I'm so glad when Daddy comes home!

So, we're not moving to Seattle afterall. Yay!

Quinn was so excited to come home that he pulled an all-nighter and got home around 8 this morning. He wanted to surprise Rylee, so I hadn't told her that he was coming. Rylee came into my room about 8:30 this morning and woke me up (I was up until a little after 2 making room in the garage for Quinn's car...this included an unplanned vacuuming of the garage...so I was still pretty sleepy at 8:30!) and said in a giggly voice, "Mommy, guess what? Daddy here!" She was SOOO excited! As we all snuggled in the bed, she chattered on and on about Daddy being home. My favorite part of the conversation went as follows:

"My Daddy come home! I so happy! He make me all better. I not sad anymore!"

Isn't that just the sweetest thing you ever heard?

Cailyn woke up not too much after this, and SHE was so excited to see Quinn, too! She was grinning from ear to ear and giggling and babbling.

So good to be all back together again.

I have pictures and other things from the last week or two that I will write about later, but for now I just wanted to write about our happy morning.

Here's a little video of Rylee singing - she sang this to him earlier, but he's sleeping now, so I just took a video of the Rylster.

The Wheels on the Bus...

Ever since Rylee has become aware of buses, she has wanted to ride on one. She loves singing "The Wheels on the Bus," which contributed to her bus infatuation. So, after several weeks of her telling me every time she saw a bus that she wanted to ride on one, I finally planned a little field trip for a bus ride.

In my head, I was thinking that buses went in little loops and we could just get on a bus and stay there until we got back to our starting point. Once I realized that wasn't very practical, I thought it would be fun to take a bus to a park, play for a while, and then ride back. The only problem with that was that I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to figure out where the bus stops were in relation to parks. So Katie came up with a great plan: we would ride the bus from the University Mall to the Provo Town Center and get ice cream, and then ride back (finding the bus at two malls had to be easy, right?) Well it should have been easy. Except that I saw the 850 bus and jumped right on without a thought as to which way it was heading; as it turns out, we were on the northbound bus, when we should have been on the southbound bus. Oops! But we decided it didn't really matter that much.

Here we all are on the bus. Rylee and Ava were very excited to be on the bus. I wish I had pictures or a video of them as they were actually getting on the bus. Rylee marched right up, pushed her way to the back of the bus, found a seat and sat down with a huge grin on her face; Ava on the other hand stayed close to Katie and me. Those girls sure love playing together, but they definitely have their own ways of doing everything! I had to take Rylee off her seat and bring her farther down a few rows to the back of the bus where there was room for our whole gang.

I think that it was right about the time this picture was taking that the girls started pushing and fussing at each other, so I gave Rylee a little talk about how we were on the bus to have fun and if she was going to fuss and fight we were going to get off. Then I started snapping pictures and Katie pulled out her video camera. I didn't think much of it until a few stops later when a lady who was sitting at the VERY back of the bus got off...with a little boy who was probably about 4 or 5. We were sitting on the benches that are sideways, so I had seen her before, but I hadn't noticed her little boy. I felt a little bit guilty as I realized that they were not on the bus for a field trip, but that this was their regular mode of transportation.
Anyway, as we rode the bus, the girls loved looking out the window.
We decided to get off at 800 North in Orem and get some ice cream at Macey's instead of at the mall as we had originally planned.

Cailyn, of course, loved the ice cream cone.

Ava and Rylee found the bouncy ball display and played with the balls for a bit.

Then it was time to catch the bus again. As it turns out, there wasn't a southbound bus stop at 800 North, so we had to walk almost all the way down to 400 North to catch the bus. We got there about 10 minutes before the bus was supposed to get there, so we thought it wouldn't be too bad of a wait. We told Rylee and Ava to hold on to the pole so the bus would know to come get us.

That lasted for all of about 30 seconds for Rylee, but Ava held on for a while.

Eventually, Rylee returned and discovered that she could see through the holes in the pole.

Well, 4:03 came and went, but the 4:03 bus never showed. The girls got rather restless and started playing in the rocks. Rylee and Cailyn tried to eat the rocks.

When Rylee started putting cigarette butts in her mouth, I decided it was time to get her off the ground!

Of course, then everyone else wanted to sit on the wall, too (:

We waited, and waited, and waited...and finally, a little after 4:30 the bus came (I don't know what happened to the 4:03 bus; the next bus was scheduled to come at 4:33.)

After 45 minutes of waiting for the bus, I was so happy to be back on it again! (Cailyn was happy to be holding on to the pole again - she held on to it almost the entire time both ways.)

