Amelia lost her tooth!!

Amelia is growing up!!! She lost her first tooth today. It has been hanging on by the "skin of it's tooth" (just had to say that) and we thought it would come out last night. But it was still there this morning. They went to the pool this afternoon with their friend Chloe, and at some point Chloe accidentally kicked Amelia in the chin and the tooth came out. My experiences tell me that if you have a tooth that just won't give up the fight, go swimming!! It has worked for me, Leah, and Amelia. Amelia is really excited about the tooth fairy coming, but worried because she did not find her tooth. So she has written a note to put in her little tooth fairy pillow explaining why there is no tooth inside. And now she is worried the tooth fairy will be too small to open the note. I told her to relax, the tooth fairy could handle that. Now if she just doesn't forget to stop by!!!!

My Girls





Hannah, July 2009



Amelia, July 2009

She is her mother's daughter!!

Ok. I cannot believe the whole summer has passed and I have not updated the blog one single time!! I would like to say I have been too busy, but I think the word I am actually looking for is "lazy"! The girls have been on their annual whirlwind summer tour of the Southeast. They spent a couple of weeks in Jacksonville (with Uncle Pappy and Jillie), one week in Demopolis (with Daddy Hawk and Grandmama), and one week in North Carolina (with Grandpa John and Grandma Weezie). I feel like I have hardly seen them all summer. They enjoyed all of their trips, but were ready to be back home and both were very excited for school to start back (they get that from their dad--he gets so excited about the new school year). Obviously, none of them share my love of sleeping in or they would not be half as excited as they say they are. Both of them like their teachers after the first day, and Hannah has several kids in her class from last year, and she is back with two of her good friends from 1st grade. Needless to say, she is really thrilled about that. Amelia has a couple of kids from her class last year in her class again this year, but she is all about making new friends. And she also just assumes that Hannah's friends are her friends as well (sound familiar, Tracy?), so she feels like she is right at home already.

We have not had any big events happen over the summer. Amelia has one or two loose teeth, but so far she still hasn't lost any. It is not for lack of her wishing for them to fall out. I am not sure how much she thinks the Tooth Fairy is going to give her for each tooth, but I have a feeling she is going to be sorely disappointed with reality. I am hoping those wiggly little teeth hang on for a long time, because I hate for them to loose those pretty little "baby" smiles!! And it means she is growing up, and she is my baby. I don't want her to grow up so fast! Hannah is already claiming to be "almost a teenager", so I have to hang on to Amelia as a little girl as long as possible.

Amelia did receive a couple of scars for souveniers from the summer of 2009. Steve took them to the beach (to Jillie and Uncle Pappy's condo) and Amelia fell at the pool the first day they were there and split her chin. She went to the ER, but thankfully did not have to have stitches, just a little glue and some butterfly strips. And then the next week, Steve took them to his parent's house in Jacksonville. The same day they got there, Amelia dropped a stool on her foot and knocked her toenail off of her big toe (OUCH!!). I was beginning to dread her leaving the house for fear of what might happen next. She was a real trooper with both injuries, and Hannah was a regular little nurse taking care of her until they got back home. When they got back from the beach, Hannah told me exactly how to take care of the wound and bandages on Amelia's chin, and showed me where all the supplies were and instructed me on how often I needed to clean it and change the bandage. To see them fighting like cats and dogs the majority of the time, it always surprises me to realize they really do love each other!

Hannah turned 9 years old on July 22. Not quite the teenager she wants to be, but certainly not a "baby" anymore!! Steve gave her a longboard skateboard for her birthday, and he did a custom paint job on it. I will have to take a picture of it and post it on here. Of course, she LOVES it, and thinks she is cooler than cool when she rides it. But she had it for about 2 days when they left to go to North Carolina. The last time I saw it, it was in her room. When they got back home, she was going to take it out to ride and could not find it. Of course she wanted to know what I had done with it. (Because, as everyone knows, I am a closet skateboard fanatic). Once I had convinced her that I had not touched it while she was gone, then she decided that it had been stolen. Our next door neighbor Chloe told her that she might have seen one of the neighborhood boys riding it. That was all that was needed for them to take off to the garage, and all three of them jumped on their bikes to go "after" the supposed thief. The Wilderness Lake Biker gang!! They did not find the skateboard at the "suspects" house, and eventually I reached Steve and he said he had it at his house. So thankfully, the skateboard was safe and sound, and the innocent neighbor did not get roughed up by my little hoodlums!

