April 30: Blogger Fail

I have been working on a big post with lots of pictures of our outdoor fun over the past couple of days.  But Blogger is not letting me upload any pictures tonight.  So, I guess I will have to try again tomorrow.

April 27: Preschool Songs

Because I never get tired of listening to her sing, here are a few songs that Audrey sang for us this morning.

This is her preschool class "theme" song.  (Ignore Isla's fussing in the background.  She really wanted to hold my phone while I was recording)

Her class has been learning the fruits of the spirit all year.  This week, for the first time, I heard her sing a song to go along with them.  So sweet!

April 23: More phone pics

I'm cleaning up my phone, so time for some more iphone pics and videos.  Here are a few that haven't made it to the blog yet.

I love watching the girls play together, and I am always trying to capture those moments on video.  Here is a video from February.  They were dancing to the Dora dance game on the Wii.

 These pictures were from our last Sprouts session in March. 

This is Audrey doing one of her favorite things:  singing, dancing and acting out songs.  This is a song from the show Sofia the First.

 I keep thinking that Isla is getting taller.  Until I see pictures like this, where she looks so teeny tiny! She goes back to the endocrinologist in about a month, and I'm very curious to see how much she has really grown in the past three months.

 I posted this picture on Instagram, but I don't think I posted it here.  This was Isla's first time to play dress up, and she was SO adorable!  She especially loved the shoes, and she frequently wants to put them on and walk in them.

This picture was taken tonight, after Audrey finished performing a Cinderella show.  Notice the socks on Audrey's hands.  That is what she uses as Cinderella's gloves when she goes to the ball.

I have a few more videos to post, but they are taking forever to upload and I'm tired of waiting.  I've got to finish dusting and vacuuming in preparation for our house appraisal tomorrow.  The house is looking pretty much perfect, so now we just need the appraiser to be able to see that it is worth what we sold it for! 

April 20: Iphone pics of the day (with a house update too)

The girls spent some time painting and drawing this morning.  Isla is starting  to be more purposeful in her scribbles.  They still mostly just look like scribbles, but she will tell us what she is trying to draw.  Then she concentrates really hard and takes her time trying to draw it.  Often she will try to write letters (O's and A's, as she calls them) because Audrey is always writing letters.  She is also now trying to draw people (even though they don't look like people at all).  I took this picture while she was drawing Daddy.  Such concentration!

Someone commented on Facebook about how well she grips her pen.  She does!  She has always naturally held writing utensils in the correct way.  Unlike Audrey, who still doesn't quite have the right grip yet.  I'm thinking maybe Isla will be artistic...who knows?

Audrey likes to put on shows.  Which means she wants to listen to princess movie soundtracks on Spotify, dress up, and sing all the songs.  She will often create an audience using her dolls and stuffed animals and us.  When the show is over, then she wants people to come meet the princess.  Today, after finishing her Belle show, she invited Isla to come and meet Belle and get her picture taken with Belle.

This afternoon, Daniel took the girls to the park that is right next to our new house (we haven't been to that park before, so they wanted to scope it out!).  They all had a great time.  Daniel said the park was nice, and it is right next to the pool, so he got a good view of the pool too.  While they were playing at the park, they met two other girls who live in the neighborhood.  Audrey and a  girl named Lucy played together.  Daniel talked to their mom, and she had lots of good things to say about living in the neighborhood.  She also said she is excited to see more girls move in!  We are excited to move to a neighborhood with more families and kids...and a neighborhood where the families and kids are out playing and interacting with each other. 

This is Audrey saying goodbye to her new friend.

Now, we just want to move to that neighborhood, so everything needs to continue to go well with our house selling process.  We had the inspection last week, and it went fairly well.  The buyers asked us to fix a few minor electrical problems and to repair part of our chimney, which is starting to fall apart on the roof.  It doesn't sound like any of those issues will be too difficult or expensive to correct, so that is very good!  We also passed the radon inspection with flying colors! 

All that is left now is the appraisal.  The appraisal was supposed to be on Friday with an appraiser who has a bad reputation, but it was cancelled for an unknown reason.  We were glad that it was cancelled, and we were hoping that it would get rescheduled with a different appraiser.  Well, it did get rescheduled (for this Wednesday) but with the same appraiser.  Boo!  Daniel and I are getting pretty nervous about it, because this appraiser is known to appraise houses lower than most other appraisers.  That could be bad, as we are counting on all the money from the sale of this house to go towards the purchase of the new house.  We can't really afford to come down from our selling price.

