Highlights

Well, since our one-week summer vacations are over, this blog is back to me reminiscing over the past week's nuances so that I can gladly share them with the you; my readers on the world wide web. :) Dave and I are getting back to working on the house. I got the little downstairs bathroom painted this week, and painted the daybed we bought at a garage sale a few months ago. Dave has almost finished putting together a playset we aquired and has carried the painted daybed up stairs and put it together. The girls are still up to their eyes in hilarious antics. I spend the majority of my time just trying to keep up with them.

The other day, the girls and I went outside in between rainstorms to clip our finger nails and get them painted a nice shade of pink. We enjoy girlie stuff like that. As we sat out there, a neighbor of ours, whom I am guessing is Middle Eastern, walked by and we said our hellos with polite smiles. I love to watch the girls greet adults because it usually puts a smile on the adults' face. Anyway, the man was polite as well and then kept on exercising. As he turned the bend of our culdesac, Julia said "Bye, bye. Grass-yas. Grass-yas!" I looked over to her and she was beeming from ear to ear. It was so not politically correct, but so cute. It also made me realize that when I ask her to tell our neighbors "Gracias" that she doesn't understand what it means. And, obviously, she also doesn't understand the difference in race and languages. But, that's what I enjoy about Houston, she will have the quite the opportunity to learn.

Besides running away from me at the most inconvenient times, Lydia is growing and learning and talking a lot too. She has started pointing out different colors, and just this week, she surprised me by indentifying pink, red, blue and orange all by herself. Older syblings really do help teach their younger syblings! I haven't worked with Lydia on colors all that much. And yet, she is learning them. Julia doesn't always teach Lydia in the nicest way, but, she is teaching her. Today, Julia was instructing Lydia on how to fetch all the black checkers for her. When Lydia touched a red checker, Julia would say, "No, the black checkers, Lydia." Lydia would respond by saying, "Oh, okay Sissy."

Lydia has started doing something else that makes me laugh. The other day, I was tickling her, and in the midst of it, I spurted on her stomach. In response, she giggled and said "Cuse me". We both laughed, and continued to play the "tooting game" a little longer. She is so hilarious.

We had a nice surprise this last week. Our neighbors are redoing their 9 year-old's bedroom, and in that, wanted to get rid of a bunch of dress-up clothes, toys, and games. So, our neighbor stopped by the other day and asked if we would like to have all that stuff. Woohoo! Christmas in July is so fun!!! The girls have been playing and reading and playing some more with their new-old things. We made some cookies this evening as a thank you to them. Thank you God for our neighbors!! Love it.

Thanks for reading!! See you soon! -Amber