Wright Side of Life: Friday, July 26th

Our friends, the Lawsons, would be joining us for a fun Friday pool playdate, so we plowed through our schoolwork in order to be ready for them to arrive around 11:00 a.m. The kids were ecstatic to meet their friend's new puppy and played with the patient pooch for a long time before eating a picnic lunch, swimming and hanging out in the back yard. Thanks Julia for bringing Smokey over for a visit!

At breakfast, Victoria came over to talk to Waverly - she sang her favorite little song, "You Are My Sunshine," and it's amazing how excited the baby gets when she hears it!

As she listened to the song, she tried getting herself sat up and her little left eyebrow shot up like, "Hey! I know this song!"

After a few rounds of singing the song, Victoria was talking to her and you can tell that Waverly would desperately like to respond! :-)

As Gram, Victoria and I were talking to each other and the baby, I asked Victoria what kind of birthday party she thought Waverly might like next year (birthdays are a hot topic right now!). She didn't take any time to respond, "Well, she would probably really like a deer party! She really likes deers." I didn't want to laugh out loud, but I instantly realized that in the song she had been singing to Waverly, there is a little phrase that goes, "And you'll never know, DEAR, how much I love you..." and Victoria was mentally replacing the "dear" with DEER. I waited until I thought she wasn't looking to whisper it to Gram and we laughed and laughed! :-) As we guffawed, Victoria kept saying, "What did the baby do that was so funny??" haha

Lincoln was feeling a bit tired overall and needed his support team hanging out with him during his school time. Peter lucked out with the bouncy chair, and BearBear ended up in the pink bumbo seat. Linc had two new sounds - "o" and "i," and did pretty well with them! For his math, I would lay down a number card really fast and he would try to really quickly put the correct number of little helmets on the card.

He loves these little football helmet counters.

Victoria first worked with her site word/phonics cards - there were two new ones - and for the initial round, I said a word and she found the correct match and put a little frog manipulative on that card. In the second round, I had her hand me each card and tell me what it said - if there was one she didn't know, we left it on the table to review; this way I could see which words were still a bit of a struggle. She only had three cards left and we reviewed those a couple more times.

Waverly was sitting with me while Victoria worked on the cards and was super wiggly - kicking and punching the air. Victoria thought it would be hilarious to put a frog on her head and see if she could get it to stay there.

Sorry, kid, but it's probably not the last time you'll have something odd placed on your head! ;-)

Finally! School was finished and our friends arrived with their new pup, an adorable little Yorkie named Smokey. It was all Scarlett could do to finish her reading lesson in the minutes leading up to their arrival!

Victoria, Julia and Smokey.

Lincoln surprised me by running into the garage and wanting his bike brought out - he hopped on and rode down the driveway like a pro! His awesome new Spiderman bike that Nana had purchased for him was finally getting broken in - he had tried to ride it before and just couldn't get the mechanics of it at all and now seemingly had no problems...

...until he got out onto the street! Suddenly, it was as though he just couldn't do it anymore. I think he initially hopped on and just DID it, then got out onto the street and started thinking about what he was supposed to do and just lost momentum. We tried for a few minutes but he was immensely frustrated with himself and so we said we'd try again soon.

He was quick to get over the disappointment though, as it was his turn to walk Smokey.

Our cat, Pixie, sat at a safe distance and hate-watched the dog.

Picnic-ing on the pergola!

Scarlett borrowed Mrs. Lawson's boogie board and spent a long while "surfing" around the pool
:-)

For her part, Waverly spent quite a while sleeping in her room while our friends were over... then sleeping in Nana's room! I love watching her sleep when she's all curled up on her side. Such sweetness!

After our friends departed and the kids had rest time, I ran out for a few minutes to return another little friend's swimsuit that had been left at our house. The kids stayed home with Nana and Grammie and when I returned, they had made elaborate plans for a dance party and were busy with the set up.

Scarlett made the invitations, complete with personalized drawings - I thought this one for Jim was great, with the beard and all :-)

While Scarlett agonized over setting out snacks and matching cups/plates, Victoria worked exclusively on her amazing dance moves - she called this one (above) her "big ending."

EPIC

All costumed up for the dance party... which promptly fell apart. The day caught up with them and it was suddenly all about bickering and major drama. It was still a fun evening - the kids have a hard time staying truly upset with each other and eventually went back to playing great after dinner.