... like walking in the rain and the snow...

... or wobbling on the ice and sitting in the gym...

One of the things I love about our girls is how unique each of their personalities is. They look similar (sometimes they are mistaken for twins, though they really don't look *that* similar), they can sound and act similar. They are clearly closely related. But boy are they different in personality!

K is a rule-follower by nature. She checks with us, knows when she's stepping out of bounds, listens to instructions and follows them.

L is a boundary-pusher. Tell her she can't do something and she'll do it. She's the only one in the family who regularly wears her shoes in the house, even though we have a long-standing convention of NOT doing so (exceptions for visitors and, apparently, for Miss L!). "I've just got to get the ...." "I'm going to the bathroom...." Whatever the reasons she gives, they don't really map to any real justification and she might as well be saying "I know you told me that but I'm not going to pay any attention to what you're saying." Which she is, in essence saying. Sort of.

A well-balanced and thoughtful friend down the street from us who has a child with a similar style to Miss L once said to me, "Isn't it great? Wouldn't you hate it to be any other way?" His point being that the sort of "do it anyway, apologize later if necessary" approach can be a real powerful strength for these people in the future. Much more so, possibly, than the rule-following, permission-asking approach of many of the rest of us. I don't know how true that will be, but it's a nice way to think about it as we navigate the challenges.

In any case, this is all intended as a lead-in to my real topic, which happens to be how much we, as parents, are willing to do in support of our children. Which is not a new or particularly illuminating topic, I know, but it's one I've been thinking about.

As two examples (and here is where the differences come into play, at least a bit):

A week ago Sunday we went skating as a family, a request from Miss L for her birthday. Her birthday desires were:

• go skating as a family
• have dinner out as a family
• have cake and ice cream at home with our neighbors (and pseudo-grandparents of the girls)

Nice and simple and sweet. Just my kind of celebration, in fact. Except for the skating bit, which is hard on my knees and cold and hard and....

So we went to the skating rink and all skated, spending family time (after a challenging effort to get the girls out of the house in an appropriate state of dress and properly fed) at a rink crowded with beginning and mediocre skaters (our family included), a cold and echo-y space with gouged and chunky ice. I did a bit of skating as a college student, and I loved it. But this time (and the other time we skated at the same place) both M and I were holding onto slipping, floppy little skaters who were a bit awed by the activity and the chaos of the rink. What I'd love to do is find an opportunity for the family to skate without the crowds, music, chaos and give the girls a real chance to learn how to get around on skates. This wasn't it.

But it WAS L's birthday celebration, so we went, we had fun, and we came home with sore knees and cold toes.

That was Sunday.

Last Friday we all went to West Seattle High to watch a three-school gymnastics meet that the girls had heard about from their gymnastics "coaches" on Thursday. So we sat on hard wooden benches in an echo-y high school gym and watched girls in leotards do the vault, uneven bars, beam and floor exercise. Just what I want to do on a Friday night! And the girls *loved* it.

And M and I realized that in "normal" life, our exposure to gymnastics is limited to either watching the girls do their little girl attempts at cartwheels and handstands, or video of the Olympics. And what we very quickly realized was that there is a *huge* gap between the beginning gymnasts and the Olympians and if you go expecting to see someone anywhere close to Mary Lou Retton or Nadia Comenici, you are going to be disappointed. (Huge realization, right?) And to be honest, most of the competition was much closer to beginning than to Olympian. Floor exercise routines seemed to consist of a couple wobbly, bent-knee cartwheels, a roundoff (possibly), a forward roll or two, and then, mercifully, they were over. It was eye-opening.

And reassuring, oddly enough. These were high school girls! And they looked and behaved like high school girls. As they should have. Or rather, they behaved better than my impression of how high school girls would behave. They were all supportive of their team mates, clapping and yelling encouragement, acting mature and with good sportsmanship (sportswomanship?). We did wonder whether gymnastics might be a sport where, if you're truly competitive, you aren't spending your time on a high school team. Are the really good gymnasts on club teams instead of their school teams?

The bottom line though, is that the girls were in seventh heaven in the gym (and the rink). K , who'd worried that we didn't know where we were going, that we weren't on time, that we wouldn't know where to sit and how to watch, she settled down and eventually sat on my lap and soaked it all in. L too snuggled against M and also tried to absorb it, though they both had lots of questions.

