Happy New Year!!

On New Year's Eve we went to the Smiths for dinner, and to a beautiful indoor pool just completed at their condo resort! The kids had a blast swimming, but we unfortunately didn't get any pictures. We were home by ten, I was asleep by 11, and Curtis rung in the New Year at his brothers along with a couple of shots of Patron!

Since then, we have been trying to plan and prepare for Schuyler's big slumber party this weekend, I think the preparation might be more of mental thing though! My cousin Kristen called me today and shockingly said, "You are not having 23 kids spend the night, are you? Are you trying to make yourself insane?" I tried, and tried to trim the invite list down, but we have invited 13 girls to the sleepover (including my two), and have invited several more (siblings) to come from 5-7 for make your own pizza and cake indulgence!

Schuyler hand made all her own invites, and they are so adorable! They are about 5x7 in size, and all colored with unique patterns!
While doing the invitations I was trying to get her to complete more. For doing five of them I said that she could have one M&M per invitation and a bonus of five M&M's if she did six invitations. She did. I then came back and said, "if you do three more invitations then Gabby can come over for a play date." She was really excited and asked if I was going to call Gabby's Mom, and what would happen if she couldn't come over? I said that Gabby would be over at three and that I had talked to her Mom yesterday. After a few minutes Schuyler asked, "so Gabby was coming over whether or not I did these three invitations?" I laughed and said, "Yes, you are smart as a whip!"

I have been meaning to write about our brief house guest - Clara. Our neighbor Carole found a turtle in the road (they should be hibernating), and we took her in for a week. She had a wound on her back, and was pretty good in size - maybe 6x4 inches. We let her swim every day, let her exercise in the yard, bought turtle food, and gave her other tasty treats. After a week or so we thought that Clara would be better in her own environment and let her go at the beach, where she swam happily into the lake! She was fun for the kids! Graydon would just go up and turn her over, or pet her, or one day just picked her up and walked across the yard with her. Today we were reading a book and he pointed to the turtle and said, "turtle." By the time we let her go, her wound looked better, so I think we did her good!

To elaborate on other activities the day that Graydon got locked in the car...... Daddy Fixer Man and Eric were working on the sail boat motor. Daddy Fixer Man had a great idea to fill a trash can with water while working on the engine so it could be turned on - brilliant if I say so myself! They made a lot of progress, but not enough. Curtis has not been sailing much because it is hard to get off and on the dock without the help of a motor. He is having major withdrawls!Other random tidbits:

Morgan said "Mommy said if I patient I don't have to nap."

Morgan told Graydon "I am going to keep you and love you forever." Then about 15 minutes later she told me, "I going to keep you too!"

Morgan and Schuyler were arguing the other day about who was older. An obvious thing, so not sure why the disagreement. "I older", "no, I'm older Morgan"......... on and on. I was trying to find something else for Morgan to boast about, so I said, "Morgan, you are blonder." Morgan said, "no, I smartest!" A couple of minutes later she said, "and I braver-est too!" She has told us a couple of times since then how braver-est she is!