June 21st - all of the Father's together: my brothers Mark & Terry, my Dad, and R. Celebrating Father's Day at my parents' house.

June 22nd: First day of swimming lessons for Irelyn. She was terrified to get into the pool because she thought she would sink. Soon she realized she could touch the bottom. I hope she becomes more comfortable in the water before we head to the beach!

June 23rd: The temperature in the car as we left to do our errands today. Too hot to be outside running around.

June 24th: Swim lessons every morning this week. After lunch we headed over to J's house for a play date with some friends. We had popcorn - the black pepper & salt popcorn is the best - chased a frog on the patio, played games, and had a fun time!

June 25th: After swim lessons we met some good friends at the park. They moved to Texas last year and it was great seeing them. It was HOT and all the kids were melting, but it was so fun to spend time together. Of course, Georgia didn't want to hang around with the "little" kids so she went to a friend's house for play time & swimming.

June 26th: Before bed play time with daddy - Irelyn giving him a make-over. Georgia had a friend sleep-over tonight so R was trying to help occupy Irelyn so the big kids could have their alone time.

June 27th: Took Georgia's friend home after the sleep-over. Georgia ended up staying to swim and play and I headed down to the Outlet mall. R finally received his Father's Day gift - Mario Kart for the Wii and he was playing it when I got home from shopping.

June 28th: After lunch we headed down to Sarasota to the GWIZ hands on science museum. Here, Georgia is making a cloud. This is a great little museum, and the best part was the free admission thanks to our membership to the Florida Aquarium. We spent a nice afternoon seeing how magnets work, an exhibit of Leonardo Da Vinci's creations, and learning about all sorts of fascinating science things. I think R and I had more fun than the kids!

June 29th: Flip flops are what we wear in the summer time. Here we are, a family of flip-flops!

We spent the morning at swim lessons then headed over to a swimming play date and lunch with some friends. I was too tired to cook so we headed over to Bob Evan's for dinner.

June 30th: Irelyn not happy about bed time.

July 1st: R's new shirt! He has a running joke about not wearing pants and someone sent him this shirt. Too funny!

July 2nd: This is pretty much what the passenger side of my car looks like on a daily basis - purse, swim bag/towel, water bottle, coffee (not always Starbucks), notepad and pen to jot down things as I think of them while driving around town.

July 3rd: R was off work today. He took Irelyn to her swim lesson where she jumped off the diving board for the first time. I was sad that I missed it, but happy that R got to see it since he normally is the one to miss out on all of those types of events. Later we headed over to my parents' house for some Maryland Fried Chicken. After dinner we set up the new sprinkler toy I bought for the girls. They had a blast.

July 4th: Happy Independence Day! Too many pictures taken today - too hard to choose just one. We started out the day going to a local church for a free picnic lunch with hamburgers, hot dogs, snow cones and a bouncy house. Later we met some friends to watch the fireworks display at the mall.

July 5th: On Friday, R decided to go out and get a tattoo. He's been wanting a new one for a while and this is what he chose.

If you do, your baby girl will go from this

  3 days old

to this

  4 years old today

in a blink of an eye.

Happy birthday to my feisty, sassy, sweet, smart, beautiful girl!

What a week. Oh it started off fine enough. Monday was swim lessons for Irelyn and then a couple of errands before going home. Girls were great until about 1pm and then the aliens must have abducted them or body snatched them because they were not acting like my girls. Irelyn had 2, yes, 2 potty accidents which she hasn't had in months. So I yelled about that. Then there was the bickering between the girls over who could be the princess or the dog or the ___________________ (fill in the blank) in whatever imaginary play they were having. Then the dog peed on the floor. I was washing dishes and I look down and she is just walking in the kitchen peeing. Great! Haven't I dealt with enough bodily fluids for one day?!?! As I'm mopping up the urine, Georgia says "mom, can you log me on to Barbie.com?" Seriously? Can't she see I'm mopping up the dog pee. So I snap at her saying that it isn't the right time to be asking me that question.

We muddled through the rest of the day and thank God tomorrow is a new day!

Tuesday was swim lessons again then a trip to the bank. I was planning to open the girls' first savings accounts, but I forgot the ever important social security cards in order to do that. At least we were able to stop and see my parent's at their business and have lunch.

Wednesday. Woke up. Called the girls in for breakfast. Georgia comes into the kitchen and then I hear Irelyn crying as she's walking down the hall. "Georgia hit me" she says. Georgia denies it, saying she told Irelyn it was time for breakfast and left the room. Then Georgia chooses which cereal she wants. I ask Irelyn to choose what she wants. She picks Apple Jacks. Georgia grabs for the container of cereal (I had transferred it to a tupperware container) before Irelyn can get to it and she winds up dropping the container, the lid flies off and Apple Jacks pour out all over the floor. I make Georgia clean up the mess and then try to figure out why she was grabbing it from Irelyn. We discuss it for a while and then she admits that she indeed did hit Irelyn earlier and lied about it. At this point I lost it. I do not tolerate lying. We had a lot of yelling, crying, and general ugliness about the whole situation. Mind you this is all happening at 8am. What a great start to the day.

We all calm down, take a deep breath and have a do-over. We get to swim lessons and as we are crossing the parking lot, Georgia somehow pulls Irelyn too quickly and Irelyn twists and falls hard on the asphalt, hitting the back of her head. It was an accident, but it scared me. Georgia kept saying "I'm sorry mommy" and I told her it was an accident. Of course after the fall Irelyn wasn't too keen on doing her lesson. I convinced her it would be alright. About 2/3 through the lesson, Irelyn had had enough and started crying for me. I couldn't get to her and I tried to calm her down from across the pool. She made it through to the end but was very weepy.

After swimming we stopped by the preschool where I'll be working in the Fall to check on some things. The girls were able to play with their friends and it was a pleasant experience.

Thursday was about par for the course - lots of bickering between the kids. It hasn't helped that it's been raining almost non-stop for the past 5 days. I'm feeling very stressed and exhausted today from the week. Decided that I needed a nap so the girls had quiet time and I napped. Peace and quiet for a little while anyway.

Today. No swim lessons on Fridays. The girls let me sleep in until about 8:15 which was nice. They both jumped in the bed for a cuddle and Georgia says "I'm not grumpy- bumpy today" Irelyn says "I have my listening ears on" and they had a really good day. Of course, Georgia was looking forward to a sleep over at a friend's house tonight and the neighbor girl babysat for about 2 hours this afternoon while I ran some errands that were not appropriate for the kids. I think the break did everyone some good. Now it's the weekend and Daddy is home to help referee. Hoping it was just a case of a bad week and not a sign of things to come over the next 6 weeks until school starts. This is the first week I thought about that since the summer break began.

At least there is always tomorrow (to try) to get things right.