With multiple things happening at the same time, with loud music and incomprehensible loudspeaker announcements, clapping and yelling and cheering, it was a bit much. High school students came and went, some obviously coming from other sport workouts, others looking like they had nothing better to do on a bitterly cold Friday evening. And (I noticed) there were the parents watching closely from the bleachers around us. When K told me later that she wanted to be on a gymnastics team and that I would have to come to her meets. I told her that I would do that. Because I would/will. Just as I'll go skating again with L when she next wants to do it for her birthday. Because these are my daughters and this right here and now is what we have and what we get. This is life.

... it's a little bit funny...

... or, a peek into a morning not long ago.

You know how we keep getting told "not to sweat the small things?" Well sometimes it's the small things that are the most important to keep in mind. At least that's what I'm thinking at the moment.

self-portrait by miss l

(with daddy's phone)

Yesterday the plan was for me to make french toast in order to use up some of the leftover bread we had from dinner the night before. Except that Miss L wanted pancakes instead. K agreed, though it was clear that she would have preferred the french toast. And they both insisted that the pancakes come with powdered sugar.

I dislike powdered sugar. I'm not entirely sure why I dislike powdered sugar as much as I do, but partly it has to do with the ease with which you can blow it (via sneeze, cough, loudly yelled argument with your sister) off your plate and all over the freakin' place. It's sticky (it's sugar, after all!), so drifting floating motes of sugar don't work for me. I don't even like it much on pastries where it gets into your nose when you inhale at the wrong moment, it sticks on your face, your clothing.... I fall into the pure maple sugar camp myself. Don't give me any of that fake maple syrup "flavored" corn byproduct! But I'm getting away from my point. Which is that even when I'm keeping my mind open and remembering to appreciate the day-to-day moments, I fail to keep my mind open and remember to appreciate those same moments. Sometimes.

Anyway, so I'm making pancakes, against plan, and have agreed to include powered sugar on them, against my good sense.

Backstory to (and complicating) this scenario is the fact that the girls got new clothes a couple of days ago, including sweatshirts from their school. Who doesn't love a Montessori-branded sweatshirt? But new clothes means that these are the only clothes the girls are wearing at the moment, to the point of digging them out of the dirty clothes every morning. Ok, so they've got on their new sweatshirts, and Miss L has on a pair of new pants that M found on sale last Sunday.

Lately we've been weathering (with better or worse success) a "downturn" in dressing. By which I mean that 2 out of every 3 mornings, L has "nothing to wear!!!" and she ends up in what M calls "watermelon" position, crouched huddling face down on the floor. She has an amazing ability to turn on the tears, so a side effect of this is that we end up with a wet spot on the floor, rug, couch, pillow... whatever. We keep hoping this is a phase, but it would be nice if it wore off before we're into the teenage phase where she has "nothing to wear!" but is bigger and has more attitude and we're older and possibly less willing to put up with that attitude.... But I'm getting away from my point. Which is that getting her dressed is a challenge that no sane person would want to take on if they could possibly avoid it.

So you don't mess with it. At that moment it's not broke, so hell if I'm going to risk needing to deal with it broken. When means that I need to keep those new clothes clean! And I'm already a tad concerned about the powdered sugar potential for complication, when L comes dancing into the kitchen to ask if she can help "so it goes faster."

Here's where I'm aware enough to know that the tradeoff in efficiency is made up for by the pleasures of doing something together. So I say yes, and I do my best to keep the sigh out of my voice. And we drag a stool over and get her into an apron and she helps by dumping flour in the bowl, stirring it with a knife (it was what she could reach), dumping baking power in on top and stirring it (most of it ended up in the bowl - cooking like this is like a mad scientist experiment. Who knows what is going to come out!), cracking eggs and spilling their contents mostly in on top of the milk with only a bit splashing out....

At which point I can't help myself and I recommend, strongly recommend that she at least consider taking off her sweatshirt. And here's the thing: I don't really care if the sweatshirt gets dirty. I don't particularly mind dirty clothes. But it's the reaction if it gets dirty that I'm afraid of. I don't know that I have the bandwidth to deal with a clothing meltdown on this particular morning.

She opts not to remove it. We continue on, me more concerned about her getting herself dirty than anything else, and eventually I'm delivering pancakes to the girls (both of them reading now) at the table.

More concern here, because frankly, both girls eat like starving animals, with foodstuffs scattered all over the table, bench and floor. Napkins are used to mop up spills, dribbles, splashes, and then tossed aside. It's like a trough except messier. At this point, with some urging, L and K both take off their sweatshirts to keep them clean, and the short ending to this is that we manage to get the girls fed and out the door without (too many) issues.

