Lehi Roundup

This week was the "Lehi Roundup" - the City's summer festival. They had different activities going on all week, and we had fun participating in a few of them. Thursday night we went to the Horse Parade; there were all kinds of horses, some plain, some fancy (we even saw one that was all painted pink!), some with just one rider, others pulling a whole wagon. Being there made me realize how much of a farming community we live in - even if our little neigh-borhood (sorry, I couldn't resist) is more the suburb type.

Here's one little patriotic pony with his family that we saw:And here's a bigger version:
We all had fun watching the parade,
especially Rylee! Her favorite part was the candy they threw. She's still talking about "Parade throwing candy! Hit my arm!"

(Check out her cowgirl boots for the occasion!)


Then on Saturday morning we went to the Grand Parade, which was more the traditional type with floats and marching bands and such.

They threw candy at this one too. And although Rylee's favorite part of both parades was the candy, she wasn't very good at actually getting any of it on her own. Even when it did land at her feet (or hit her arm), the bigger kids were much faster and she almost always came up empty handed. This picture is of her returning empty handed from a candy run.

Lucky for her, I wound up being the mom who jumped out onto the street to grab some candy for her every now and then!

Cailyn liked the candy too...Rylee gave her her lollipop stick after she finished it and there was just a little bit of sugary goodness left.

Cailyn got pretty tired and wound up falling asleep in the stroller with a bottle of juice - which, by the way, is a new thing for her as of this week. She really seems to like the Gerber juice and does pretty well holding the bottles herself.

After the parade, we stayed for the other festivities, including a petting zoo...

...and a pony ride...

...and more petting zoo...

At some point, Katie and Ava came to join us. I tried to put a video of the girls dancing as they watched the performers on stage here, but for some reason it wound up at the bottom of the post and I can't move it...so watch it at the end!

They had lots of fun on different rides, including the blow up jumpy things and these swings - they went around in a circle.

In other news this week, I have moved Rylee into the guest bedroom for the time being. The plan is to get Rylee used to sleeping with the freedom of not being in a crib and Cailyn used to sleeping through the night in a crib before I get Rylee her own big girl bed and put them in the same room. So far, it's going pretty well...although the first night, Rylee managed to totally destroy the blinds in that room! But she's very excited about sleeping in her "big girl bed" and likes to shut the door "Rylee self" after I tuck her in for the night.

I'd planned on doing the letter of the week every Monday, but on Friday Rylee said she wanted to make a Bumble Bee B again, so I decided to go ahead with the next letter...

C is for Caterpillar

And here are some cute summer pictures of a little girl eating a popsicle outside in her swimming suit after running in the sprinklers.

Cailyn Videos

Here are a couple videos of Cailyn from the last couple days. I will probably be posting other videos soon, but I was having problems getting more to load, so it's just these two for now. (Just a reminder to those of you who are looking at this in your email, in order to view the videos you need to actually go to our blog - you can't watch it in your email!)

Did you have fun?

Today was Quinn's day off from work, and both he and I had dentist appointments. Quinn went first, and then came home and took Rylee to the park while Cailyn and I headed off to the dentist.
When I got home, Rylee ran to the garage and yelled "Mommmmyyyy!!!!!" (like she normally does when one of us gets home.) Then she said (and it took me a minute to figure out what she was saying) "Did you have fun at the teeth doctor?"

The Latest on our Cute Girls

It feels like it's been a while since I've updated my blog...so here we go.

I suppose nothing really too eventful has been going on, other than the girls just being cute. Here's on of the few pictures that I have of them both smiling... I took this picture with Gran in mind - the girls are wearing their official Whiting shirts that were made up last year for everyone when we burried Pops. Cailyn was still in the making at that point, but now she's finally grown into her onesie. Rylee was very excited about wearing jammies that matched Cailyn's!
Cailyn is really starting to get a sense of what's going on around her, and it's fun to watch.
She loves to arch backwards to grab things...

...and she has discovered food. I think the last time that I wrote about her on her, I had just started giving her rice cereal. Shortly after that, I was eating a popsicle after dinner at Grandma Clawson's house. Cailyn grabbed it and got it in her mouth and wouldn't let go!

I'm thinking that letting her eat sugar as her second food is probably not the best thing, but oh well...

since then she has made it obvious that she knows when we're eating, and she likes to try to get tastes of anything we will let her - apples, bananas, watermelon, etc.
I just love her pretty smile!