While the girls were enjoying their summer vacation, I was working out in the heat and humidity all summer long. And it was a rough summer for us at the zoo. Unfortunately, we lost our old male chimp, Bamboo, to heart disease a few weeks ago. He was such a wonderful old guy. He was kind of cranky towards the keepers sometimes, but you could not help but love him dearly. He had a tough time the last couple of weeks, and it was very difficult for all of us knowing that our days with him were numbered. The other chimps in the group have definitely felt his absence, but we have tried to keep things as normal as possible for them, and have spent a little bit of extra time with them as well. This seems to make them happy, and it definitely makes all of us primate keepers happy to spend extra time with them. They are the most amazing creatures!

Bamboo and Sasha

I have spent the last 3 weeks or so rehabilitating a baby Mourning Dove. He (or she?) was found on the ground at the zoo after having fallen from the nest and being roughed up pretty badly by a crow. After a quick visit to the vet clinic, it was straight home to begin the process of recovery. I actually did not expect him to survive the ordeal, but survive he has. Now the only problem is that I have a fully fledged dove that refuses to grow up and leave my nest!! He still refuses to eat the food that normal wild doves would eat, instead waiting until I give him some of the baby food I have prepared for him. I am down to feeding him once a day, and leaving the other food available all the time, but he is as stubborn as I am!! Stay tuned to see who wins this one.

So that is really all that has been going on as of late. I am sure I am leaving somethings out, but that will give me something to post later on, I suppose. I have included a few pictures taken over the summer. Hope you enjoy seeing them.

All dressed up and nowhere to go.

Well, summer is well underway. If there were any doubt before, there isn't after spending the last 3 days working outside in this heat and humidity. And I know they say it's not the heat, but the humidity..... But honestly, I think it is the heat. I am not looking forward to the next three or four months. I do not understand why so many people come to the zoo during the summer when they could actually be at home in the air-conditioning!!! We do what we can to help the animals stay cool, and they all seem to fare pretty well. It is us old folks that really suffer!!
Anyway, the girls have been out of school for a couple of weeks, and I have barely seen them. They went to Steve's dad's and step-mom's last Wednesday and will not be home until tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday). While I have really enjoyed being lazy and not having to worry about anyone but me, I have missed them so much! Amelia made her first visit to the emergency room the first day she was there. She was running around the pool and slipped and fell. She landed on her chin and split it a little. I was at work and got a message that she was "ok, but going to the ER to be checked". My poor baby! Steve was with her, and said she did great. She did not have to have stitches, just a little "glue" and a couple of butterfly bandages. Hannah texted me the next morning and said "Amelia's chin doesn't hurt, and all we had to do was glue her back together". Thankfully the rest of the visit has been relatively uneventful. However, they are a bit homesick. Hannah sent me a text message yesterday saying she just really wants to come home. I wanted to jump in the car and go get them, but I had to work all day today and couldn't do it. I think they have had fun, but there is "no place like home", after all. I mean they can't even have a good ol' fight, hitting and crying and tattling, when they are away. They apparantly put on some kind of facade and lead everyone to believe they are these adorable, well behaved children that never do all the things I say they do!! I know they are ready to get back so they can show their true colors, haha!
We are leaving again on Friday. We will drive to Melbourne to meet up with Tracy and her girls, then we will all pile into her van and head for Alabama. We are going for a family reunion and to see Daddy for Father's Day. I am excited to go and see everyone, but am not looking forward to being captive in the van with 5 little girls for 13 hours. Uuuggghhh!! Whenever we stop for a break, we look like a bunch of clowns piling out of one of those little cars at the circus. It is surprising how much you can actually fit in one of those vans.
Hopefully the weather will be nice for our trip, and the girls will get to have lots of outdoor play time. I hope to get lots of pictures, and will then post them to share with everyone.
Here's wishing all of you dads out there a very Happpy Father's Day!!!!

Agapaopolis, the play

Hannah recently had a school play at the Center for the Arts. It was a large production, and they had practiced for most of the second semester. The teachers wanted the kids to all dress appropriately, i.e. in dresses and dress pants (for the boys). This did not sit well with Hannah. She would much prefer to wear her jeans and converse tennis shoes, so there was MUCH complaining about the dress. However, she did wear one, and I thought she looked very pretty and lady-like. So after the play, the very, very long play, I wanted to take some pictures of the girls all dressed up. At least Hannah and Chloe were dressed up, Amelia was in her own idea of "dressed up". But, as usual, they just proved the old saying that "You can dress them up, but you can't take them out". They have sooo much of their Daddy in them!