But the thing is, as I rode into work on the Water Taxi I found myself revisting the morning, thinking how I just wasn't able to help myself, couldn't just let things happen as they would, and I wondered if maybe I'd been so damn concerned about messy clothes that I'd missed out on the joy of a shared experience (the small stuff), mixing up a batch of pancake batter with a small person standing on a stool and still only reaching to my shoulder. That image makes me smile and even feel a bit nostalgic for these days... except that I'm actually still IN these days and I have to stop stressing about the bigger stuff so I can embrace and enjoy the little moments.

After all, it's not always (or even often) going to be as easy as relaxing on a sunny beach and knowing that this moment is an important one...

a little sunny october moment

(note handful of rocks flying water-ward from Miss L's hands)

Sometimes those little moments are buried in the swirl of morning demands for getting out the door in a timely manner or evening routines for getting into bed. Which doesn't make them any less important (and might actually make them MORE important), but certainly seems to make them easier to overlook. At least for me.

important shared moment

(doing not much of anything)

singing into the fan

(and what's more important than that?!?

... no need for argument ...

There's a new game in town and its name is called "dominos!"

lucky tiles, lucky grab-shot

I recently resurrected a set of dominos that belonged to my grandparents (I think). They pack into a very nice koa wood box that was broken for years and which I just finally glued back together. The girls had no idea what dominos were, so we showed them how to stand them up and tip them over. And then we started playing.

K picked it up fairly quickly, with L not too far behind. I had to have the girls read the rules to me because they were printed in .5 point font. Translating K's interpretation was a challenge. And then M came and joined us and we figured out the real rules (she could read them, somehow) and all was good until K got 0 points 2 or 3 times in a row, at which point she quit and the rest of us continued to play without her. When she realized we were soldiering on, she came back to the table after missing a round, and promptly won 2 or 3 times in a row to win the entire game. So much for sportsmanship and good behavior.

Everyone had so much fun that K wanted to play again this morning (M was at an early morning spinning class and Miss L was fast asleep, putting in a good 12 hours). I got a Dutch Baby into the oven and then K and I laid out the tiles. I took a quick lead, 24 to 7, at which point my luck changed and K beat me 102 to 24. It was a great opportunity to show her how to lose gracefully (damn it!).

serious consideration of the tiles

*disclaimer - I don't know dominos from sugar beets, but we sure had fun!

... you angel you...

This parenting thing is confusing. Just when I think I've got a bit of it nailed, things shift out from under me and I am reminded that I don't know squat about any of it. I'm hanging on by my fingertips and hoping that I don't lose my grip.

miss l, wearing clip-on earrings

But we all lose our grips now and then, right? Like digging in my heels and insisting on telling K where in the book we were, even though it doesn't really matter. (For those of you following along at home, the next night we read in the book again after I talked her into letting me do so and assuring her that we wouldn't disagree about it, that where ever she said we were, we could be.)

Tonight we're solo, by which I mean I'm playing at being a single parent while M is out at an event. She's been gone since about 9a this morning, and the girls are now in bed and asleep and we've had our moments, but I just stopped by their beds and kissed both of their sweaty heads and was reminded of just how damn much they mean to me, and so instead of crawling into bed as I had intended, I came back downstairs to write this.

Yesterday I read this column in the NYTimes about parenting, and there were several things in it that really struck home for me:

• She [his mother]  taught me that you must allow yourself time to find stillness and so you can be moved by it. Sometimes we are so busy that we forget why we’re busy. We have so many things on our list of priorities that we lose sight of what’s really important.
• And she taught me that my children are not truly mine. They don’t belong to me; they’ve simply been entrusted to me. They are a gift life gave to me, but one that I must one day give back to life. They must grow up and go away and that is as it should be.

And I'm reminded that even though Miss L has a breakdown every single time she has to find something to wear, when she snuggles in close to me to listen to Frog and Toad or smiles at me or even when she crosses her arms in a grumpy display of attitude,  she's doing her job and I need to do mine, to raise her and her sister (who can be a separate handful too, when the two of them aren't being sweet siblings) to stand on their own feet.

I took them to Circa for dinner, the first time we managed to get out of the house all day (the morning trip down to the beach to run around like horses crashed into the reality of L not being able to get dressed in anything that "works" for longer than 5 minutes, so she spent the morning in her underwear and nothing else, crying until, ignored by me, she stopped and got distracted by a book, her sister, or some other thing), and K was very well behaved while L acted like... well, like a 5 year old, which she still is for another month.

