hot hot hot

I'm not going to lie. It's ridiculously hot here.

Larkin wishing her mom would have taken her to the pool instead of on an animal farm tour in 100 degree heat.

We've been surviving the summer pretty well though by mainly going out in the early morning and late evening, and by spending a lot of time at the pool. We've hit up all different pools around Austin and the girls are now both expert swimmers. Larkin can swim without any assistance and can take breaths on her own, and Willa can swim about five feet and float on her tummy and back.

Unfortunately though we spent so much time at the pool that Larkin got swimmer's ear, and the doctor said we had to wait five days before getting back in the water. Larkin broke down into tears a few times over this ("Why did the doctor have to say that I can't swim?!! I wish she wouldn't have said that!!").


Luckily the girls are pretty good at entertaining themselves with indoor activities, so the five days went by quickly. Over the past month or two we've started playing some new games, and their favorites are tic-tac-toe and checkers. We started with tic-tac-toe and they both developed a bit of an obsession with it. More than once I overheard Willa talking about tic-tac-toe in her sleep, and every morning for about two weeks they would wake up and immediately ask to play. We had probably 25 sheets of paper that were filled with kid drawn tic-tac-toe boards all around the house!
They both have a lot of trouble saying "diagonal" and it's hilarious to hear--it sounds kind of like di-nag-nal except the vowel sounds are just waaaaay off and it's almost impossible to impersonate. Anytime anyone wins on a diagonal Joel or I say, "How did you beat me on that one?!" just to hear them say it again and again. Too cute.

Willa is actually really good the game now and loves to say, "I'm setting you up, buttercup!" She learned the word buttercup from Auntie Lisa and loves to say it whenever she can make it rhyme in her sentence!

Once they had mastered tic-tac-toe we moved onto checkers. They both caught on quickly but often forget which side they started on/are supposed to go toward, so we solved that problem by placing construction paper on either end. Larkin has taken off at checkers and anticipates her opponents' moves now. Each move often takes her a minute or two because she sits and looks at all her possibilities before committing. Willa is great at spotting places where she can jump but will move herself right into spots where she can easily get captured. Larkin will just kind of roll her eyes and stare at her with a face that says, "Really? You want to move there?!"


Another indoor activity that the girls love is drawing. Larkin especially loves to draw/paint/color and spends at least an hour each day (usually much more) doing it. She gets into these "funks" where she will only do one sort of art--for a while it was painting, and I think she went 6 months without even touching a crayon...but painted all day long. When she was into painting she always painted abstract paintings and filled up the entire paper. Right now she's into oil pastels and crayons, and she loves drawing flowers. I'd say she does at least 5 flower drawings each day, and maybe a 3-5 others that are not flower related. Here is a small sampling of her flower work--I could probably fill three tables worth of flower art! The other day she added a caption on one of them that said, "Bst tlps in Astn" best tulips in Austin--I thought that was funny!

Larkin likes to "teach" Willa how to draw. One day they were both drawing side by side and Larkin coached Willa on how to draw a "mouse with boots and a duck with wings and webbed feet."

Larkin's

Willa's

Here's a picture Willa drew--it's of Willa (upside down), me, and Larkin

South Padre Island

Joel's parents came down for a visit in June and we took them to South Padre Island for a few days. Larkin was super excited because she's been asking to go to the ocean ever since the BP oil spill. When the spill first happened she asked for daily updates (for months) on what was happening, how they were fixing it, and how all the animals were doing, etc.

When we arrived on the beach (after 6 long hours in the minivan!), she ran out to the water and stood mesmerized looking at the horizon. She looked completely amazed and turned to me and said, "Wow. I didn't think the ocean would look like this. Did you? It's sooo big!"

Our condo was right on the beach and had an ocean view. It also had an indoor (and outdoor) pool that we used when it rained! I think it rained every day that we were there, but no one seemed to mind. Really it was a blessing--the cloud cover kept us cool and the rain was always short-lived. Plus we were in our bathing suits 95% of the time anyway!

On our first day on the beach we had a professional sandcastle lesson. Here's our work, and you can see our condo building in the background-



One of my favorite places we went was to the birding center. They have these long boardwalks that weave though marshy areas and it's a mecca for all kinds of birds and wildlife. We went at dusk and had a great time walking off our seafood dinner and doing some birdwatching. There's even an alligator that lives around there somewhere, but we didn't find him. Maybe next time!
We also went on a dolphin tour and got to see the bay. The dolphins would come close to the boat and jump out of the water a little, and each time the girls would count out loud excitedly. Really there were never more than three dolphins at one time, but the girls thought there were 12 or so. Each time a dolphin surfaced they'd count it and yell, "There's another one!" and think it was a new one. Here's a pic of Willa on the boat with the "dolphin dog"--he would bark anytime he saw a dolphin. It got a tad windy on the boat. :)


Our favorite part of the beach is going to the beach access points on the north side of the island that are far away from all the development. There is a section where the paved road ends and you are allowed to drive your 4x4 vehicle on the beach. Joel and I came here before the girls were born and drove up the island for miles and miles--you really feel like you're in the middle of nowhere and hardly see any other people. Unfortunately the "off road" section was closed while we were there, but I'm not sure that the minivan could have handled it anyway! We settled on going to the furthest most beach access point,and that was good enough! There were tons of shells (very few people walking on the beach to grab them all!) and it still felt pretty remote. The girls said this was their favorite part of the trip. Larkin spent well over an hour collecting shells, and Willa "kept the shells warm" by piling sand into the shell buckets.



Here's a pic of a flock of pelicans overhead. These birds were huge and every 3o minutes or so a new flock would fly over us. It was really impressive!

If you take your bug nets and flashlights out on the beach at night you can catch crabs! Joel caught the biggest one and the girls loved holding the smaller crabs. They were both pretty good at shining their lights and running like crazy all over the beach to find the little guys.


We were lucky enough to see a sea turtle release while we were there. South Padre Island is a nesting spot for the endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtle. The Kemp's Ridleys are the rarest and most endangered of all sea turtles. There is a conservation group that collects eggs from nests and keeps them safe from predators, and then once they hatch they release them back into the ocean. The last morning of our trip happened to be a turtle release day so we were on a remote section of the beach at 7am to witness the little turtles swim out to sea! I've always wanted to go see this, and it was a great way to end our trip!