Poor Alice is such a sweet baby that sometimes her patience puts her behind her tantrumy two year old brother. Well I was seeing to Jude and put Alice in the jumperoo which is one of her favorite activities. When I had finished getting Jude set up with whatever it was he was doing I came back to get Alice and the sweetest sight I have ever seen was before me. My little darling had fallen asleep in her jumperoo. I very softly picked her up and put her in her bed. I love my kids!

Warning!!! There is booty in this post!So I think that at one point there was a washer and dryer hookup in our back yard because there are two spiggots and one of them is warm water. So I hooked it up and we had a warm sprinkler party. The boys loved running and got soaked to the bone. They played and played and played but then the water got cold and they all started shivering and shaking. So we took them into the tub to get them warmed up and....all the hot water was gone. Poor kids were just going to have to get warm the old fashioned way with clothes and movement. Also it didn't help that I had done dishes, two loads of laundry, and taken a shower myself. Geez, I think someone needs to remind me that I live in the desert! But at least it was all in the name of fun!

Pull up your popcorn cause this post is going to be a long one. brain and Angie invited us to go play at the Dixie rocks and we had such a grand time that I couldn't cram it into a collage. I needed to give each beautiful red rock picture a chance to show. So we started off hiking and Jude would not be slowed down. He chased his Dad and Grandpa everywhere they went like he was just as big as any of them. He was doing so good...until...! There was a point that we came to that Jude didn't want to go down. he was wiggling and squirming so bad that we couldn't keep a safe hold on him. It was a steep enough rock that if he feel he wouldn't stop and would do some serious damage. So we got uncle Brian to stand at the bottom... and we threw Jude! It was about 8 feet and we ended up having to throw Dexter down to. It was pretty funny to see the Oh crap looks on their faces but it was the safest way little wiggle worms. Poor kiddos.

Then we tackled the narrows. It is these two slabs of rock that have come together with just barely enough room to squeeze through, and I mean barely. Look how squished in we are!Poor Dexter got way scared about half way through and decided he was done. To bad kiddo you passed the point of no return and if you want out then you have to get to the other side. So Angie grabbed on hand and i grabbed the other and we dragged him the rest of the way. I felt like I was kidnapping some poor kid. Dexter went limp legged and was scraping and bashing himself all over the narrow space. It was one of the saddest things I have had to do but the way that place is set up you have to go through after a certain point.The view from the bottom.Jude and Ollie took off and did fine.Suck it in! SQUEEEZEEE!!!About here is the point of no return. Although there are little places where the rocks open and you can take brakes and photos!After we got through the narrows we stopped for lunch and the big boys showed us their strength and the little boys showed us their jumping skills.

We had such a good time!!!

Yay!!! It was Alice's first time on the swings and she did so good. She laughed and giggled and loved every soaring minute of it.Here is big brother Jude showing Alice what these swings can do!

That's it! i am trading you to the gypsies for a bag of rice! Ok not really but sometimes these kids! Jude had used his bumbo to climb up to the counter and pull out a purple permenant marker and just went to town on my kitchen. He got the floor, both counters and himself. I was proud of myself though because I very calmly told him that he was in trouble and was going to get a spanking and time out. I administered the spanking with out anger and put him in his room. After a minute or so I got him back out and set him to work. It took us about 1/2 an hour of scrubbing with a brillo pad and lysol to get it out and I made him clean the whole time with his own little rag. Hopefully he will think twice before he decides to paint the town red, err, the kitchen purple. Dang kids!

These were taken about a week late but now Alice is 7 months( and a week) Old! She is getting so big! She is almost crawling and is so busy. She doesn't like to be snuggled to long because she has got places to go. She can motor around the house and look cute doing it. She is still working on sitting, she can do it but she is just so busy that she wont. Cute little pincess pincess!

Here is a classic Alice, to busy to stay still for pictures! She has got to go!

I opened up the front door to air out the house and little wiggle worm Ali-boo decided she was going to make a break for it. The first two pictures really crack me up. I can just imagine her turning to me and saying "K bye mom, I"ll call you when my apartment is all set up!" Where do you think you are going you goofer girl!

One of my favorite things about my new house is that it is right by a river and at night we can hear a symphony of frogs! It is like one of those jungle sleep CDs and is just so soothing. Well one morning when I was watering my gorgeous yard there was a froggie on the hose! So Jude and I made a friend. Jude was so interested and loved to hold him. Anytime he would jump away from him Jude would start talking to the froggie "Fahgie, peas wyte hewr" and then point at his palm. He just loved it. I wanted Derek to see him so i put him in a bucket with some leaves and water and then I played a little joke on Derek. I got another bucket and put it all together to look like I had the frog in there. When Derek got home I told him to go look for the froggie and Derek starts looking in the bucket. After a second he looks up at me "Cristina...there's a frog loose in our house!" He he he. I showed him where the frog really was and let Jude play with him one more time before we took him back to the river. Thanks for playing froggie!

We have a glorious backyard with our house but it had fallen in some serious disrepair and needed some help. It was nothing but crab grass and stickers bushes. Poor Jude and Duckets would go out to play and would get cratched and gnarled and covered in bumps and bruises since the ground was so uneven. So Derek and I set out to make it beautiful. At first i thought I was going to just get a little shovel and do it myself. After 5 days and not even getting 1/2 the yard done I threw up the white flag and got a tiller(Thanks to Sheena and Shan who probably saved me from 20+ hours of bending over and getting back cancer) It was really fun to just rip up the yard that had been giving me so much frustration. It had so much power and made the earth so soft and helped us get rid of all the yucky crab grass. ) We were also finding boulders in our yard and having to heft them over the wall(just a river back there) it was really crappy soil, so we layed down a bunch of manure(ewwwww) and mulch. (Thanks to Brian and Derek for being willing to get down and dirty) . It was starting to really come together at that point because the sod showed up. They were like giant dirt swiss rolls! So we (I really mean 75% Brian and 25% me, I just can't match Brians strength! and then 100% Angie kid wrangling super powers) got started puzzle peicing our yard. It was so much fun watching it come together. After about 3 hours we finishe and now it looks GREAT! Thank you for everyone that helped out to have my amazing yard. Now I am ready for it to get hot and have a sprinkler party! Wahoo!!!