But that column by Charles Blow, and the goodnight kisses combined to make this a good day. These two are a gift that life gave to me and M, and one day they'll be independent and on their way and that is as it should be. So I need to hold tightly to the now, and make the most of every day we have.

Sleep tight, with the most pleasant of dreams.

my horsewomen at home

(september, before the rains started!)

...oooo, witchy women...

... i read a book today, oh boy...

The beautiful thing about reading is how it brings families together. Right?

 happier times, earlier in the weekend

(walla walla sunshine)

This last weekend we were in Walla Walla, which was nice, except that yesterday we had a 5 hour drive with M feeling under the weather and the girls getting antsy. The weather was changing (we actually had rain during parts of the drive) and we were all tired. But we made it safely (always my base-level measurement as to how successful a trip we had). And we ate dinner and did baths, and even finished listening to the 4th CD (out of 6) for the book on "tape" we'd borrowed from the library (On the Shores of Silver Lake, for those of you keeping track). We were all snuggled up like a family on the couch. It was classically Rockwellian. Ish.

And then it was time for reading and bed.

Did I mention we were all tired after a busy weekend? And a long drive?

I was going to read to K, but she was finishing up a book on her own in an armchair in the living room. I told her twice that she was using up her reading time. M and L were already snuggled in L's bed, reading. I lay down in my own bed to read my own book (last 15 pages of All the Pretty Horses, for those of you…). And finally K came up. She had 4 minutes left of reading time and still hadn't brushed her teeth. She brushed and brought the floss to me and I flossed her and then it was time to read. We had 2 minutes left. She whined. I told her she could have 5 minutes of reading.

me: What are we going to read?

K: I wanted to read Yatimah (the 6th Horse Diaries book, for …).

me: OK. Where it is?

K: Down stairs in my suitcase.

me (sigh): I'll get it. 

seconds pass

me (crawling back into bed): OK, where are we? Can you find it?

K: Yeah (paging through). No… (handing it to me)

me (flipping through): Here (starting to read) "So I followed her out into the desert…"

K: No! That's the sandstorm. 

me: Right. We haven't read that yet. We were just getting to it.

K: No!! We already read that!

me: No we didn't. It doesn't matter. Tell me where to start.

K: Just go ahead and start there!

me: OK. "… I followed her out into the desert…"

K (slapping the bed covers): This is boring!

me (closing the book and getting up): This isn't working for me. And we're out of time anyway.

K (turning face down in the bed and beginning to sob): You don't like me! You don't love me!!

She jumped up and ran out of the room slamming the door. I went and said good night to L while M followed K downstairs and after they came back up I kissed her and told her I love her to which she said "You don't love me!" And I went downstairs.

And that's how reading can bring a family closer together.  Shouldn't you do more of it with your children?

post script: To top it off, I had to get up and out of the house before K was up this morning, so I didn't have a chance to reconnect with her. There's little worse than going to bed feeling like your link to your loved one is fraying and then getting up in the morning and leaving the house without an opportunity to repair the connection....

walla walla trees

(whose parents probably didn't read to them)

... i got a halloween head....

This last weekend we did the pumpkin patch thing, which may come as a surprise to those of you who are still waiting to read about the downtown-hotell-for-one-night-last-fall thing, or the trip-to-maui-without-mom thing or any other number of things we've managed to do over the last 11 months without my writing a damn word. Things seem to have heated up, busyness-wise (as well as hyphen-wise, apparently) and I've been doing rather than writing about doing, which is something my own mother called me on when I was in college. If I remember correctly, and even if I don't, because she most definitely won't (though she'll be certain of whatever she remembers), the conversation went something like:

me: I'm going to write novels.
mom: When are you going to live?
me: In between novels?

Substitute "blog posts" for "novels" and you more or less see that the realities of parenthood have swayed me to the wisdom of mom's point of view. I haven't had much time, in other words.

But that doesn't mean I don't write posts IN MY HEAD that any reader would have loved, had they only been actually written down and posted.

Enough of that.

We went to the pumpkin patch this weekend and saw pumpkins (not a huge surprise), pigs (an unexpected joy, especially to Miss L), horses (an unmitigated ecstasy to both L and K), a pumpkin-tossing trebuchet (expected), and we came away with 80 pounds of pumpkins, now on our front porch and waiting for some carving action.

