Silly Stephensons

Yesterday I couldn't find Izzy or William. I raced around like a maniac calling them, when I heard some giggling coming from the dining room table. I peeked underneath the tablecloth and...

Peekaboo! There they were, "reading" Nancy Drew books together. Nevermind that William's is upside down! They were very silly in their newfound fort!

I love the look on William's face in this picture, he's been getting lots of teeth in and has been quite cranky. In fact, I took him yesterday to the pediatrician because he has been so off-key in the last two weeks. He is frequently listless, lays like a rag doll on my shoulder, runs a fever every now and then, and isn't sleeping at all like usual. (This 5 am thing has to stop!) The doctor said no ear infection so that's good, and nothing else appears physically wrong, but she thought he might have had as many as 6 teeth erupt in the last two weeks. She said that would make anyone cranky. Including me.

Izzy asked me to "roll out the red carpet" for her princesses this morning. (The red carpet is also known as our Christmas tablecloth.) So while she ate her oatmeal, the princesses attended a "big ole ball" as Izzy said. Man, we have been in Cedar Key too long when she says big ole ball. Last night at dinner she was talking about the pool that I just put up again in the backyard and she said in her best southern twang, "Oh man, that pool is gettin' full and it's gonna be ready in no time! I'm gonna need my vest, uh huh!" We had a good laugh, she is always coming up with these crazy sayings. She's our little princess, for sure!

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope you have all done your duty and called your Momma today and told her how wonderful she is! I got to talk to mine, (Ok, so she called me before I got to call her) she was checking on me (as usual), this time about how I was feeling after my crazy weekend. (I'm feeling fine, thank you!) I know how much I depend on my Momma, and I hope yours is just as amazing as she is! I got some wonderful presents from my girls, handmade cards, little styrofoam cup "vases" with paper flowers, a "You hit the beach of fame" (yes, that's what it said!) poster from Sarah, with crabs, sand dollars, palm trees and banded tulips (my favorite shell that we found in Indian Rocks Beach and she has never forgotten, evidently!) She also made a "vase" with little rocks holding up pipe cleaner stems and her picture on top. Inside the vase are little strips of paper that she typed up, each of them a memory or special time that she remembers with me. It was very sweet. They include things like "I like when you say let's play catch", "Remember when Daddy was out fishing and the hickory nuts were falling on the roof? You protected me" (Actually I was scared out of my wits since I thought someone was breaking into the house! Darn hickory nuts...) "I like when we go to Wal-Mart, just the two of us" and "Do you remember how you say I am all yours? Well, I like that!" It's a good reminder that the special times are not necessarily those that cost money or require going to a special place to stick in the minds of our little ones. They remember far more than we do, and it is ALL important.
One special note, my Poppa died during the night on Sunday the 4th at the wonderful age of 100. We were blessed to have him in our lives and know that he and Nana are together in a most wonderful place. His funeral is May 23rd, so if you are of the inclination, a little prayer for him or quiet moment in his memory would be most appreciated. He was a wonderful Poppa, and I remember him dearly. Happy Mother's Day to you too, sweet Nana. Thank you for giving me my sweet Momma! We'll miss you both.
Now, if you haven't yet, what are you waiting for? GO CALL YOUR MOMMA!

Sea World Field Trip

Man, what was I thinking? Now I know why we go to theme parks in either November or February. It really is the best time, especially for Momma. I chaperoned the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade field trip to Sea World on Friday. We left the parking lot at 7 am, and after all the stops, arrived at 11 am. Four hours on the big yellow bus. Woohoo. We had a great day, with the exception of Momma getting heatstroke. Yup, that's right. I had a headache (thanks to a very noisy bus) and it didn't get any better. So I ate little, drank not enough evidently, and all around felt like barfnagel (thanks for that one, dad!) for most of the afternoon and the ride home. I really wanted to be sick at the Turkey Lake turnpike stop, where the kids ate Burger King and Sbarro pizza. It was enough to make anyone, much less a heatstroke victim, sick sick sick. Once the bus got moving again, the air cooled down as it got dark, and I took three ibuprofen, I felt infinitely better. Thank heavens. I was never so happy to see my giant shower with jets when I got home at 11:15 that night! :) I figure at least the girls had fun, and are still at the point where they WANT me to go on field trips with them. Pretty soon, I won't be so lucky... Sweet Nanny (my Momma) watched William and Izzy all day, and cleaned the downstairs bathrooms, and cleaned Izzy's room to immaculate condition, and never whined about any of it! Something about coming home to a clean bathroom is just heaven to me! It was great to have a day with my big girls after the week without them in DC, I think it really meant a lot to them.

Sarah, Savannah, Emily, and Katy say hello to Shamu

Mr. Penguin at the Penguin Encounter give the girls a friendly, but not TOO friendly, hug under Momma's supervision! :)

Sarah jumps higher than a kite on the trampoline thing, you pay extra for it but it was sheer entertainment on my part! Wow, there is an evil little someone in me somewhere, enjoying the sheer terror/sheer delight on my kids' faces!

Katy was first up, and she LOVED it! I was surprised, to say the least, as a slightly rough ride in the boat gets her whining like a banshee!
After this, she wanted to do the rock climbing, too! But we had to be on our way to catch the Shamu--Believe show, which they thoroughly enjoyed. They sat in the SOAK ZONE, second row, and didn't get a bit wet. They were not happy about that, but they had an excellent view of Shamu and the others swimming underwater and doing their tricks. It was very cool.

