Nothing exciting today...

No exciting pictures today. I'm too lazy to go back through my archives and find something good to post, and I didn't take any photos of the stuff we did today. It's been a busy couple of days around here. I took the girls to school on their first day, but yesterday and today Daddy-J took them to school because I had to be in court both mornings.

It has been a while since I've done any courtroom work; not that I was ever a very big courtroom lawyer (I'm not!). But it was kinda fun to get in there and cross swords with some other attorneys live in front of a judge. We won't know for a few days, at least, the outcome of yesterday's and today's hearings, but I felt good about my "performance."

I think it's good for the girls to see that mama works sometimes too. They know I work in my office and on my computer, but today they got to see me get all dressed up in my work clothes and march off to battle, just like daddy does every day. It's important to me that they know that mamas can work too, and just because theirs doesn't go to an office away from them every day, doesn't mean that other mamas don't do that and that they can't do that someday if they want to.

What else? Nothing I can think of. Just getting ready for our trip to NYC this weekend. Trying to get through all the laundry so we have some clothes to pack. I ordered some things from Target.com, designed by Isaac Mizrahi, so I hope they're nice. They should arrive tomorrow. I bought Daddy-J some clothes at the outlet mall today... he even liked most of them.

We'll be staying at the Essex House, which is a fancy hotel right on Central Park. We're going with a small group, including the local station manager, from our Salt Lake CBS affiliate. I hear we'll be attending the US Open tennis tournament on Saturday and Sunday, and have access to the CBS hospitality tent. Should be fun!

Well, it's 9:30, and I need to go eat dinner -- Daddy-J cooked for us tonight. Thanks to everyone who's left comments or e-mailed or phoned to tell me they enjoy the blog. It's nice to know I have dedicated "readers" out there!

First Day of School

Thanks for looking!

Boating!

Sunday afternoon we took the girls and met up with some friends of ours to go boating at Jordanelle. We have a 2004 Hydroswift 22' open-bow boat. We bought it the year Miss D was born. For 5 years we had a slip at Jordanelle. This year we don't have the slip, so we're towing the boat back and forth. Finally, the girls are all old enough to enjoy time on the boat and not be totally high maintenance.

Miss D and K-Wiggles were very excited to get out on the tube.



Despite the look on her face, M-Moo was ecstatic to get out on the water ski again (this was her second time on water skis and she talks about nothing else virtually all day).



Does the video show how happy M-Moo was?




And Miss D and Daddy-J had the best time together on the tube!

We all had a great day, and everyone came home exhausted and promptly went straight to bed!

Margaritaville 2008

We've been going to our friends Larry and Denna's "Margaritaville" party for quite a few years now (Daddy-J isn't here to help me remember just how many, but I'd have to say at least 6 years, if not 7 or 8). I couldn't even tell you how many years they've been having this party.

Anyway, the party is a blast. A whole bunch of really fun people show up (Larry & Denna are super fun and attract all kinds of fun people!), and nowadays there are a lot of kids too. Larry & Denna have two girls, Megan and Kennedy, who are the same ages (almost to the day) of our three.

This year, we had a really great time. The girls were all old enough to wander the party, dance, eat, drink, and just have a ton of fun. They even got to do a pinata!

On the sidebar at the right, I've installed a slideshow from an album put together by someone who was at the party. Looking at the photos is kinda like playing "where's Waldo." See how many photographs you can find with a picture of someone from this family -- there are actually quite a few! Leave a comment with your guess as to how many!

Dinosaur Museum

Kerry and I took all six of our kids to the dinosaur museum today. Actually, its called the Museum of Ancient Life. It's small and intimate, but great for little kids. They have lots of hands-on exhibits for the kids to get into, and they can really get up close to the dinosaurs. All of the kids had a fun time, from six-year-old Emma down to 22-month-old Nora. Miss D, Ian, M-Moo, and K-Wiggles were highly entertained (and entertaining), and did a lot of running around and "ooh-ing" and "aah-ing."


