Lovn' Summer!

Julia got a new pool at Jee Jee and Paw Paw's house. She loves playing in the water and calls getting in the sprinkler, "taking a shower!"

We celebrated Father's Day at Jee Jee and Paw Paw's house. Julia happily announced, "Happy Valentine's Day" when she handed Paw Paw his gift!

Juicy Julia loving a juicy strawberry. I think she could eat a gallon a day!

Fun at home.

All of this from my delicious garden. Ha...I so wish. Our Wynne Farmer's market is my favorite stop after work on a Tuesday afternoon. I am going to try not to market it too much because I don't want to give away Wynne's best kept secret. I'll just say all of this, plus a dozen country eggs, for less than $7. WOW!

I went to pick blueberries one night and had a hard time keeping a little hand out of them while I was putting it in freezer bags.

Julia has been having a good time going to the summer reading program at the library. They have story time and a craft every week. This week, Jee Jee took Julia and she made this "art wrok." The fruit loops are the rainbow, cotton balls are clouds and then the sunshine.

I think the summer reading program is working to encourage reading. John and I have spent literally HOURS of reading to Julia the past few weeks. She will sit still and read for an hour or more at a time. Makes me very happy!

Silly Julia, keeps us smiling and so happy!

A Conversation with Julia

Julia's building something with her blocks and I asked her, "Are you building a castle Julia?" She says, "No Mommy, I'm building a architecture." Um......okay.

Farmfest 2010

We had a great time at Wynne's Farmfest this year! Thursday night was armband night where we could ride all the rides we wanted. Julia loved the cars the best. We probably rode this at least 7 or 8 times! Here's Sol and Julia!

Becca snagged this little gem of a picture on the roller coaster. I called it the car wreck roller coaster because that's what I felt like I had experienced when we got off. Julia entertained with a very loud, hearty laugh the whole way!

Here's the Farmfest family of the year, minus baby Rose hanging out listening to some music. Thank you both for coordinating this huge event and for keeping this long time Wynne tradition going! It's a full circle moment for me to watch Julia having a good time at Farmfest. I remember looking so forward to it when I was a kid....it was like Christmas!

Heres Tara and sweet Emmy listening to some music on the courthouse lawn. We also went to Julia's first Redbirds baseball game Friday night with Tara, Emmy and John. It was a fireworks game and our girls loved them! Julia kept blankie wrapped around her head like Mary Magdalene to protect her ears from the loud pops! I was so glad my John got to go with us. He's been missing out on most of our weekend activities because of his music playing/work schedule. He's having fun (well, sometimes) getting to play music for a living even though it can be a rough schedule with lots of driving and crazy all night hours!

Julia eating her first snowcone! She kept saying, "Momma, this is a very special treat!"

Taking a cool, much needed break from Farmfest inside the library.

Back at home, these popsicle breaks after dinner are becoming habitual. Julia and I like to go outside and sit on the deck with a popsicle and talk about our days. You just never know what Julia is going to say. She was telling me about the comode this morning and I couldn't make sense of what she was saying about it. Finally, I asked her to show me what she was talking about and she went and showed me the remote. Oh, should have know...the comode/remote. Close enough!

She also told me that she was building an architecture with her blocks this morning. Ha!

Another first. Here's Julia's first drawings of something other than a circle. She drew these fish on the bathtub the other night. She drew the bodies first, then the tail, the eyes next and ended each drawing with curly hair....lol! Pretty good, huh?

I love this picture of Julia and Mattie! Julia and I went to Rogers weekend before last. Julia adores Mattie and the feeling is mutual. She also adores Daniel, when we are gone.....lol. We had a blast playing outside in their backyard and having a sushi picnic! Also went to the Fayetteville Farmer's market (pretty neat!), a neighborhood garage sale, and saw the new museum that is being built in Bentonville. Another milestone on this trip was that Julia slept with Mattie in her room on her trundle. They laid in bed whispering when we put them down. I couldn't help but listen. I am pretty sure the conversation had something to do with cinnamon cereal being for breakfast!

The backyard activity of choice was to dig up worms and "feed" them sand. Here's Julia feeding them in the sandbox. I am so glad that Mattie led this activity because I am not much on anything slimy and poor Julia would just have to miss out on the awesome opportunity to hold a hand full of worms if I am in charge.

A friendly game of tetherball. Julia laughed for twenty minutes while playing this game. She thought is was hilarious that the ball would swing around and hit her in the head EVERY time she pushed it.

The first two days of Memorial Day weekend 2010 were spent potty training Julia. We started out Saturday morning saying goodbye to the diapers and setting the oven timer every 30 minutes to remind us to go sit on the potty. She insisted on wearing this black ballerina skirt (I have no idea why) over her new panties all day. First day went okay, second day was better, and we haven't had any accidents since! Wow, I anticipated it to be much worse. We did make use of a bag of marshmallows and some fruit snacks for incentives. I guess I will have to pay a therapist to tell me why I am just a little sad about this milestone.

She is just growing up so fast!

Trust me, I know that I will be in big trouble for posting this one some day, but I just couldn't help it. Memorial Day, John and I took Julia to the Memphis zoo where they had lots of water activities for the kids. Julia was soaking wet and loved being in the water sprinklers. Here she is when we were leaving the zoo sitting on her potty in the parking lot.

We also helped to celebrate sweet little Stella's third birthday. She had a water party with bubbles, water guns, sprinklers, and a blow up pool. Lots of sunscreen and laughs!

Here's Julia enjoying her cake and ice cream. This normally mild mannered child pushes everyone out of the way when they start cutting the cake. She has no patience for waiting in line.

Here is my little pirate after the library's first day of their summer reading program called, Make a Splash, READ. They read stories about pirates and then got to make this pirate hat. Julia wore it home and here is my little pirate saying, "Argh!" with her hooked finger.

We are looking forward to lots of fun activities at the library this summer.

And here are Julia and sweet littl Joanie Terhune. These two were having a very serious conversation in front of the hay bale. We love having the Adkisson/Terhune family over to visit. Julia is still talking about Dempsey and Joanie.....days after they left!

I just couldn't pass this one up. Aren't those little ringlets delicious?????