Another year goes by....

I cannot believe my baby is 3!!

Sleeping with Ash. They still do this. Ashlynn will tuck Josie in for her nap, and sometimes fall asleep with her now that Jo's in a big girl bed.

Reese dressing josie up like a present and taking a picture. And now, Reese will dress Josie up as a cat, princess, mom, doctor or some combination of those things and Josie loves it.

We continue to stare at her with amazement. She is smart and growing so fast. We don't want to miss anything so we're constantly watching her.

She's:

getting potty trained

talking back

sleeping in a big girl bed

constantly putting on lip gloss

mimicking mom and her sisters

singing

hiding, only to be found in a room putting on nail polish

losing her temper

asking for kisses

saying I love you

And Josie....we love you too! Happy Birthday

Treasure Hunt

Okay...so it's really Geocaching. But when you have three girls with active imaginations....the way to get them into the hike and search is to tell them it's a treasure hunt.

We've wanted to try it for a couple years but never had a good handheld GPS system. But now with the iphones, Rich downloaded a Geocaching App and we went for it.

This is on the Rock Creek trail. We forgot to write down the actual coordinates of the cache, and they were coded on the website we were looking at. So we followed the clues and searched around. We were thinking we were in the wrong spot when Reese spotted the treasure under the log.

They were so excited when the opened it. We had taken a couple small toys (old McDonald Happy Meal toys) and traded them for others that were in the box.

The girls had so much fun. Part of the excitement is trying to keep the locations a secret from non-geocachers. Yesterday we went on a spur of the moment after dinner walk to a cache that was just placed a couple days ago 0.2 miles from our house. It's on a busy trail so the kids were whispering and excitedly looking for it while trying to not let anyone notice us.

The Dreaming

Last night I had a dream that I was selling most everything I owned so that I could see Kate Bush in concert. This is not unlike something I might do.... if Kate did concerts.

I love the album cover above, for The Dreaming. When we first got this cassette:) I remember flipping and twirling it around with my hands....only to stop suddenly worried that the key on her tongue might fall off. Weird I know, but Kate has that affect of people.

If I were stranded on a deserted island and could have only one artist's work, it would be Kate's. If I could have only one album, it would be Hounds of Love. Every song moves me. In Junior High I was obsessed with the story line of the ninth wave. And Cloudbusting would always bring tears to my eyes. Her music sparked my emotions and her lyrics sent my imagination into a frenzy. I would act out an entire theater production in my head listening to her songs.

Theatrical productions are exactly what Kate would do to...watch any of her videos on youtube and it may take a while to get over the initial crazy you see as a first timer. I think most of our friends who knew about mine and my family's obsession with Kate thought we were all a little crazy.

She is ARTIST.

Yes, it is beyond shameful that I don't own her album Aerial. Something I plan to remedy very soon. But I'm not going to download it, Kate's albums have to be felt and seen. There's usually cool pictures and hopefully lyrics to the songs.

So would I sell everything to see her? I'd sell a lot, but not everything......

Besides, in the productions in my head, I get to be the heroine :)

Now go listen to Hello Earth from Hounds of Love and then tell me if it doesn't move you.

Kids say the darndest things...

Write it down or you'll forget:

1- Josie told me she wanted to see her cousin Asher. I said, "We can't. He's in Utah." She said, "He's in my-tah?"

2- One of the highlights of going to their cousins house is to see the chickens. Last time we went they were all caged up instead of roaming free. Adrienne told Josie it was because the chickens were naughty and kept going in the road. On the way home Josie said, "the chickens were naughty. The chickens in time-out. They should say......." (then in a high pitched, throaty voice she said, "BAWK! Sorry!"