Especially Kate.  She is constantly upside down.  The other day I was trying to give her a good talkin’ to, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t get my point across.  We started out sitting at the top of the stairs and I was trying to get her to look into my eyes, but instead, she did a head stand on every stair all the way down, while I talked.

Between cartwheels, flips onto the couches, and somersaults, she rarely has her head above her waist.

Scott suggested that I do some yoga with the girls to help cultivate this… um… talent of theirs.  Or maybe to help them be upside down at more appropriate times rather than at meal time, prayer time, or scripture time.  So, I made a little card inviting them to Yoga with Mommy today and it was a big hit!

Audrey started getting pretty good at her head stands, but I just wasn’t fast enough to get her picture taken.

Kate prefers her own way of spastically kicking her way into her headstand than the controlled yoga way of doing it.

Simon got into the yoga too.  He was really cute at downward facing dog and at the warrior poses, but this is all I could get out of him once I got the camera out.

We ended with a nice relaxing lizard on rock pose.

The result was 4 subtitled videos that were projected up on the exterior wall of a cabin for a family of about 25 people to sing along to. I picked songs that I figured most of the grandchildren (my nieces and nephews) would know and actually sing along to. That was easy because I have a few songs that I play all the time that our kids dance and jam to.

What I did NOT expect was the comedic relief of Kate to come out in the filming. I was cracking up when I was making the final edits of the movies, and when I showed Jeana, we were rolling with laughter. There are some clips that must not go unnoticed, and to that end I have produced a quick sequence of the highlights for your viewing pleasure.

One thing I didn’t notice until just barely was the part when Audrey jumps off the chair and doesn’t make the landing. That’s about the only subtle part of the sequence.

To see the full length films check out the Songs of the Day:

• I’m Yours
• Hey, Soul Sister
• Hey There Delilah
• Any Dream Will Do

She climbed it over and over and over again….until she ended up with a blister on her toe.  I guess that’s what she was mainly using to grip with.

At half time, Scott encouraged her to reach up and grab the top with her hand.  What a little monkey!

Jeana dropped the girls off at my office at 10am (yes I actually went into the office for once) and we raced to the first events on the schedule. Jeana had them prepared with backpacks of books to read and to color/write in, toys to play with, and food to eat. Of course, I had the backup plan of two DVDs in my backpack just in case of an emergency. The exciting part is that we went from 10am to 4pm non-stop and then they hung out and played for an hour while I wrapped up some work. We left the office around 5:15pm and they didn’t even fall asleep on the way home. I think they have built up the stamina to make it through a full work day now.

Here are some highlights from our day.

The first thing we wanted to do was go to the cookie walk. They must have walked in circles at least 10 times before Audrey’s cookie was called out. She stood at the cookie reward table trying to decide what to get for quite a while. Finally, she chose a bag of three brownies so that she could share – how sweet. Kate’s cookie was never called out, so we decided to leave.

Downstairs in the old library there were displays of countries around the world. They played instruments from Guatemala, declined spicy gum from Mexico, experienced boredom at the USA table, spoke Portuguese at the Brazil table, and met my friend at the Africa table.

What kids event would be complete without a visit from a fire engine? We got to the engine right before they had to leave, but we still got to climb inside and sit in their chairs. One of the nice firefighters (you could tell he either had kids or has been around them lots) showed Audrey and Kate a “magic door” on the back of the engine where the ladders were stored.

We had lunch in my office – you can see Kate’s spread of food above – and then watched a spelling bee for second, third, and fourth grade kids. Audrey was sad she wasn’t old enough yet to participate, but next year she’ll be ready. When the host would call out the word, I would hurry and have Audrey spell it in my ear. She did alright, but she’ll be better off waiting a year to compete with kids older than her.

Professor Sparky gave us a presentation about volts, microvolts and megavolts. He showed us a theremin and let us try it out! Theremins are the devices used in old scary movies to make UFO or alien sounds.

The day ended with a performance by a local musician / story-teller, Staci Gray. Staci was great with the kids and involved them by having them stand up and move around during the songs. She concluded her show by turning on a bubble machine which invoked a sort of kids mosh-pit up front. Audrey and Kate begged me to let them go up. I hesitated to let them, but gave in and let them go. Here is a clip of the hokey pokey to open the show.

Thanks IBM for a wonderful event again, and for helping me spend fun quality time with my kids. We’re looking forward to next year!