Hannah "enjoying" being a girly-girl.

Steve, Jr.

I don't know what to say about this one.

This is Amelia. Enough said.

Spring Break 2009 has come and gone. The girls and I went to visit my cousin. She has her own business of baking/decorating cakes for all occasins, so she baked one and let the girls decorate it all by themselves. They really had fun, and it looked pretty good when they were done, all things considered. I have to say, tho, one piece had enough sugar in it to last you a week! There was not really a theme to it, as they each had very different ideas about how it should look. They are actually turning into pros at this, because since then, they each decorated a cake at school for mother's day and they both turned out very nice. Maybe I should put them to work! I have included a few pictures of the cake decorating process for you to see. Looks like fun!

What?!?

Well, it seems that I have failed miserably in my duties as a mother. I just told my children, who are 6 and (almost)9 years old to go wash their feet, and Hannah tells me that she does not know how!!!! Where did I go so wrong?

Saturday at Busch Gardens

This past Saturday the girls and I spent the day at Busch Gardens. A friend had given us passes a while back and we finally had a chance to use them. We really had a nice day. It was pretty crowded, but the weather was overcast so it wasn't too hot. And most of the people there are wanting to ride the "grown-up" rides, so we were not really in the middle of the worst of the crowds. There is a new section that just opened this past year called Jungala, and there is a very large play area for the kids. There are lots of climbing areas and there are animals on exhibit on different levels of the structure (there are stairs for the adults to use, thank goodness). That was the main area the girls wanted to stay in, and since it was just us, I let them do pretty much what they wanted for the day. And as you can see, they wanted to get their faces painted. Amelia chose the unicorn, and Hannah chose a peacock. The good thing about the paint is that is washes right off. The bad thing about it is that it washes right off. They really wanted to keep it on their faces, but they had to have a bath Saturday night so they had to wash it all off. But they looked beautiful in their "masks" while they lasted. Now they are trying to talk me into going to Disney next Saturday. I just don't think I am ready for that so soon after Busch Gardens. Next week is spring break for my kids, so I think we are going to visit some family we have not seen in a while. If I remember the camera, maybe I will have pictures to post from the trip.

Turn up your volume:)

I don't have any pictures of the girls at the zoo today, but I do have a few pictures of the animals to share. There are a couple of Hadiah, the 3 year old orangutan that is having a tantrum in the piture i posted last week. She is such a funny little girl. I am also including one of her and her little sister (same dad, different moms) RanDee. Hadiah loves to spend time with RanDee, and DeeDee is nice enough to let Hadiah play with RanDee as long as she plays nice. If she gets too rough or obnoxious, DeeDee will smack Hadiah and shoo her away. And this happens at least once or twice a day, because Hadiah can only not be obnoxious for short periods of time.

I am also including a picture of one of our newest residents, Sid, the bush baby. Don't let the picture fool you, tho. He is vicious!!! He only weighs a couple of pounds, but he is not afraid to take us on. We have to lock him in his nest box just to go into the exhibit to clean up and feed him. If he were any bigger, he would REALLY be scary.

Enjoying Our Weekend

This is the first weekend in quite a while that we have not had anything planned and nowhere we had to go. We usually spend our Saturdays getting packed and driving to Orlando so the girls can spend Sunday with their Grandparents. Since Steve and I both work on Sunday's, we have to have someone to watch the girls, and his mom and her husband are kind enough to do that for us each week. And as much as I appreciate them, and I really do, I don't like having to make the road trip every weekend. And the girls complain about not ever having a weekend "off" where they have all day Saturday to play. So this weekend I took Sunday off with plans to drive to Tracy's for the weekend to visit with our cousin. But plans changed at the last minute and so I decided to just stay home and have some quality time with the girls. We have had fun so far. Hannah and I stayed up really late last night. I was showing her old videos from the 80's on the Vh1 Classic videos web site. I would find one of the bands I used to like and show it to her and tell her which of the singers I always thought was cute. Well, lets just say, she apparently has NO taste in men whatsoever!! Once I realized that she just does not appreciate the finer things in life, we went to bed. We slept late today, of course, and then got up and went to the zoo for the day. We have lots of babies in the primate department right now and the girls have not had a chance to see them yet. So we visited with the new ring-tailed lemur babies and the girls fed the lemurs gummy worms. I don't know who enjoyed this treat more, the girls or the lemurs. Then we visited all the other babies, rode a few rides, argued about what to do and not do, got mad, got glad again, and all in all had a pretty good time. They rode the camel, but I decided to sit that one out. It is a good thing we get to do these things for free, cuz otherwise we would not be able to afford a trip to the zoo!! Can't believe how much everything costs.
Tomorrow we plan on taking it even easier and not leaving the house except to go to the pool (if the weather is nice). I hope to have a bit of time to work in the yard as well. One could really get used to having the whole weekend off pretty quickly, I think. One day when I grow up I will get a real job that works Mon-Fri. But for now, I will just enjoy what I do and the time I get to spend with my girls.

