Last Night With Claire.

Claire is hysterical. She has always had a wonderful sense of humor and is constantly surprising us. We taught her a while back when her birthday is. Ever since, she announces multiple times a day that her birthday is in November. November 13th. She gets so excited and talks about it all the time.

Last night I made an oatmeal chocolate chip cake for a treat. When I pulled it out and said it was ready, Claire squealed a little bit and ran over. As soon as she saw it she started singing Happy Birthday as loudly and enthusiastically as possible.

I had to explain that sometimes we can have cake as a treat when it isn't someone's birthday. She sang Happy Birthday to herself anyway.

Before the Happy Birthday cake, we were having dinner. Claire doesn't always love to eat dinner. She wasn't really eating so Ross told her she needed to have five big bites in order to have some of the cake. She immediately started scooping up food and eating it as fast as she could. We weren't counting for her, just sitting back and letting her eat. She was three bites in when I looked over at Ross and said, "Good thing she isn't counting.". (Thinking she couldn't count in her head.) Just then she looks around the table and said, "I have two more bites, Aoife!"

My jaw just hung open for a while. She's such a smart stinker. I'm in trouble.

Adios Pixie.

Back in April I got some courage and chopped off my hair. And it was crazy and kind of liberating and there was a lot of self discovery involved. And we ended up taking it even shorter. I have a lot of hair and the cut just wasn't working with that amount of hair.

And then it grew. And I had a pet mullet. And the mullet needed to go. Originally the plan was to grow out my hair and just tame the mullet. This was probably two weeks ago. So some classmates and I started flipping through pictures. And we saw one and loved it. And the next thing I knew there were clippers on the back of my head. The mullet was gone, but so was a lot more of my hair.

But it looked fantastic. So much better than the first couple cuts. The same night I got mine cut, a friend got hers cut into a cute long A-line. I went home and was telling Ross about it and I teared up a little. (I feel pathetic admitting that.) But here I was with short hair, (And it even looked cute) but feeling like my hair was never ever going to grow back.

I really have enjoyed the short hair. It's easy to do, and a bad pixie day is a thousand times more fashionable than a greasy ponytail. Even on my bad hair days I get compliments. I have NEVER had so many compliments on my hair. Ever.

But I'm starting to get envious of all these women with long locks. And I think it's time to start the awkward growing process. I want to stay away from my thermal tools as much as possible and will probably not be going platinum like I've been thinking about. Please be kind and offer fake compliments on my "style".

The couple (hundred) blogs I've stalked about growing out pixies have been wonderful and so helpful, hopefully it will make the "Bieber" and mullet, and holes-because-the-hair-in-front-of-my-ears-is-shorter stages more bearable. I also might be wearing lots of hats and headbands. But hopefully someday I'll have luscious locks again.

Adios pixie. It's been fun.

Silver Lake Beach.

This morning the girls woke up grumpy. Claire got sent to time out before 8:00, and both girls went down for a morning nap before 8:20. It was one of those mornings. So Ross told me to take a fun day. It was 90 degrees before 9:30. I loaded up the car with beach toys and sun screen and the second the girls woke up they were strapped in their car seats. I'm pretty sure Aoife wasn't sure what just happened.

There's a free ferry 20 minutes away. Someone told us about it when we first moved in. It runs 24/7 until the lake is frozen and it only takes about 7 minutes to get across the lake. So we parked at a park nearby and walked over to the ferry. Obviously I was a genius and didn't think about just driving the car on and taking the girls out once we were on. But it worked out nicely. We didn't even get off on the other side.

Wisconsin has enough lakes that you could go to a different lake every single day and never run out. Lake Wisconsin is pretty big. Looking around the shoreline I couldn't see any swimming spots. Luckily our GPS has a section labeled 'beaches', so I just hit that and it came up with a list of nearby beaches. I love technology. Silver Lake beach was the first to pop up. It was about 12 miles out, but i decided to give it a try, and I'm so glad I did!

When we pulled up, all you could see was tons of white sand and a roped off swimming area. Claire was antsy so we changed into our swim suits quickly and grabbed the toys. It was wonderful. There's even a snack bar and a couple life guards. And the water. I cautiously toed the water. and then dragged Aoife in as deep as she could stand it and sat down. It was BATH WATER warm. I have NEVER been in water that warm. Obviously this is now our favorite lake/beach. We're so excited to take Ross with us soon.

We spent the afternoon there playing in the water, laying on the beach, and drinking juice bags. And the best part: We got home and the girls settled in for long naps. I love Wisconsin summers.

And seriously. When is that kid going to start walking?!

July So Far.

I've decided Wisconsin summers are awesome. They are fantastic and possibly worth the months of freezing. On Fridays, I don't have class so I get to workout with my favorite. The girls and I meet up with Ross at the gym after he gets off work. Otherwise, he usually wakes up early and hits the gym before work. So Friday morning are also my favorite.

This morning, Ross got the girls up ad changed and turned on the Primary songbook playlist we have. Aoife played with the car, and Claire danced around singing with Ross. And I was barefoot in my robe in the kitchen cooking up pancakes, sausage, and eggs. Some mornings are just perfect. We've had a fantastic week and it's just really great to be in the place we're at. Life is wonderful. And it was just how a Friday morning should be.

The girls and I have been busy this week. The weather honestly couldn't be any better and I want to check as many things off of our summer bucket list. We have a pretty good routine going. We head to the gym first thing. While the girls nap, I clean. Then we have lunch and go out to explore.