Kerry and the big kids spent a good amount of time playing in the "erosion" exhibit -- a giant water table with sand and dinosaurs and trees and running water. They built a huge dam and watched the lake form behind it. (In case anybody's wondering -- this is not a picture of any of our kids at the water table... I found it online on somebody's flickr album and just wanted to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Kerry and I failed to take a single photograph today!).

It was really fun to get down there for our last activity before school starts on Monday. (Yikes! Where did our summer go?).

Soccer and boogers.

Miss-D started fall soccer league yesterday. She has played a couple of soccer leagues and learn-to leagues over the past year or so, but this is the first time she is in an organized league, segregated by gender and age. She is on a team (the Aqua Butterflies), coached by two dads of the other girls on the team. All the girls are 4, and they seem to be a pretty similar ability level to each other. It was fun to see all the girls at the same level and learning to "dribble" and kick goals.

This is Miss-D dribbling during one of the drills the girls did.


Here's Miss-D's team. Is it just me, or can you feel the estrogen already?



This is pretty much what sisters did during soccer practice -- annoy the heck out of Mama-V! Next time I need to make sure and bring a soccer ball for them to play with (maybe 2?!).

Ok, that takes care of the soccer -- now for the boogers! Apparently, M-Moo had a colossal boogie nose this morning. Instead of wiping said boogie nose, Daddy-J decided to grab the camera and take a picture. And lucky you, I'm going to share that pic right here... (warning, if you're squeamish, don't look at the following photograph!)






I'll give you some space to get ready for it...







Impressive, no? That's my girl!

More catching up -- spring skiing with Miss D.

Miss-D took skiing lessons this past winter. She took 4 weeks of lessons, twice a week, for three hours. Although she has been skiing since she was less than one year old, her skiing really took off this year. Toward the end of the season, Daddy-J and Mama-V took Miss D skiing, and it was actually fun! We skied all over the mountain, and took Miss D to some of our favorite spots. She was a trooper, and skied all but the steepest stuff (Daddy-J had to carry-ski her down Sidewinder!).

Here are a few pics of our fun family ski day...

All three of us, right by the gondola.


Daddy-J and Miss D enjoying lunch al fresco.


Miss D ate the bun from her hot dog, and some french fries - carbo girl!

And here's a video to give you the idea of what our day was like:



All three girls will be taking ski lessons this coming winter. We're really looking forward to being able to ski as a family. Mama-V and Daddy-J have not skied as much as they're used to these past four winters and we are both eager to get back to it in a big way! Here's hoping our girls inherit our love of skiing.

Three girls and a park!

Amazingly, after yesterday's hiking adventure, we took the girls out for dinner (at a new restaurant in town, called Flippin' Burgers) and then Daddy-J had a hockey game. So while he was "suiting up" at the hockey rink, I took the three girls over to the playground right by the rink. The light was gorgeous, so I took about 100 shots of the girls, only exactly one of which turned out at all good! So here it is...


But since that's the only one from the park that turned out, here are a couple more cute ones from the hike... (I need to lighten all these in Photoshop, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, so I figured I'd better just share them before they get lost somewhere on my hard drive!).








Are those not just the cutest bellies you've ever seen? And isn't that the beginnings of a six-pack there on K-Wiggles?!

A hike!

Today, we decided to take the girls (all of them, even the doggies) for a hike. After a short early nap for M-Moo and K-Wiggles, we loaded everyone in the car and headed up to the top of Guardsman's Pass. From there, we hiked almost all the way to a lovely lake (saw it in the distance, but it was a steep downhill for the last little bit and we decided not to risk it!). The girls were champs! Seriously, all three of the littles hiked the whole way without complaint. We saw lots of wildflowers, and Mama-V tried not to hate the mosquitoes that were torturing her too much.

Here are a couple of cool shots we took:

More catching up from this summer's fun!

