Isabella's 4th Birthday!

Isabella turned 4 today. Robert made her birthday cake. She opened presents from Connor, Cameron, Gabby and her daddy and me in the morning. Victoria gave her a birthday rpesent too. In the evening, after her daddy came home from work, we all sang happy birthday to her and she blew out the candles on her birthday cake. She loved the cake and enjoyed the day. She missed having her big sisters Angelica and Kayla around, but they are both still in the USA.



I took her to the park and took a lot of photos of her, and Robert took some close-up pictures of her when we came back home.


























After she'd gone to bed, her godfather Leon arrived with a present for her. She had been waiting for him and made me promise to wake her up when he came, but she wouldn't wake up. I took pictures of her still asleep on the couch where I carried her with Leon sitting beside her because I knew if I told her I had tried to get her up when he arrived, she wouldn't believe me.



I love my little princess Isabella.

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" - sung by Isabella, performed by Gabriella
a spontaneous performance

Cameron's Crawling Improves

Cameron's crawling has improved a lot in just two days' time!

Baby Giggles

Cameron is a very happy baby and he smiles and laughs easily. His brother and sisters love making him giggle.

Cameron is crawling!

Cameron started crawling, so, of course, I had to capture it on video!

Animating Gabby's Art

Gabby drew a really cute bee when she was 4 years old, and she just drew a pretty flower, so her daddy thought it would be fun to create a little animation using them both.

Learning from His Big Sister

Gabby (6 years old) decided to teach Connor (2 years old) how to draw some simple drawings.

First, she showed him how to draw a flower.

Here's Gabby's flower:


Here's Connor's attempt to draw a flower:


Then, she showed him how to draw a dinosaur.

Here's Gabby's dinosaur:


Here's Connor's attempt to draw the same dinosaur:


The really cute thing about this "lesson" is that, when Gabby was showing it all to me, she was pointing out which parts of Connor's flower picture were the leaves, stem and petals and which parts of his dinosaur picture were the teeth, spikes and tail. Can you see those things in his drawings?

Border Collies Are Smart!

Our dog Mercury is so clever! Angelica got him for her fifteenth birthday and is supposed to do his training, but she never taught him more than the sit command. Later, I taught him to lie down when I said, "Down," and it only took him a few minutes to learn and remember it. (Border collies are smart!) Well, she still hasn't taught him anything else, so I decided to work with him again. I taught him "Stay!" and "Come!" And again, it only took a few minutes to teach him. (Of course, there were no distractions around such as other dogs to play with.) He is so EASY to train.

Now I just have to teach him to run with me without grabbing his leash and pulling while jumping around in front of me growling playfully. Right now, whenever I try to run, he thinks it's a game.

Notes From Gabby

Robert has a little sticky note feature on the desktop of his computer where he can quickly type in a note to himself to remind himself of things. Gabby was playing games on his computer, and the browser stopped working, so she decided to let him know.

Typed onto this little note feature was written, "Daddy your conpyooter browk."

I thought it was a really cute message, especially with her phonetic spelling.

A Mommy & Her Boys

Connor, Cameron and I had our photos taken by Robert while we were at the park. Usually, Cameron is quick to smile, but today we were all squinting in the sunlight, and Cameron was overly interested in the grass.

Gabby the Rock Star

Gabby has informed me that she is going to be a rock star. And her friends Hannah and Morgan are in her band.

Summer by Gabriella

Gabby wrote a poem/song this morning.

Summer
by Gabriella (6 years old)

I see sun
in the sky.
It sings
Summer's here.
It's coming
Back for you.

Summer, Summer,
Summer, s-Summer.

You might have a holiday,
Out in the sun,
But you know you know
That it's Summer.

Summer, Summer,
Summer, s-Summer.