Flashback Friday - Two Years Ago

We are heading on our mini-vacation tomorrow morning. We are going to King's Dominion tomorrow then on to a large indoor water park for Sunday and Monday. This is our 4th year going to homeschool week at Wolf Lodge and it's always a blast. I went back looking for pictures of Tori the 1st year we went since she had only been home in America a few weeks. They were on a different computer, but I found pictures from 2007 when Ben and Julia were new Americans. Look how little my baby girls were. Julia was 14 months, exactly how old Elijah is this trip.


I'm excited to see Elijah play this year - Julia enjoyed it at one!


Here we were as a "little" family of 10, with my sister coming, we are now a family of 12.

It's fun to see Tori and Julia grow and learn, but part of me is sad that I don't really have "baby girls" anymore! Look at Julia chugging her morning orange juice bottle, boy, was it tough to get that bottle away from her!

I'll be back on Tues. with lots of pictures. Then I can post them in 2011 and carry on about how I miss Elijah being little......:)

Barbies Galore

I have always disliked Barbies. In fact, for my 5th birthday, I clearly remember getting two Barbies and I didn't care for them at all. I always loved dolls and stuffed animals, but Barbies were not my thing. When Alei was little, I had no intention of buying the disproportionate plastic dolls for her, but once all her friends had them, it wasn't worth the fight. Alei, Moriah and Alyssa all played with Barbies for years. The basement at our old house had a playroom that was usually littered with small plastic Barbie shoes and an occasional decapitated Barbie head. I sucked up many a Barbie item with the shop-vac over the years. When we moved to our temporary home over four years ago, the Barbies all moved into the barn due to space shortage. Occasionally they would play with them in the barn loft, but overall they have just collected dust for the last several years.

Since Julia went to a friends house and played Barbies, she has brought them up several times. I don't let her play in the barn loft since I'm concerned she'll fall out the door, so it meant that the Barbies once again were going to litter my playroom floor. Actually it's worse than that since Tori and Julia are semi-scared of the basement. The Barbies are going to litter the girl's bed-room and spill out into the living room. So, last night, we hosted scrub the Barbies, the Barbie cars and the Barbie airplane in the driveway. Julia was pretty thrilled with the whole event. With the barn collection I just cleaned, I see no reason to donate any more money to the Barbie billionaires.

My favorite part of the cleaning event is when two of the ducks showed up and snatched a plastic Barbie item and tried to run with them. We chased them to get it back so they wouldn't choke on it. While Ben was in hot pursuit of the one duck, Tux waddled by with something on the edge of his mouth. I chased him down and pulled this item out of his throat.

He's certainly cute, but he's a high maintenance duck.