Rainy morning

The weather is starting to heat up here and rainy, cloudy days are not the norm anymore. So the other day when we woke up to rain pounding on the tin roof, the kids were overjoyed. They raced into their rooms, threw on their swim suits, and went outside to splash. It was so incredibly refreshing to be in the cool rain and I love watching them play together as their imaginations go. Keenan and Elliot threw water at each other in a battle while Lucy and Jules "cooked" lunch for everyone. Here are some pictures of their fun :)

tiny biscuits peeking out :)

Jules walked around the yard with this piece of tile pretending it was a phone taking pictures of everyone :)

Precious Princess Girl

This tiny sweetheart Juliette is one! She is full of life and spunk and we all just adore her! She started laughing at herself lately and her favorite thing is to get the boys giggling at her. She loves reading books and will sit in front of our bookshelf and pull books off the shelf one at a time and look at them forever. All of the books. And she doesn't even put any of them back. We'll work on it. :) She has the coolest dance move where she rotates her pelvis forward, sticks out her tummy, then she bounces up and down in that position while rolling her wrists around. It's pretty awesome.  Ill try to get a video of it and put it on here at some point. She still squeals like a pterodactyl (yes, I had to google how to spell that sucker) when something happens that she is not happy about, but now she also does it for fun and looks around smiling to see who heard. She loves walking around the house with one of Lucy's purses strapped over her shoulder. She sits calmly and happily as I put the tiniest pig tails in her hair.  She pulls our every plastic plate from the kids cabinet in the kitchen and pretends to eat off of each one as she scatters them all around the kitchen floor. She has curls!! When we tell her "no" she looks at you as though she is highly offended and softly squeaks in protest. She really brings all of us so much joy as she is our entertainment a lot of times and we think she is pretty darn cute. Here are her pictures from her one year photo session in the back yard. :) Happy Birthday, sweet little munchkin. You are loved beyond measure!

Whats a one year old photo shoot without a little bit of tears?!

sweet little teeth!!

Eggs!

 There were a few weeks where my kitchen counter had a few jars of random eggs waiting to hatch on it. As I was cleaning the boys closet one day, I found two lizard eggs hiding in their shirts. Randomness from living here, right?! As I showed the boys the eggs, Elliot decided that he wanted to break one open right then and see what was inside. So we dropped one onto the tile and peeked inside to see. Sorry, I know its a little gross, but just chalk it up to science. :) Sure enough there was a tiny slimy lizard wrapped up inside but he didnt survive long but I have to admit it was a little cool seeing it in there. We put the second egg in a jar and decided to wait and see what happens with him.

This is what the eggs look like

first crack

Elliot removing the shell

The lizard still in its sack

If you look closely you can see the tail wrapped up around the head

poor little guy

The second egg in its new home

While we waited for the lizard to hatch, we started seeing these huge moths all around our yard. They were sluggish and clung really tightly to where they were.  We thought they were cool at first, but them we started seeing them more and more and then we got grossed out. I started thinking that maybe the reason they were so sluggish was they were at the end of their lives and about to drop a ton of eggs somewhere and they were extra heave. The kids smashed one one day and, lo and behold, inside there were hundreds of eggs. We thought it would be a good addition to our lizard egg, so we trapped one one day and waited for it to lay its eggs. After that, we jared them up and waited.

This was its alarmed state after we blew on it

The kids opening our trap

success!!

Going to join lizard egg in the kitchen

One day after school Keenan came running out of the kitchen excitedly yelling that our lizard had hatched!! Pretty incredible that he fit in that little egg!! The other egg was one that Elliot found in our living room behind a game. It never did hatch, just got kinda mushy and eventually stuck to the bottom of the jar. :)

Then a few days later, these little guys made their appearance! Sadly, they only lived a few hours even though I put in new leaves in there for them to eat. 

The boys thought it was pretty cool though to watch them for a bit!

 Now our counter is empty and we will have to hunt for new things to watch or take apart. Life with kids! :)