Swim Lessons

Clara finished her first round of swim lessons today! She finished off the lesson by jumping to her teacher, in the deep end, and going totally head under. We are so impressed!! (Especially since just a couple months ago she was still freaked out by water getting on her face in the bathtub.)

This video clip is from one of her lessons early last week...

Daddy/Daughter Dance

A couple of weeks ago, I got to go to a Daddy/Daughter Dinner and Dance that our church put together. It was a lot of fun! You can imagine Clara's energy...there's no such thing as a slow dance - even when the music is slow.

Here's a little video...



I hope you can appreciate how difficult it is to video a 3-year old dancing, especially when she just wants to dance with her daddy all night!

Here are a couple of pre-dinner pics...

Playground Catastrophe

Wednesday of Spring Break, Joel, my sister, and I took all our kids to the Trinity Trails park. The park boasts this amazing triple-level playscape/slide. We've been there before and I helped Clara learn to climb up all the necessary ladders to get to the slide at the top and fly down, on her stomach and feet first, for safety. Well last week Lexie and I were supervising the chaos on the playscape (which involved a truckload of children who didn't belong to us but were there to enjoy shoving kids, I mean playing) and Clara was climbing the first ladder. It has like 4 rungs and she'd already been up and down multiple times. One minute she's on the ladder and the next minute she's laying on the ground, crying and holding her wrist. Somehow she slipped and fell about 3, maybe 4, feet off the ladder and into the playground mulch. Ask her and she can tell you exactly what happened. We got her home and iced her hand. There was no swelling or brusing and she would only mention pain when she bumped it on something. On Friday Joel took her to Urgent Care and she has a buckle break in her forearm. (Have I mentioned before her freakishly high pain tolerance??) Here's the picture Joel sent me from Urgent Care.

Today was our appointment with the Orthopedic doctor and he confirmed the diagnosis from Urgent Care, assured us this is a common injury in children her age, pronounced the sentence of "a cast for three weeks" with full expectation of a complete recovery and then declared she had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. No surprise there. :) (What was funny was when he looked at Joel after saying that and said, "They're your eyes!") We really like Dr. Hamilton!

So here are some pictures of our little girl in the cast color of her choosing: Princess Pink, of course. (Clara actually came up to me on Monday dressed in her pink frilly dress and asked me to help her put her crown on "because every good princess wears a crown.")

Oh and look close at the picture above and you can see where Dawson is still healing from his injury. Here's a picture of Dawson's crash with the door frame that landed us in the same Urgent Care facility just the week before Clara's accident. Somewhere someone has started a file...

Things Heard Lately from Clara...

Last Friday morning, I'm driving the kids to Mother's Day Out and they are bundled up in their little coats, looking too cute...
Mommy: (looking in rear view mirror at the kids) "Who's my blue-eyed boy? Dawson!"
(Dawson looks at me and grins.)
Mommy: "Who's my big brown-eyed girl?"
Clara: (in her little sing-song voice that we love) "Clara!!"
With only the slightest pause, I hear this from the backseat:
Clara: "Who's my green-eyed authority? Mommy!!" (I of course am laughing at this.) "Who's my brown-eyed authority? Daddy!"

I am still laughing over that exchange!!

Today, Joel and I are enjoying lunch together while the kids play in the living room when Clara runs up to me at the table and says, "Mommy, I saw that big fly and I need the fly swatter. I need to hurt his feelings." So I think, why not. I give her the fly swatter and she runs back to their play table, crawls carefully under it and then we hear her say, "Hey fly, where did you go?" I love that she expected the fly to still be there. So she stands up and begins looking in the air for the fly while calling out, "Can you come down now please? I'm just going to hurt your feelings." All of this while holding the fly swatter of course. :) No surprise that when she wasn't looking, that rather large fly made a bid for freedom out the patio door. Too bad the screen door was shut by that time and Mommy got him with the fly swatter first. Hee hee. :)

Texas Snow Day

We fell asleep last night to the sound of Texas Snow, that something between ice and snow that we all get so excited about. We woke up to roads, driveways, lawns and rooftops covered over in it and schools of course shut down. The temperature is 20 but "feels like 10" so we got everyone bundled up and went out to play! You have to be quick because as we all know, the sun is going to melt the fun away pretty fast...

Dawson took one of the bouncy balls out to the front yard and I got a great series of pictures of him picking up the ball, losing his balance and falling over. This of course is the last of those pics!

Dawson took off on an adventure up the sidewalk with Daddy & Clara right behind him.

Dawson dropped the bouncy ball and it rolled off down the driveway, across the neighbors sidewalk and down the street which of course is a hill. This is Joel getting to the ball just in the knick of time and barely maintaining his balance before careening down the icy hill himself.

We wanted to get a picture of the kids together so I told Dawson to go stand with Clara. He falls down right in front of her and she is very kindly saying, "You have to be careful Buddy," while just standing there & watching him struggle to get up. I guess it's better that she didn't actually try to help him up or they could have both been laid out on the ground. :)

I took Dawson inside and put him down for a nap while Daddy & Clara kept playing outside. Evenutally they made their way back into the house and out on the balcony to take advantage of the "snow" which accumulated on the patio chairs. Daddy made the snowballs and helped Clara toss them off the balcony and onto the driveway...

Fort Worth Rodeo Parade

We LOVE living here in Fort Worth, especially in the heart of the city near dowtown. Joel's mom tipped us off to the parade today downtown near Sundance Square. We got the kids dressed in their cowboy gear, including matching boots from MaMaw & PaPaw and went early to get a good spot. It was cold - colder than we thought it was going to be but we had a great time. Joel found the perfect place along the parade route where we had a spot to sit and some room for the kids to play while we waited. We were wise and picked a place near Starbucks so that we could have something warm to drink too! The kids even shared a hot chocolate. The whole parade passed by within feet of us and we were front row. Clara's favorite parts were the various marching bands and Dawson loved the horses, hundreds of them. We got to see a lot, including an albino horse, some really big Clydesdale horses with legs the size of a man's body, a yellow lab pulling a little girl in a cart and my favorite, a group of cowboys & cowgirls riding for Jesus with banners that read "King of Kings" and "Lord of Lords". After the parade we ate BBQ downtown and then visited the library. Here are some pictures!

One of Those Great Days

Do you ever have one of those days? One of those days that you wish you could bottle up and not lose one moment of? Not because of something momentous but because of the everyday? Today, I had one of those days. Seeing Dawson enjoy the ability to walk...going everywhere and nowhere all at once just to show off that precious toddle-walk that is gone too quickly. The joy of my son snuggling against my chest, perfectly content to be in his Mommy's arms. The joy of laying on the bed next to my daughter watching her play with her hands and listening to her imagination soar. Indulging in her laughter as she leans over to plant a kiss on my nose once and then again...the kiss turning into a raspberry and peals of delight. The joy of her smile and her wanting me to take a nap with her. "Stay right there Mommy and don't go." Even the chaos of two children in complete emotional melt-down, screaming in your lap and both pushing away at the other, wanting to be the only you hold. Playing peek-a-boo at Wendy's with the whole family and just being silly. Watching your husband be silly with the kids. Pushing a cart through Target with Clara staying right at my side saying with delight, "I am obeying." That precious glimpse of the sweat and effort of parenting that is reaping blessing in her life. Comforting my sweet girl during an embarassing moment. Trying not to laugh with Dawson after he threw everything out of his bed including his pants. I delight in being a wife and a mom. I love my life. I love these days. Thank you Lord.

So here it is. My day, bottled up so that not a moment is forgotten...