Savannah goes high above the treetops

A parade on stilts gets really exciting when they started doing flips

Sarah and Katy aboard the Shamu Express, they were too short to ride Kraken, so Momma rode it with Patrick. Let me just say, I'm glad I love roller coasters, it was GREAT! Upside down about five times and WHEW what a head rush! Patrick loved it too, as his mom won't ride roller coasters so this was his big chance!

Here's Patrick climbing the rock wall

Naked Boy

William knocked over a cup of water and soaked his outfit, so I took it off. His diaper was wet too, so I took that off. I set him off the couch, went to the island to get a diaper, and when I came back, this is what I saw. So I grabbed my camera.


Here's naked boy looking for birds, looking all kinds of cute!

Ooohing and aahing at the outside world. Luckily, this window opens to our backyard which is pretty private! I planned our windows to stop where they did, but I did it for kids falling out type of thing. Little did I know that it would work to prevent William from becoming an exhibitionist at a very young age!

After I took a couple pictures, Izzy took the camera and started shooting. This was her first picture that actually included an entire person! Pretty good if I do say so myself!

This was taken by Izzy when I was getting ready to put a diaper back on William. Yup, I'm naked, I'm naked, biting this turtle, love the turtle, I'm naked...

Washington DC or Bust!

Actually, these first few are in Baltimore. So there, threw you off. Me and da Momma having a Lemon Stick, which is a peppermint stick pushed into a lemon with just the tip cut off. You suck the lemon juice up through the peppermint stick. And as a certain sister would say, Wahla! You have a refreshing little drink! We're quite the pair, we ate enough sugar on the trip to fill many a five pound bag. This was just one of many indulgences. The rest we tried not to be captured on film during our binges.

Lemon sticks for everyone, courtesy of Aunt Laura! Yum!

Well, maybe not the rock-climbing wall just yet. First maybe I ought to consider walking...

Or sliding...

Is it illegal to be this cute? I mean, look at this little guy!

This picture is so sweet, Izzy loving on Leif, as usual, and Leif and Willie touching hands from their strollers. Awww...

Izzy was so proud that by the end of the playtime, she could do these wiggly things herself! Check out the tongue in concentration!

These pictures just had to be shown in succession...

That's a happy boy, not sad... Wheeeeeee....

Loved that, can we do it twenty-five more times?

Aaaah, the boy.

Look at all the cuties! A whole house full!

I love this picture of Mom, it looks like something from a magazine to me. Laura definitely has the eye...

Me and sweet Izzy cuddling on the couch.

Izzy and Leifypants, as she calls him, share raviolis together. Love that Leify face!

Willie shares some more of said ravioli. Those are KK eyes if I ever saw 'em.

Izzy loved SP's drum set, she and Leif had a grand ole time playing it.

Willie enjoys SP's picnic table

Spring Has Sprung...AGAIN!

The astonishing thing about DC for us Floridians, is that it is still SPRING! The azaleas are all out, the dogwoods in full bloom, the cherry trees past prime, and the tulips are incredible! It was 50 degrees every day except the last, in which it reached 80 or so. Needless to say, we wore the same jeans every day as that was all we brought. It was beautiful everywhere you looked though, except for when it was raining!

Izzy shows off Aunt Laura's fabulous bridalwreath and picket fenced yard.

The only picture I actually have of Cathleen, taken by someone else on my camera, and containing a really nice picture of me getting ready for bed. Focus in on Cathleen, please. She was so awake, though in this picture her eyes aren't fully open. Look at all that dark hair! It really was a shock for me every time I looked down at her, I'm just so used to white blondes. We enjoyed her so much, it just makes you want to have another one... sorry, Shawn. His wallet hurts just thinking about it.

Gotta love my Willie boy, here he is having a great time on Sean's fire engine. He figured out how to scoot forward and reverse but no steering. He loved it! Too bad Christmas is so far away...

This elephant was pacing the four cages, back and forth, back and forth. All the schoolkids were running every which way to try to see him in the cage he was in. William, Izzy and I chose to stand in one spot and wait for him to come back. William was enchanted with him, pointing at him and saying over and over, "eh laaaa?" which in Willie means, do you see that? At first, I thought, what a horrible life he has, just walking back and forth in the cages. A few minutes later, I heard a zoo lady telling someone else that actually the elephants are rotated between the cages and a natural habitat area. They actually are in the cage for a short time. It's just to give you a close-up view and to get an idea of how big they truly are. I felt a little better after that, and I did enjoy seeing Willie see his first elephant up close and personal.

This is Tai Shan, a panda born at the zoo just a couple weeks before Sean Patrick was born! He was most accomodating at the window. He played and ate, pooped and napped, and just an all around good watch. He stayed right next to the window so we could all see his antics. William and Izzy were literally a couple feet away most of the time, separated only by the heavy glass! Most impressive were his teeth, which made short work of that stick of bamboo. Most interesting was the pooping session, in which they are very tidy creatures. They go up to a rocky ledge, hang their bottoms over the ledge and go. They don't want that stuff anywhere near their living area. Izzy was fascinated by the yellow-green stuff, product of lots and lots of bamboo. OK, no more potty talk.

The multi-tasker in action. This momma knows exactly what it's like!

Sean Patrick describes the big construction trucks over at the soon-to-be elephant house. The kids watched those trucks forever, it seemed. They couldn't get enough. He's such a cutie. He got a haircut a day or two after this and he looked so handsome!