This whole system is frustrating and so subjective.  If we have someone who is willing to buy our house, why can't they just buy our house?  They think it is a fair price, and we think it is a fair price.  We did our research, and I really do feel like we priced it fairly.  So why does the entire sale of our house have to hinge on the opinion of this appraiser?  Oh, it's such a stressful process!  I CANNOT WAIT to be done with all of it!

April 16: Crazy Hair Day

It was Crazy Hair Day at Audrey's preschool today.  Audrey requested that we fix her hair like Cindy Lou Who from The Grinch again.  It didn't turn out quite as cute as the first time we attempted this hair style, but Audrey loved it.  And Isla kept pointing to her and saying, "tall!  tall!"

Speaking of hair, Isla finally wore her hair in pigtails for the first time on Sunday.  We attempted pigtails once before, but she screamed until I took them out. 

For the past two Sundays, I have managed to get Isla to leave a bow in her hair for church.  It started on Easter Sunday.  I tried everything I could think of to get her to accept the bow.  Finally I said, "Isla you can wear a bow and show it to Adam at church," and she gladly agreed to this plan.  (Adam is a friend of ours, and Isla adores him).  When we got to church on Easter Sunday, we walked all over church until we could find Adam and show him Isla's bow.

So for the pigtails, I first fixed Audrey's hair in pigtails and made a big deal about how pretty they were.  Then I told Isla that she could have her hair in pigtails too, and she could show them to Mimi and Papaw (who were in town for the day).  Isla liked that idea, and she liked her pigtails too!

 

Isla left her pigtails in all through church.  Here she is at lunch after church, showing off with her ice cream spoon!

 This pig-tailed girl wanted to show off for the camera too!

April 14: House Update

I'm sure only a handful of you (if that!) are interested in reading all the nitty, gritty details of our house selling/buying process.  I'm only posting this here so that I will remember it.  So if I ever get the idea in my head again that I want to move, I will remember what hard work it is and how stressful it is and how I really don't want to ever do it again!

We had the inspection on our new house last week.  It was perfect.  Nothing wrong, and everything was in great condition.  The inspector said that he wished he could move in there!  So that is very good news.  We weren't really expecting anything to be wrong, but it is reassuring to know that we have picked a good house!

Tomorrow, we have the inspection on our current house.  We have been working hard to fix up a few little things and get the house spotlessly clean (yet again!).  We don't know of any major problems, but in an old house, you never know what they will find.  Keeping our fingers crossed for a good report!

On Friday, we have the appraisal on our current house.  Our realtor told us that the appraiser who has been assigned to our house has been appraising houses low lately.  If he appraises our house below our selling price, that could be really bad.  So let's hope that doesn't happen.  I would hate to see this all fall through now that we have made it this far into the process!

April 13: 5K

The girls and I got up early to go watch Daniel run a 5K this morning.  Our church has started to sponsor a 5K race each year to raise money for missions.  Last year, the weather was cold and windy and rainy.  It was just awful.  Audrey still remembers last year.  I made the girls stay in the car, while I went out in the rain to take some pictures and periodically come back to the car to check on them. As soon as I told Audrey what we were doing today, she said, "No!  I don't want to stay in the car by myself again!"

Well, the sun was out in full force today.  But it was still cold.  Much, much colder than last year.  And it was windy.  Much more windy than last year.  I think the temp was 35 when we got there, but the winds were at least 25 mph if not more, making it feel much, much colder.  All the EZ up tents they were using for the race were blowing away.  It was so cold!

Despite the cold, the girls were determined to watch Daddy run.  We made signs and Audrey brought a whistle to use to cheer for Daddy, but it was just too cold and windy to get them out.  We huddled under a blanket to watch Daddy and our friends Brooks and Jody start the race.  (You can't see them in this picture, but it was really hard to find them in the crowd at the starting line!)

Once the race started and they were out of sight, we went inside a nearby restaurant until the runners circled back around to cross the finish line.  Then we went back out in the cold to watch the finish.  We could barely see Daniel when he finished because someone came and stood right in front of us!  But I managed to get this picture right after he finished.

The highlight of my morning (besides cheering for Daniel of course!) was hearing Isla say, "Go Da!  Go Da!  Go Da!" over and over again.  It was the first time she has ever put two words together!