Looong weekend

This was my first flex weekend of 2011 and I took advantage of every moment of it. I had gotten into the habit this Fall of bringing the girls to school on Fridays I had off to run errands, go to doctor appointments, lunch with friends or even take a nap. However, I had not one single thing to do this Friday. Believe it. I had no closets to organize, no returns to make, no parties to plan for. Nothing. All I wanted to do was to spend the day with my girls. And that we did. Brenna called Friday morning to see if we wanted to play and I suggested Rec. Unlmtd (thanks for the suggestion Jaim!). We spent a few hours there getting our sillies out on a snowy day:

Think she'll be a basketball star? Me neither. She's as short as most kids 6 months younger than her!
Brenna & Jack were loving the court
Izzy spent approximately 3 minutes on the swing. Her big thing is to CLIMB (there are several climbing walls here) and jump/bounce.

Sliding

Laney steering

Bounce heaven. It was hard to keep her off the trampolines (Brenna can attest to this; she witnessed a 3 year-old meltdown at its finest).

And Laney also loved to bounce

Jack enjoyed the tire swing

Izzy's favorite thing to do these days is take my picture (and then of course check out her artwork on the screen). Here is one of her shots. Kind of artsy if you ask me. Ha!

Friday night I had a girls' night out with Molly; we went to the Butler game and then to dinner at Us.ual Suspects (YUM!). We had so much fun at the bar...so much that we dined and dashed! (And since I keep up with celebrity smut, I had just learned that in some states dining and dashing is a felony!) I realized this on my way home, after dropping Molly off at her place. I felt horrible. Thankfully Molly called the bar to let them know we indeed intended to pay for our meals & paid over the phone! With this, hopefully Molly won't be blackballed from her favorite hangout spot. Yikes. Kind of embarrassing.

Saturday morning we went to Izzy's gymnastics class. We switched from a weekday evening, as it was far too hectic to get her fed and to class in time to cram it in. I just love the Saturday mornings now...the light is peering through the windows during her warm up and I can relax and enjoy watching her.

Izzy is very strong on the balance beam and the bars and is showing a lot of independence & confidence already on the equipment.

So cute, this is how they walk from event to event. And below is the end of class where they get stamps if they were good listeners that day.

This morning we accompanied Mike to the gym (he's training for the 25k relay in June) to swim. The girls and I had fun swimming in the (bath-like-temperature) pool while daddy swam laps. Izzy is also quite independent in the pool, now that she wears the life vest and can float and swim on her own. She wants no help because, of course, she can do it herself.

Daddy came to join us after his workout

Izzy had kisses for him

Laney was excited to have us both in the water to run back and forth to

And Izzy had a new audience (her fave). She's started this game where she says "Now do this" and holds a pose. This repeats for as long as you play along. She played this game over the holidays with Grandma Laura for about 30 minutes. The game only stopped because Laura pulled something. It's hysterical, as Izzy will contort herself into all kinds of crazy positions and say "Now do this!" Cousin Taylor played along with her for a while over the holidays as well. Izzy tried to get us to play in the pool. Um, most of her poses I will not do in a swimsuit. Sorry, Simon said it was ok.

Playing

This afternoon we took the girls to their first Butler game. We stayed for about an hour and a half and both girls did amazingly well. Laney loved all the clapping and cheering, while Izzy loved watching the cheerleaders. The girls ate the entire time we were there. Popcorn. Crackers. Fruit snacks. Orange. Raisins. Oh my, I'm surprised Izzy wasn't sick (again) from all the eating. But we had a great time and I look forward to another daytime game to take them to!

Sharing popcorn

Watching the game & petting Butler Blue.

We had a great weekend. We watched Annie (my favorite childhood movie). We played. We snugged. We simply basked in the three days that were ours.