The highlight of the afternoon, which was cold but dry-ish, was a ride back to the barn in a horse-drawn wagon, pulled by 4 belgians:

We waited 25+ minutes for the ride, but it was worth it. K spent much of the trip breathing deeply and saying "I love that horsey smell, don't you?" And I do! So does her Maui grandmother. It must be in the genes, this love of equine sweat.

The only hitch (ehem) was that while we were waiting (the loop took the horses 20 minutes) K expressed concern that we wouldn't get on. We'd been waiting about 5 minutes and had about 5 more to go. I assured her that we would. We didn't.

disappointment

She groused and spent the next 10 minutes telling me how she couldn't trust me any longer.

hiding disappointment

waiting

Then the wagon came around again and she set that aside to breath deeply of draft horse sweat, and it was worth it. Apparently. Even though she's since raised the issue again of her lost trust in me. I guess it was bound to happen at some point. It may as well have been over something as important as an extra 20 minutes waiting in a pumpkin patch.

We also came away with a few photos, with which I'll pad the rest of this post. I'm playing with lens/film combinations in Hipstamatic, so you have to deal with the oddnesses of those. I like the impression these give, something along the lines of colored images from Gettysburg, but without the bloodshed and with more crushed squash:

pumpkins 

pumpkin hunters

uncle b (and cousin j in the background)

family -1

family -1 (+ randoms)

no relation (that i'm aware of)

aftermath?

one last family group shot

... splish splash...

... or, "do you want anything on that?"

Sometimes a simple bath can turn into a mermaid-fest, which for some reason involves swimsuits (and sometimes goggles):

"they're called 'bathing suits,' daddy!"

And just ten minutes later, on the way upstairs to get dressed, towels get tossed aside in favor of a snack.

me: Dinner is over girls!

K&L: Just some fruit then! Please Daddy? Please?!?

me: (sigh) Let me get my camera at least....

pre-bed snacking

(clothing optional, apparently)

.... you're a big girl all the way...

file this under, "If my older sister can do it at 6yo, I can do it at 5!"

Expecting a visit from the tooth fairy sometime tonight....

Attitude Monday: ... talkin' 'bout bad girls...

or at least bad attitudes.

Last week we went for a walk in the evening, in an attempt to avoid the dessert issue that has returned since the girls earned their american girl dolls*.

Miss L, upset about... who knows what.

*which I just realized I never did write about, so if I'm able to keep this up, I'll post something about that too. Maybe. No promises. After all, I still haven't written about our overnight stay downtown last December. Or our minus-Mommy trip to Maui in April. 

... dream a little dream for me ...

It was our nation's birthday yesterday and I'm making an attempt to get back into the fight that is the regular posting to this blog, as much to capture these moments as to please any readers (who have long ago abandoned ship). And we watched a movie to celebrate. And this movie was an "American Girl Doll" movie about the doll of the year from 2012, a doll who lives in Seattle and is training for the Olympics, or at least dreaming of doing so.

About the movie, here's a Facebook post I did late in the day yesterday, which provides a bit of context:

you know you're a dad of little girls when you just spent the nicest seattle 4th of july in memory in the living room watching "mckenna, american girl" instead of getting outside into the sunshine. (and it was still worth it!)

The movie is about a 4th grade gymnast who injures her ankle and ... well, a friend's response to the post does a good job of summing it up:

Is that the gymnastics one where McKenna suffers an ankle sprain and has to take time off from training and in the meantime learns the true value of friendship and also overcomes a minor learning disability?

So after watching the movie, the girls ran to put on the closest thing they have to leotards (their swim suits) and to do the closest thing they can to gymnastics (running and jumping and "cartwheels" and balancing on the couch), and I ran to grab my camera.

Our 4th of July evening in pictures (post in-yard picnic of fried chicken, french potato salad (or "freedom potato salad" as we called it just for today) and watermelon):

L, with a leap from our "balance beam" (aka, the couch)

a crowded floor routine mat, K watching L 

a prime example of K's cartwheel abilities

(and they're better than mine!)

L, on the balance beam and ready to dismount!

The routines were a combination of foot races, ballet leaps, tumbling, jumping off the stairs and spinning in mid-air, some falling down (some intentionally - the "hurt ankle" aspect being very compelling to a young actor/gymnast), a fair amount of grunting, and some heavy breathing, post-routine.

... will we go 'round in circles...