Still catching up on some of the fun stuff we did this summer. Last fall, Mama-V bought a couple of wading pools and some other swim stuff on super-clearance at Wally-World. When it finally got warm this summer (sometime in July, I think), I dragged out one of the wading pools. After blowing it up for an eternity -- hello, who turned off the oxygen! -- we filled it with water and Daddy-J had the brilliant idea of pushing our outdoor slide over to the pool.

Well, needless to say, the girls loved it and played for hours, despite the water being less-than-warm. They have been dressing up in their swim suits all year long, nearly every day, and it is so nice to have the pool set up so they can finally actually go "swimming!"

Here's a little video I shot from the deck when the girls weren't looking:

Jordanelle's 10th Anniversary Celebration

Jordanelle Reservoir is our local body of water, where we take our boat "Soul Mate" to play. The reservoir had its 13th anniversary this year, and they decided to do a big party, with a band, bouncy house, water slide, barbecue, and fireworks. We took the whole crew to play and dance and eat and watch the fireworks.

All three kids really loved the band, a bunch of locals from Wasatch County who were actually really good! This video of Miss D and K-wiggles dancing is absolutely priceless, IMO:



The fireworks were really amazingly good, too! They were coordinated with cool music from the bandstand and lasted a really long time.


All in all, we had a really great time at the celebration, and we can't wait to do it again next year!

Fourth of July Pinata!

Well, since we're catching up here... I thought I'd share some cute photos of the girls whacking the pinata at our neighbors' 4th of July barbecue:

Here's Miss D (look closely and you can see her "rasta" braids!):


This one is K-wiggles... not much of a swing there!

This one's a little better:


But here's our real slugger, M-Moo:


No, seriously! She was a killer at the Pinata!

Oh well, anyway... we all had a great time. Thanks Sammy & David! See you next year!

Bedtime shenanigans!

Well, the twins have been wreaking havoc with bedtime for some time now, pretty much ever since we put them in the same room and changed their cribs into "big girl beds." We've been putting them down at 7:30 this summer, which is pretty late for us (and them) and lately it's been 9:00 or even 9:30 before they finally sack out. So I posted a WWYD question on one of my "boards" where a bunch of very wise twin mamas hang out online and got some great ideas.

Today's project: clearing everything out of the twins' room except their beds, blankets, and one stuffed animal each. I also turned the handle around on their door so I could lock it from the outside. I moved the monitor and noise machine to where they couldn't reach either one (this took some ingenuity in a room with no furniture, let me tell you!). And finally, I barricaded their closet sliding door shut.

Tonight, they went to bed at 6:30. No nap today, because they've just been napping way too long. Tomorrow I will nap them, but get them up after 2 hours max. May have to cut that down to one hour; we'll see. Anyway, after a couple of "curtain calls" to get them some water and change poopy diapers, they were "all quiet" by about 7:30. Vast improvement!

I expect the whole thing to go downhill from here for a while. I'm giving it two weeks of them having a party in their room with nothing but their blankets before they *hopefully* get bored of it and just go to sleep when it's time to go to bed. I don't mind a half hour or so of chit chatting with each other, but this getting up 500 times and me (or Daddy-J) having to go back down there every five minutes for two hours has got to stop!

If this doesn't work, we're going to have to separate them. When I put them in separate rooms, they pretty much go right to sleep. Maybe if they start getting better sleep at night, they'll even sleep later in the morning. K-wiggles has been waking everybody up at 6:00 for the past few weeks and it's definitely making me tired!

Our spring irises

Wanted to share these photos that Big Daddy J took last spring of our beautiful irises. Our spring was so so late here, that it took forever for these pretty ladies to show their faces, but when they did... ooohboy were they beautiful! See for yourself...

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Welcome to Casa Llamedos!

Welcome to Casa Llamedos! Home to human animals Mama, Daddy, Miss D, M-Moo, and K-Wiggles. Also home to doggies Alpenglow and Katahdin, known fondly as Alpie and Kadie. We'd like to use this blog to keep our friends and family up to date on all the marvelous goings-on in and around Casa Llamedos and the busy-doings of her human and animal inhabitants. Stay tuned for hopefully frequent updates!