In the last game of the season, I had a bit of a collision with the opposing forward and my ankle is swollen, green, and causing a severe amount of whining to spew from my mouth. Poor Jeana has to listen to me complain about it constantly.

I took them to my new office which has no decorations on the wall and commissioned them to create a mural for me to enjoy. I also took a stack of recent pictures they had drawn for me and tacked them up on another wall above my desk. Audrey told me, “Thanks for hanging up these pictures dad.”

My sister, Michelle, sent a book to the girls of how to draw. Audrey has been practicing with that book, and you can see in the images above teddy bears, a snake, a wizard, and a cauldron. Audrey is also really good at drawing snails. Kate focused on butterflies and flowers. I asked Kate to draw Jeana in the mountains – which she did.

Kate has been practicing her cartwheels so she can go to Capital Gymnastics this fall. I think in her mind she has to be able to do them before she can go, a prerequisite if you will. The girls took it to the next level and started doing cartwheels without their hands.

Jeana was gone the weekend of the World Cup finals. The girls and I decided we’d have a World Cup party. They were insistent on streamers and balloons, and I wanted to make a dutch oven cake. I ended up burning the bottom of the cake, but luckily we had ice cream to try to drown out the burned taste.

Chris and I ended up watching the Germany vs. Uruguay match – well I did while Chris napped – and the girls played. Every time a goal was scored I’d get their attention and have them watch the replays.

I used to fix the girls’ hair all the time when they were younger. I’m not sure when that stopped, but I was ill-prepared for fixing their hair on Sunday morning while Jeana was gone. They ended up with the same back-pony as I call it and coated in spray gel.

Each day while Jeana was away, Audrey and Kate did a fantastic job of keeping their room clean. They were amazed every day when the Room Fairy left them a treat and note saying, “Congratulations! Keep up the good work.” One day Audrey left a thank you gift on her bed in hopes that the Room Fairy would come and find it. Well, the Room Fairy did come that day, and the Room Fairy accepted the gift. When Audrey discovered that she came running to me to tell me, “The Room Fairy took the sea shell I left her!”

While I was there, we visited the Garden of the Gods.  It was so gorgeous.

I forgot to take Simon’s stroller and he was not about to let anyone hold him… although Danielle tried.

He really loved walking, and falling, and climbing around on his own.

He got pretty scratched up, but he was so much happier getting scratched up than being held.

While we were hiking around, we heard some bagpipes so we hiked up and watched this guy play for a little while.  Here are Danielle and Ivy watching.  I think they’re pretty cute.

After our excursion we headed to a Jerusalem Café for falafels and ice cream.  Falafels weren’t quite like I remembered, but the hummus was delish!

We also went to Pike’s Peak while I was there, which was also breath taking… no seriously… it was so high up, it was a little hard to breathe.  On the way up we stopped at this pretty lake.

It was so nice to be in the mountains again.  Simon, again had a lot of fun not being confined to a stroller.

As we headed up to Pikes Peak, it reminded us of going on a roller coaster where you can’t see the track in front of you any more.  You just have to trust that it’s there.  Don’t let that first picture below fool you; there weren’t many guard rails on the way up.

When we got to the top, it was so cold.  Thankfully, Bryan packed coats for us all.  It even snowed a little bit as we were getting back into the car to leave.

Thanks for the fun!  And for the crazy adventure when it was time to leave.

The race started with us receiving our third teammate, an egg (whose name I can’t even remember).  We had to run around a loop in the parking lot while balancing our egg in a spoon.  Then, if he survived, we had to keep him with us through the entire race and keep him safe.  I won’t keep you in suspense; he survived the entire race!

We ran and swam in the first leg finding a bunch of check points.  This leg went great for us.  Biked the second leg. We both crashed on this one.  Here’s the deal: we both are new to toe clips and hadn’t practiced taking our feet out quickly, so when each of us hit sand going around corners pretty fast, we went down.

We kayaked the third leg and although this isn’t our strongest point, we did pretty well since we were in these awesome ski kayaks that rock beyond description!  Love them!  Our navigation was totally on too.

When we got back from kayaking our cute little families were there to cheer us on.  It was fun to see them.  We headed back to our transition area refilled our waters and figured out the navigation for our last leg (on bikes) and headed back out.