For those of you that think you are the only one dealing with unruly kids, here is a little something to make you feel better. It seems that we are not the only moms that have to put up with temper tantrums and bad attitudes. This picture was taken several days ago on one of our colder mornings. The orangutan moms were trying to keep the kids close to them to keep them warmer, but as you can see, Hadiah was not too keen on the idea!! She is three years old now, and once she hit the terrible two's, she has been nothing but trouble. Poor Josie! She has more patience with her than I ever could. So the next time you are dealing with one of your little "monsters", remember, you are not alone!

Playing Catch-up

Nubbin...1/2 Bulldog, 1/2 Bat!

Ok, I have now been reprimanded by one of my best friends for not updating my blog more often. I have meant to do it a hundred times since the last update, and always decide I will do it "tomorrow". I feel like I should post new photos with each new update, but I have also been informed that is not necessary. The girls and I spent this past weekend in Melbourne at Tracy's house. Saturday (Feb. 14th) was Amelia's 6th birthday, so we had a little party there for her. We always have a big party with lots of family and friends here, but I just was not up to that this year. So we downscaled the festivities, and I think Amelia was just as happy with this party as with any of her previous parties. Her only complaint is that she wants to have a swimming party, but I have tried to explain to her that since her birthday is in the middle of February, not too many people would be very excited about that! However, that did not stop her and her sister and cousins from going swimming while we were at Tracy's. They were all little popsicles after about 5 minutes, but by golly, they were swimming. Rachel was the only one to realize it was not a really fantastic idea. Amelia's lips were a very pretty shade of purple, almost exactly matching the purple stripe on her bathing suit! Needless to say, it was a little easier to coax them out of the pool and into a warm bath that day than it ever is in the summertime.
If you read tracy's blog as well, you know that Allison now has a little, (and I do mean LITTLE), hamster. It is very cute, and Hannah fell in love with it. I am such a mean mommy because I have not let her get one! Nevermind all the pets we already have, life will not be complete until I have a hamster of my own.....I mean, until Hannah has a hamster that I can feed and change.....
Amelia is now riding her bike without the training wheels and is very proud of herself, and rightly so. She had me take a couple of photos of her on her bike today so I will attach those to this post. And if you want to see pictures of her birthday party, you can view Tracy's blog. She was too fast for me and posted them before I did!!

New Year's Eve 2008

I just celebrated my birthday last week, and was lucky enough to have Tracy and her family come over to share it with me and the girls. Seeing that my birthday is on New Year's Eve, things are bound to get wild and crazy. I let Amelia take the camera and this is her version of our birthday celebration. Just imagine these same girls 15 years from now!! Watch out world, here they come

Hannah learning to play the Wii.

Amelia emptying her stocking.

Coming downstairs to see what Santa has left for everyone.

Good Morning, Sunshine!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!! The girls and I spent Christmas in Jacksonville with Jillie, Uncle Pappy, and the rest of the family. Good Times!! The girls got most of what they asked Santa for, and some extra goodies they were not expecting. Luckily for them, Jillie had written Santa a letter and let him know they would be at her house this year for Christmas so he was able to find them and leave their presents at the right house. Steve is usually the photographer on Christmas morning, but since it was my job this year there are very few pictures to share. I got too "wrapped up" in Christmas boxes and bows as the girls were tearing into their gifts to take pictures. But there are a couple I will post to share with everyone. And it seems I do not know how to arrange the pictures once I have added them to the blog, so they are in the reverse order that I intended for them to be. Ooops!! We really enjoyed spending time with family and friends, and the girls have enjoyed their vacation from school. But they are actually ready to get back!! Hannah says she misses her friends and can't wait for school to start back. We will see how long that attitude lasts once she has to get back into the routine of getting up early, and doing homework. But before you know it Spring Break will be here, and then summer is just around the corner!!