Last night after dinner, Miss L wrote out an invitation:

and then she and her sister got fancied up:

and they put on a hol hop (hula hoop) show:

and I was reminded that whatever else it is I miss when I'm busy with family, it's never anything as important as attending an invitation-only hol hop show.

(M and I even did a turn, but neither of us was caught on camera nor were we dressed up. I did get a compliment from our neighbor though, who was on his garage roof, weeding.)

Sister Sunday - "where you lead, i will follow" edition

A tandem biking shot from our outing 2 weeks ago, this showing how both girls mastered the fine art of tight turns while crabbing at one another about getting in the way:

L following just a little too closely for K's comfort

Sister Sunday (bonus Saturday post)- one paddle, two paddle edition

Today the girls did 3 (three!) outrigger sprint races together at Green Lake.

pre-race practice

post-race, heading back to the beach

... runnin' down the road...

(I could make all sorts of attempts at explaining where I've been and why there's been nothing posted for months, but what's the use. To quote a song writer I like "... it's life and life only." and that seems to be enough. Enough to distract me, to occupy me, to interest me and challenge me and keep me from writing.)

The big news these last few weeks is spelled "Look Ma, No Training Wheels!"

Yup, both girls have shed their extra wheels and are two-wheeling it through Jack Block Park a park near here whose name I can't tell you because we don't want it to be overrun.

I offer a photo as proof:

Sisters, being sisters

In a bit more detail, here's what happened:

Two weeks ago (on Mother's Day to be exact), the girls went with M and a friend to a nearby street that is almost flat, and there they took off their training wheels. Most of that hour or so was spent simply "scooting" which means pushing their bikes along and balancing as best they were able. And L took to it - she was balancing well enough to go the entire length of the street. K was doing fine too, but  didn't seem to have quite the balance of her little sister.

Then, near the end of the following week, M took the girls back there, and this time they started to pedal. When I got home from work there was much joy and enthusiasm because they were starting to pedal and were even able to pedal a few times in a row before quickly shifting their feet off and onto the ground.

So the following Saturday, while M took K shoe shopping for her birthday, L and I went to Jack Block Park and... there's no other way to describe it... she started riding. Honest-to-god pedaling and zipping around and when I suggested rather than stopping at the end of a long straightaway and turning with her feet, that she simply turn the bike while still pedaling, well, she took me to heart and man oh man did she "get it."

Joy, personified!

I have to confess that I was bursting with fatherly pride. I had just watched my youngest daughter take a huge step toward independence (of course, this is the daughter who needs no nudging in that direction, the one who feels she can do as she pleases, simply because she pleases). It was something I've never felt to that extent before, the pure joy and pride and happiness at her joy and pride and happiness. It was truly a highlight of my days as a dad to this point!

When we got home, M and K were back and we deluged them with tales of L's riding so K wanted to go do it too, and we (K, L and I) went back to the street where we'd started a week ago. L zipped up and down, her little legs pedaling as fast as she could go, while K struggled, clearly feeling that she should NOT be doing less well than her younger sister, so serious, so determined, so demanding of herself.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

Unwilling to be left behind, even if it kills her

This was another illuminating moment for me, as a father. To quote my older sister, who was speaking from the perspective of an older sister:

the facial expressions really tell the story - L looks happy, free and proud; K looks like it's all hard work! As an older sister I can totally relate...

It was a slightly down ending to an otherwise thrilling day.

I was certain that, with a bit of time, K would catch up tob, so the next morning (one week after the initial "scooting"), M and I took both girls down to Jack Block Park, and the picture I started this long post with comes from that outing.

Both girls got going and had fun, and M and I enjoyed watching these two zipping back and forth. We even got into the act a bit:

M, amazing us all with a couple of cartwheels

L, amazing us all by pushing me 

(note the strain on the rear tire!)

It was a glorious morning outing for the family, and loads of fun for the girls, and for M and me. I feel we've turned a corner of some sort, and that soon we'll be sending them to the store for beer, or at least for milk....

sister sunday - just another ....

... manic magic Saturday:

What passes for normal around here.

The girls, wearing PFDs (personal flotation devices, aka life jackets) as riding vests, cleaning the "pasture" of "horse poop."

sister sunday: just the two of us...

you wouldn't know if from here, but these two were going at each other most of the weekend, with Miss L getting over some little virus and so feeling especially punk, and K getting a bit miffed at the attention her sister was getting, so acting especially like a punk!

Still, they had their moments too....

And I was lucky enough to catch this one.

Sister Sunday: i got you babe!

wearing t-shirts from cousin keoni