We knew this last trail pretty well, so we expected this last leg to go smoothly.  And of course when you expect things to go smoothly, they don’t.  We found all the check points great, but we decided to do a little bush whacking so that we wouldn’t have to back track on the trail.  Somewhere while we were starting to do this, the passport got dropped.  The passport is pretty darn important.  At each of the checkpoints, there is a little punching device that you use to punch your passport.  If you don’t have your passport at the end, you don’t get credit for any of the checkpoints you’ve been to.  So, Jamie started looking for the passport while I started carrying our bikes through a tangle of thorns, trees, bushes, spider webs, and critters.  As I started carrying my bike, Jamie said, “I feel like crying.”  I said, “Don’t cry. Just pray.”  Then, I started praying in my mind and looked back at Jamie who was kneeling on the ground praying.  After a good ten minutes, I got my bike through and went back for Jamie’s.  But for some reason I took a different route and got really, really tangled in and scratched up by some thorns.  SERIOUSLY!  I still have scars! When I was a little over half way through, Jamie said, “I found it!”  I couldn’t believe it.  I finally got her bike through and we went and got the last check point and headed back in.  We were really hoping to get in the top five this year, but we didn’t see how that could happen after our major mishap.  We were pretty sure we were even over the time limit, so spirits were a bit down.    As we rode back in, I had to remind Jamie to smile for the camera.  This was as good as she could do.

We got back and turned in our egg and our passport and heard someone say, “Hey- they got all of the checkpoints!”  Then after a few more minutes I saw the board!

Can you see that?  Team Spirit USA came in 5th!!!

Check out that thorn wound on my shoulder!

This year we opted out of our normal summer trip to Utah and Idaho and after another year of daily reading, we set out for Port Aransas, Texas.

Our cottage was called the Dark Horse, and it was conveniently located only two blocks from the beach. It was a cozy little two bedroom place with no carpet. At first I thought that was odd. Maybe the flooring option is obvious to you, but it took me a visit to the beach and back to understand the wisdom of the vinyl flooring.

The first day of the beach was full of excitement and anticipation. After all, we had been waiting for this day for two years. The suspense built and built until Kate and her eczema skin touched the salt water. We quickly dropped our expectations and resigned ourselves to focusing on building a sand castle and other non-water activities.

After our first day (really only a few hours) at the beach we headed back to Dark Horse and attempted to clean the sand off of us. There was sand everywhere, and the grittiness on the bottom of my bare feet reminded me that I wouldn’t be clean until we returned home.

Somehow we got the kids to sleep all in the same room and then we got to bask in one of our favorite BBC-produced chick-flicks: North & South.

Day 2 began with the normal morning routine plus a helping of sunblock to prepare for the exposure. Simon smacked his face on the corner of the kitchen table and to soothe his pain he thought it would be a good idea to rub the sunblock in his eyes. That, coupled with the intense brightness of the sun, led to a morning of drooping his head, squinting his eyes, and struggling to see. Awesome. This day was going to be so fun!

Based on Day 1′s results with Kate’s sensitive skin, I knew that I couldn’t just take off running into the waves with her. Instead, we setup our gear close to the water, and eased into beach play. Little by little, we got in the water, and eventually Kate was playing in the water with Audrey. Surprisingly, she was enjoying it pretty much the whole time.

My time with Simon and Kate hanging out on the sand gave Jeana time to play on her own and to help Audrey try some new things on the boogie boards.

Kate was in heaven gathering sea shells and finding sand dollars. Simon did much better the second day keeping the sand out of his eyes and off his face. He (and I) hated the water in our eyes though. I took him out in the waves and he kept getting pummeled by the water and was going nuts with it in his eyes.

Audrey was a skimboard hog, but I enjoyed watching her trying to figure it out.

I think the best part of this trip to the beach was the sense of adventure that we got to share as an entire family. None of us had been here before so everything was new to each person and we each got to explore in some way. Jeana stayed in one afternoon while Simon took a nap, and I took the girls shopping for souvenirs. Ugh, it was so hot getting in and out of the car so much, but we found some fun t-shirts to come home with.

We held up our fingers to show which check point would have been at each location.

Right about the time this picture was taken, I was saying, “No, no.  I’ll get the bikes.  You go ahead and keep playing with your iphone.”  In his defense, we had found some really cool apps that would track our route and map it out for us.  Apparently, he just couldn’t wait to start checking it out, while I loaded BOTH bikes.