I think our adventure was successful in two ways:

1. The girls had a blast!

2. I have a newfound appreciation for my car and the fact that I don't have to rely on public transportation!

Oh my gosh!

"Oh my gosh!" is Rylee's newest phrase that cracks me up every time she says it.

This came from our garden...and no, it is not a bell pepper, it is a yellow tomato that came out looking like some kind of tumor! So this gets the "Oh my gosh!" award for the blog posting.

I'm just going to say up front that it will not be the best written post I've ever done...my brain is just not working well enough to make anything flow together right now!

So here's a summary of the last few weeks. Allison came into town about a week ago to celebrate her mom's birthday along with her sisters. When they weren't celebrating, she got to come down and spend time with us!

While she was here, we went a couple times to this great little spash pad thing that just opened up this summer a few miles from our house. It's just in front of the Highland library and it's free and so fun! I think they should build these all over the place. I'm puting in a couple pictures because it's kind of hard to explain.

There's this little stream with (fake) rocks that spray water...
then at the end of the stream there's this big splash pad that has water that shoots out of the ground in a big circle.

The girls just love it!

We weren't successful at getting all three girls to pose together for a picture at the splash pad, but we did manage to get a few of them wearing their pink leopard jammies that their Grandma Mac got for them.

Cailyn just turned 9 months and is as cute as ever. She is cutting her first two teeth (the bottom front ones) and has had all the classic teething symptoms (notice the runny nose...) Popsicles have been her friend.

But just because a girl feels yucky doesn't mean she can't look cute! Ava and Rylee dressed her up in this crown...

...and I dressed her up in these adorable shoes from her Grandma Mac.

Rylee likes to play with the kids on our street. Here she is with our next door neighbors - she and Emma are attempting to trace Abby with chalk, although, Rylee doesn't quite understand how to "trace" things yet...she just goes around and colors.

And we did our first alphabet project in probably a month this week...

H is for Heart

Oh, and Rylee told me about a dream she had for the first time this week! It was a nightmare. She woke up screaming "Don't eat me!" I calmed her down and asked what was trying to eat her. "Tinkerbell!" was her traumatized response! I calmed her down, got her back to sleep, and have been laughing about it ever since!

9 Months

Cailyn turned 9 months on Sunday! Boy, does time fly. I took her to the doctor for her check-up and a shot today. While we were sitting in the waiting room, I saw a mom who had twins (a boy and a girl) who were 4 days old. She said that they only came 10 days before their due date and each weighed just a few ounces under 7 lbs. Holy cow, that's a lot of baby to carry! Anyway, they may have been big for brand new twins, but the thing that got me was realizing how fast babies grow. Cailyn was 6 lbs. 14 oz. when she was born (about exactly the same size as these babies) and they looked so incredibly tiny to me! I can't remember her being so small.

So, here is the update on her growth:

Weight: 16 lbs. 11 oz. (14%ile)

Height: 27.5 inches (47%ile)

Head: 18.5 inches (99%ile)

She is following Rylee's growth pattern (at least in the weight department - Rylee has always had a small head); sometime between 6 and 9 months is when Rylee dropped from about the 50% %ile to being really tiny. At Cailyn's 6 month appointment she weighed 15 lbs. 15 oz. and was in the 48%ile, so in the last 3 months she's gained less than a pound and dropped about 33% down the growth chart! I'll be interested to see if she makes it down to the 2%ile by the time she's 15 months like Rylee did. Dr. Mumford didn't seem worried in the slightest, so I guess that's just how my babies grow.

Cailyn also is FINALLY about to have her 2 bottom teeth pop through! This sure has been a different experience than I'm used to. Not only did Rylee get her teeth early on, the teething process itself was very quick - she would be cranky for a day and then her teeth would pop in. Cailyn on the other hand has had yucky diapers that gave her a bad diaper rash, a runny nose, and fevers for about a week or so now, and they still aren't all the way in! But, I can see and feel where they are coming, so that's good.

Art through Rylee's eyes

This print is hanging on our downstairs bathroom wall.The following is Rylee's monologue about it the other morning:
Look at the swimming pool! (The Seine)
Look, there's a train in the swimming pool! (I'm guessing the bridge)
That a SILLY swimming pool!
And cars in swimming pool! (Must be the boats?)
Everybody NOT jump in. Everybody NOT in swimming pool.

Which leads me into another of Rylee's latest things to pretend...that she is a life guard. She will make a high pitched squeal (whistle) and then say "Everybody get out of the pool!" (Like the lifeguards do at the pool by our house for potty breaks.)