Overheard at breakfast

Oskar to Annika: "Congratulations!"
Annika: "Why did you say grad-u-lations?"
Oskar: "Because that's what you say when someone does something great."

Keep on Rollin'

I've been forgetting to mention that Kard is rolling like a fiend this week. I put her on her back and immediately she's flipped onto her tummy. She can cover small distances that way.

Scrapbooking

I'm reading Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life and it really resonates with me. I think it helped me find my voice. Simple Scrapbooks gurus Stacy Julian and Cathy Zielske both recommended it so I picked it up and am enjoying it. Although I can see that it would not be everyone's cup of tea.

This evening we sat outside and watched the neighbors' fireworks. Oskar and Kardynn slept through it but the other two girls sat outside with us. I was snapping pictures and Dwight was recording with one of his numerous devices. He has some cute audio of the girls.

[sound of mortar explosion]
Annika: "Daddy, hold my hand!"
Kiersten: "Daddy, I not tared."

Dwight and I with our hobbies...it's so wild how you develop a passion for something and then get such enjoyment out of it. Right now I can hear Dwight down in the basement beating away on his drums. I've been sitting here playing around with a scrapbooking layout...tweaking it here and there throughout the day. We're both so into our things. We used to have a lot more overlapping interests but I think now that our free time is such a precious commodity, we both retreat to the hobbies we're most passionate about. So he's delving into his music and I immerse myself in my various "family historian" pursuits - captioning my photos, posting to my blog, et cetera.

Well, it's about two hours past the time when I should have gone to bed.

Oskar and I are looking at photos of Danny's wedding. He said, "Oh, there's Mommy and Uncle Jonny! I love that girl."

Aww...that made my day.

Oskar just told me, "Mommy, you and Daddy are smart but about different things. You're a little smart and he's a little smart. But put your smarts together and it's a big smart."

Now he's saying, "I'm good of es-plaining invisible. Are you good of es-plaining that Mommy?"

No. Not so much.

Annika's favorite food is macaroni & cheese. She *always* asks for mac & cheese, and is then upset with me when I don't deliver (which is obviously most of the time). Yesterday she asked for the usual and I replied, "Well, how about grilled cheese?" She responded with enthusiasm, "Oh sure, Mom! Not boy cheese!"

Oskar used to call AOE "Asian Empires" but now he's calling it "Age of Empirates".

Today we were looking at groundhogs and Kiersten was saying, "I don't see it hotdogs, I don't see it hotdogs".