You don't say....

A couple of days ago Mia was reading through a book given to us by Aunt Denise and Uncle John. Their picture is posted in the back (which the kids love by the way). Mia reached the picture, stared at it and said, "I wish Aunt Denise was my mom. She has pretty lips. I wish you could be married to Uncle John and Denise could be my mom cause she has really pretty lips." What this means is that she was wearing lipstick. Mia is infinitely fond of people who wear lipstick and disgusted with her mother who sometimes does not make it out of sweatpants. She always comes up to my room when I am getting ready looking to "make her lips pretty". I have stashed a lip gloss in my drawer for this purpose. Anyway, know Denise, that you are loved.

Ryan started a conversation asking me, "why do some kids not have parents?" After talking about adoption and orphans, etc. We talked about what would happen if we died and that he would get to go live with Aunt Miranda and his cousins. He screwed up his face and said, "Could I go live with Sophie instead?" Sophie is one of his best friends. I said that Emma would probably be OK with that.

Back into Action

These photos were taken this morning - the first morning I was back from vacation. The boys had gone "missing". Turns out they had raided the fresh laundry and were out jumping on the trampoline with some major kung-fu action. I don't know if the socks were for warmth (highs are down to the low 80's - this is cold for my kids in the mornings) or for dramatic effect. They were sure having fun. Another note - the fresh clean socks are now sitting outside in the dirt - eight mismatched orphans. Sigh...

Cruisin Along...

Well, we're back and Gramps is still alive (for the record, we were never worried about the kids). For those out of the loop, we went with some of Don's co-workers on an eight day cruise to the Mexican Riviera (Alcapulco, Ixtapa, Manzanillo). Grandpa Jackman graciously made it all possible by watching the little characters while we were gone. We had a blast on the boat eating, relaxing, eating, and playing...and eating. We went kayaking in the open ocean (my poor sore sore sore arms), snorkeled, and read read read. We took advantage of an unbelievable price. It hard to believe they can make money selling tickets as cheap as they did. They probably counted on us buying a ton of alcoholic drinks and gambling while on the boat. Whooops...
We heard a stat (not actually checked out as fact or anything) that said the diesel engine of the boat used a gallon of gas for every sixty feet moved. Our groups tickets couldn't have got us out of San Diego Bay. Most of the good pictures were taken by other members of our group, but here are a limited few of our own. We had just got a new camera and were too nervous to take it out too much-- wierd, I know. So when we share the photos, we will have more to show. The very well named boat was the refueling vessel at the San Diego Port - fun, huh?