My Baby is Crying and I Can't Think of a Title

Well, we have made it through to Day 12 without David and now that we've finally gotten into a little routine and are all feeling sort of comfortable with our new situation, he will be returning home in a couple of days!  We have been really fortunate and have been able to Skype with him a few different times.  On one of our last conversations, however, he told me that his dad told him that this was just a "preliminary" trip down there and that they would get more done on the next one.  You've never seen a face get so close to a webcam before.  You can tell your father that I don't plan on having you leave for two weeks again ANYTIME SOON.  This Mama needs a vacation of her own.  


Like I said, keeping busy and getting out of the house is KEY for surviving these days and after a couple of days of not doing that, we've been out of the house a lot over the last few days.

On Thursday, we went to the playground in our neighborhood and packed a lunch for Olivia.  Last Thursday, we met a little girl and her mom who have lunch there every Thursday and invited us to join them this week.  Unfortunately, the mom was called in to work, but the grandparents still brought the little girl for her lunch date with Olivia.  She is super shy, but that didn't stop Olivia from asking her a million questions and encouraging her to play.

This girl could swing for hours!

I think I've mentioned that Olivia's current naptime is way too late and it's been difficult getting it moved up.  Well, we must have worn her out at the playground because when we went back to our house she napped around 2.  That's progress!  In all, we gave Mom and Dad about a 6 hour break which I'm pretty sure was glorious - when we got back to their house, Mom showed me the million things she had gotten done for the day!

On Friday, we met up with some friends at the zoo!  It sure is nice having friends AND a membership to the zoo!  Olivia was great all morning - we played in the treehouse, rode the carousel {three times} and walked around a good part of the zoo.  We even ended up staying a little later than the rest of the crew, but I figured if I was going to do the zoo by myself and drive 30 minutes to get there, we were going to stay as long as both girls were being good.  Sydney took a nice long nap in the Ergo and Olivia stayed in her stroller while we moved from animal to animal.  I couldn't have begged, bribed or bargained for better behavior from either of them!  Olivia was properly rewarded with a small container of zoo animals from the gift shop on the way out.  This girl is LOVING animal figurines these days.

It's really sad that this is one of the few pictures I have of me and the girls.

But, I have about 100 pictures of her on a carousel.

My favorite part of the zoo - I love this open field where multiple types of animals roam free.

While I fed Sydney, Olivia played zoo keeper in the car.

We came home and Olivia took another glorious nap!  I really don't want to have to give up her naps if I don't have to.  Mom and Dad had dinner plans that night, so they ended up having almost 11 hours of free time!  Ha ha.  Knowing that, we headed out for a late afternoon trip to the playground for some more swinging.

With these precious kiddos as my view, I could push Olivia in the swing for hours too.

Olivia had her swim lessons again on Saturday.  I wanted her to understand that while she was at the lessons, she was to have fun, but also to listen to the teacher and follow her instructions.  We practiced several times through the week and a lot on Saturday morning.  She had fun playing pretend and kept saying, "You be Miss Melody!"  All that playing/practicing paid off - she was SO GREAT at swim lessons.  She listened to everything Miss Melody said and never wandered off.  I was so proud of her.

I have a few more pictures of swim lessons on my camera, so they may show up on another post as well.

She is such a water bug!  After swim lessons, we met up with Poppy who had just played in a golf tournament AND WON!  Woot Woot!  We celebrated with pizza and an early night!

Umm, yes, I'll take that wine off your hands.

And, this morning we met up with Mom after church at one of our favorite parks,  Desert Breeze.  I took tons more pictures with my camera, but here are a couple cute ones from my phone.  Looking forward to having David come back home, but am SO thankful for friends and family who have helped make this time fly by! (And so much easier)