This week we hit up the zoo, the arboretum, the Capitol, and downtown. I wish we could have stayed downtown longer, but the girls were exhausted, so we'll be doing the museums another day.

I love our little zoo. I love that it's free. We can come and go as we wish and I don't feel like we have to see everything and push the kids for a long afternoon.When they're tired, we go!

I've heard great things about the Arboretum, and I was hoping it would be like Washington Park back home. We didn't get to see a lot of it, but it didn't disappoint. But we did realize that Wisconsin has bugs. A lot of them. Especially on the trails by the lake. I sprayed myself and Claire with bug spray and it worked well for the first half. But poor Aoife was getting eaten alive and the way she sat in the carrier I couldn't help her. Halfway, the bugs started getting Claire. She'd walk with her hands over her ears and cry every now and then. I ended up picking her up and running with both girls to the car. But she enjoyed our little hike and couldn't wait to tell Ross about the bugs.

My poor bug bite baby.

After breakfast this morning, we headed downtown. Originally, I wanted to take the girls to the UW Geology museum, but could not find a parking spot to save my life. So we changed our plans and decided to check out the Capitol. I wanted to do a tour, but after seeing all of the stairs and no one else waiting for the tour would need to use the elevator, I decided to poke around on our own so we wouldn't make anyone wait for us.

Claire loved pushing the elevator buttons anyway and loved that she got to do it so many times as we checked out each floor. And she loved the acoustics and her voice echoing. I'm sure everyone in the building could hear us. But it was a really cool building. It was fun poking around looking at everything.

It was really bright.

Then we strolled down State street. We stopped off at Jamba Juice, since that's the only one around here. They even had kid's sizes. Of course the girls loved them and drank them as fast as they could. It's been fun finding all the things to do. And you can't really beat a Wisconsin summer.

Fourth of July Weekend.

I'm a little weird. I love Mondays. It's the busiest day of the week for me. I use it to clean, grocery shop, do laundry, and just get things done. But we just had the most perfect weekend and it's making my impending to-do list a little depressing. All because that list means it's back to real life.

School this week was pretty relaxed. For whatever reason, Madison does all of its Fourth of July celebrations BEFORE the Fourth. We had Thursday off from school, but almost everyone skipped Thursday as well. A friend and I still went, and we spent the evening sipping our Sonic slushies and playing games. I think that was the fastest time has ever flown at school.

Thursday:

We started the morning with brunch with church. It was at the park right across the street from us, so we just got to walk over. They had a little program, great food, and of course it was at the park with the splash pad, so the kids were set! Claire and Aoife just played on the play structures until they wore themselves out. We all took long afternoon naps before going swimming.

Poor Aoife was so tired, she was falling asleep in her floatie. It was kind of adorable. We took the girls back for one last nap before the big party. Our friends invited us over for the fourth. People here sure know how to throw a party. We had a blast. Claire still talks about it. It was probably my favorite Fourth of July in YEARS. I probably can't even do it justice talking about it, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Friday:

I was still in party mode, so I swept up the girls after their morning nap and took them out to Devil's Lake. I've heard a lot of good things about it and wanted to explore. We started off with a McDonald's lunch where Claire serenaded everyone.

 Then we took off to the North side of the park. We started off at the Nature Center. They had a few reptile exhibits that the girls liked, and the entire downstairs was hands-on exhibits for kids. We didn't stay long, but it was a fun little stop.

Turns out the North side was beyond packed and we got sent to the South Shore. Luckily, they had plenty of parking. We started off with a hike. Aoife was pretty restless and threw her binkie before we even started. It made for a long afternoon. Claire saw a trail that was full of big rocks and started climbing. She did really well and got pretty high up before other hikers told me that on the trail ahead, you had to climb up rocks that had a drop-off on either side. So we turned around. I'm not sure how much longer Claire would have lasted anyway. It was time to go cool off in the lake!

My girls are water babies. Especially Claire. They went crazy. Aoife would walk out with me as far as she could, or crawl around until the water came up to her face. For some reason, she prefers lakes to the pool.

On the way home, we stopped off at Dairy Queen for ice cream. Claire barely finished hers before falling asleep. We had so much fun, we decided to take Ross back the next day and invite some friends. Unfortunately, I wasn't as camera happy, and didn't really take any pictures of Saturday.

Since I went to school earlier in the week when no one else came, I decided to skip class on Saturday and take a long weekend. Despite the short notice, a few friends came out to the lake with us for a picnic lunch and swimming. Claire loved it and talked about her friends the whole way there and back. The weather was wonderful and we're all a little toasted. Ross doesn't get to go outside much, and he got the worst of it. We ended up getting an annual State Park pass, so we have lots of exploring to do. Hopefully we'll get him all sunned out before summer is over. After a couple long naps, we made a spur of the moment decision to take the girls to see Despicable Me 2. I was a little worried about taking the girls to the theater, especially with them being so tired, but they were actually really good! Claire was a little restless and would talk a little about what was happening, but what kid doesn't? Aoife was too tired to do anything, so she just sat with her binkie. The theater here doesn't charge for kids under 3, so we might be taking them more often!

We've officially been here for six months, and I think we're finally starting to like it here. Wisconsin is a million times better with friends. And sunshine doesn't hurt either. (Unless you forget to take the sunscreen to the lake.) We're looking forward to putting our annual pass to good use, exploring, and having many more perfect weekends.