The McPherson Chronicles

Any guesses on how long it took the 2 of them to do this? Hint: Kevin and I were both home and they were within eyesight so it was ridiculously fast work.

We had a night away from the girls this weekend for a friend's wedding. My parents were gracious enough to watch the girls. We had a great time at the wedding and on the way home we started talking about some of our favorite things the girls do and say lately. We'd love to get them all on video but in the meantime, I figured we'd better at least write them down before they move onto new things and we forget all about these. Olivia asks us and/or Lucy every morning "You have good nap?" or "Good nap, Mama?" Kevin's favorite is that the girls refer to their milk as "Milksy-milks" Olivia says "thanks Mom" when I bring out their clothes each morning, or do her hair or for other random things. I love hearing her say it. Lucy, being a polite little pooper, always requests "privacy, please" while she conducts her daily business "I do it myself" might as well be Lucy's motto. We love how independent she wants...

Well it turns out, ballet isn't really Olivia's thing, at least not this time. We've had 3 nights of ballet so far and Olivia only really participated in the first night. The last 2 times she has been fine getting ready, in the car on the way, and even waiting for class to start. As soon as we walk in the studio doors and the kids all gather to go through the "magic door", Olivia starts with her pouty face, crying and being super clingy. She starts out by going with the other kids but as soon as they are all seated away from the parents, Olivia pretty much loses it. She ends up watching the rest of the class standing with one of us. It's funny/sad at the same time. Her little pouty face is adorable, so it makes me laugh to see her doing it, but it's so sad that she doesn't want to go have fun with her ballet friends. We're not entirely sure what the problem is, she loves watching the class and doing all the moves at home with Lucy, but when it come...

We had a great day at Newport Beach on Monday. The girls loved the ocean, the sand and the birds. As soon as they got out of the car Olivia yelled "I want to go in the pool!" while she pointed at the ocean. From that moment on she was in heaven and so was Lucy. By the end of the day they were wiped out and so were we. We got to the beach house right around 12 and gave the girls a quick lunch, changed into suits and lathered up in sunscreen. The girls could hardly wait to get to the beach. We let them play in the sand for a bit while the sunscreen soaked in. Here are the awesome sand molds we found of American landmarks. We may have to go back for the European landmark set as well, they're that cool. The girls loved digging around in the sand and helping Daddy build sand castles and sculptures. They mostly directed where he should dump the molds after he'd filled them. They were quite helpful. After some turns chasing the birds around the sand, we headed down to ...

When we were contemplating names for the girls we occasionally wondered what they would call each other or how they could pronounce each other's names. For the longest time they only referred to each other as "sister" or more accurately "sista". They knew their names but rarely used them when talking to each other. Now they have picked up on the names and nicknames we have for them and refer to each other the same way we do. For Olivia: her most common nickname and how Lucy usually refers to her it's "Gracer", when Lucy does say her name it sounds more like "Wivia" For Lucy: Olivia usually refers to her as "Goosey" or attaches her middle name and calls her "Goosey Anne". She has started to call her Lucy now which sounds a bit more like "Wucy". We love hearing them say each other's names in their cute little voices.

2 rare pictures where we are all actually looking at the camera from our last Sea World trip. Unfortunately, we're not all in the same picture. Someday...

Today we're taking for a day trip to play with lots of with some cute cousins These ar epictures from a beach intro trip over the weekend. I'll have more pictures later this week and I'll be sure to let you know if we left any sand at the beach or if it's all in my car and house.