Last week, it was pretty hot out, so we dug out the pool and slip and slide. I kept shutting the water off of the slip'n'slide when our yard became a muddy mess, but the kids kept turning it on. It didn't take long for them to discover the mud.



That night, WHEN WE HAD GUESTS OVER, us adults were talking while the kids "played". When we turned to look at them, we saw that they had painted themselves in mud. There was mud all through Dominique's hair, their suits are now stained red earth color, but their smiles stretched from ear to ear. They weren't to fond of the clean up which started with a cold water hose in the back yard. We still could have potted a plant with what was washed down the drain.






Big Buddy had his party. It was fun, although he was in a critical mood, making quite a show for all his guests. He was given a whole lot of helium filled balloons. He gave a couple to the kids and Emora was just enjoying watching the one I tied to her foot as she kicked it around.

Our totally amazing news is that Ivan read his first words. Before going to naps, he told me he could read the switch on a toy "on" and "off". So I thought if he could read that, he could read other words. I wrote things like "in" "if" "is" "an", went on to "hat", "hot" and we even got to words with the silent E like "more". He kept wanting more words and we ended up with about 50 of them on the table that he had mostly read with no help except for a few. It was so exciting! I need to upload the pics to show you. The funny thing is that he still can't make the hard G and K sounds, so he told me not to write any C, K or G words! It was so fun.