Rylee is as busy as ever and I finally feel like I am making some headway in my efforts to come up with activities for her to stay busy. I've decided that for me, the transition from baby to toddler is harder than from no kids to baby; with a baby you just take care of them, but with a toddler you need to plan things to do with them. Anyway, one thing that I've started doing is making letters of the week. I got this idea from my cousin, Megan, and it's been great! Rylee loves letters and numbers - she's constantly telling me about all of the ones she sees - so it's fun for her, and pretty simple. So here are pictures from the first two weeks:

A is for Alligator

Rylee really likes glue...she says "squeeze" over and over while she's using it.

Showing me where her eye is after gluing on the Alligator's googly eyes.

B is for Bumble BeeThis was Rylee's first time using real water colors (my mom got her some kind of pre-water color thing that was more like markers that up dipped in little jars back around Christmas time). She really liked the process of "water, color, paper..."

And here she is in her red bath...I think she dumped about half the bottle of her Elmo bubble bath/paint into this one (like the glue, she loved to "squeeze" it.)

She really likes going on walks in our neighborhood and finding all the horses.

She is also getting to that stage where she wants to do everything herself. Here are some examples:

We picked Charlotte up from BYU music camp on Saturday and Rylee wanted to push Cailyn in the stroller (even though it's a double stroller and my intention was for ME to push BOTH girls...)

She also wanted to carry Charlotte's suitcase by herself, even though it was about as tall as she is and I'm sure heavier. She fell over a few times, but kept trying. I also had to laugh when we got in the car and told me "Mommy, stop it!" when I tried to sing along with the music, but then said "Charlotte sing!" (By the way, we were listening to Fergie at Rylee's request...she likes "Big girls don't cry" and "The letter song" - a.k.a. "Glamorous")

And here she is today walking into the post office to mail Anne a package. It cracked me up because she totally looked like a little adult with her glasses and my keys (as we got out of the car she grabbed them and said "push beep!" so I let her lock the door...)

She wanted to open the door by herself (she pretty much always does these days)

And here she is reading all the numbers she saw on the PO Boxes.

So that's that. And here are a couple videos...I tried to put them up at different places in this post, but for some reason don't seem to be able to drag pictures or videos on this computer. The first one is Cailyn cracking up while Rylee hits her in the face with a balloon (she did the funniest laughing before I got the camera). The second one is Rylee telling me her name - "I Rylee Skye McNamara" - and her sister's name - "She Cailyn Del."

My Rylee Ry Skye Pie

I LOVE THIS GIRL!!!

She makes me laugh all the time. Here are a few of the latest things that have made me chuckle.

She refers to her poop as "baby snake" or "mommy snake" depending on the size. I don't think anybody taught her this...she just made it up on her own! Tonight she announced that she was going "potty poo poo" and ran up the stairs to her bathroom. While she was sitting there she was giving me a play by play as follows:

"I potty pee too.

Yellow pee!

Uuh. Poo poo stuck.

I push it out.

Baby snake! Mommy snake!

Rylee poo poo brown!

(As she was flushing the potty) Snakes going night!"

(Hopefully this isn't too graphic, but I thought it was pretty funny...)

I've been working with Rylee on how to ask for things she wants instead of throwing a tantrum. I have her repeat after me, a few words at a time, "Mommy, can I please have some cereal?" or whatever it is that she is wanting to do. Randomly I've been catching her saying "Can I..." Tonight she wanted some dinner, so as she was climbing into her high chair I said and she repeated "Mommy, can I please have some..." and then she said "Cake!?" I guess she's figured out that if she asks that way I respond well! (She didn't get the cake...)

I bought some sidewalk chalk a few days ago, and ever since Rylee has spent pretty much all of her free time out on the front porch coloring - both the porch AND our front door.

Oh, and this picture reminds me that she likes to talk about her "owie knees." The big one you can see is her "red owie knee" and there is a tiny one on her other knee that is her "pink owie knee."

Today, before I took this picture, Rylee was outside playing with the little neighbor girls. She ran inside the house...and didn't have any pants or underwear on! I looked all over outside and all over inside, but haven't found them yet! I told Quinn about this, and later in the day he said, "You know, I've been thinking, toddlers are a lot like drunk people." (refering to the fact that our toddler lost her pants and has no idea where they are) I did put new panties on her though (as you can see) before she resumed her coloring.

Then, tonight, she was on the porch coloring again, and I was upstairs. After a few minutes I called her name to check on her. When she didn't respond, I went out front to check on her and found this:

Rylee was half way down our street with a duster, and when she saw me she said "Mommy, I clean up!"
Never a dull moment with this girl around...

Family Pictures on the Beach

These were taken at our reunion last month, but I just got them last week...and I LOVE them!