We have been enjoying our summer so far. I love having kids out of school, and Jess took last week off just to hang out...life is good.

 

Jess took Pantera to the amusement park she has been talking about since she went with my brother and sister last summer. Seriously she talked about it so much, about all the rides she went on and how she loved big coasters. She even went on the bungee jump with my brother. I guess on the very first coaster Jess took her on, she turned white and buried her face in his side. They spent the rest of the day on the kiddie rides. I still can't believe it after all that talk! She loves how busy we have been so far this summer, friends, birthday parties, roller blading, splash pad, she would have me going all the time if it were up to her. My little social butterfly.

 

Zeke has been playing with his sisters a lot more lately. I love to hear what he comes up with. Most of his play is movie dialogue, but sometimes he says things like "Amari, pretend I'm sleep driving."  Or the other day they were playing Toy Story 3 and he was being Andy and Amari was being Andy's mom and he just kept going through is toys asking if he could keep them, to which Amari would reply "Nope!" I guess Andy's mom was the real villain of the film, I never knew. He currently loves Legos, thanks to the Lego movie and Ninjago. Tonight we had "Taco Tuesday" and he was absolutely thrilled.

 

Amari was playing with my thermometer the other day (grrr) and came to me with it really upset. "Mom it told me to have a bad night!" What?
"It said I will have a bad night" "No Amari it said Fahrenheit." Another great quote "Syrup makes me feel like a cat!" When we went to Olive Garden last week she was so excited for our "fancy" dinner. She talked in her fancy voice the first 20 minutes we were there. Then on the way out a little boy was holding the door for us and she stopped in her tracks with a dreamy look on her face and asked "How old are you?" He said "4" she said "me too!" I told her to quit flirting, but her little "I just saw the man of my dreams face was hysterical! I'm going to have to watch this one!!! She was trying to talk Jess into getting another dog the other day and he was resisting so she walked up to him and put her finger on his nose then said "Oh smoochie boy, calm down smoochie boy. Now lets go to the pet store!"

 

Katurah wants a cane in the worst kind of way. When we were playing at the church the other night she made one out of mega blocks and was trying to walk with it. The other kids all decided they wanted one too. I told my mom, who walks with a cane, that she is the biggest trend setter amongst the 2-4 year old crowd. We went to the library yesterday and they had a science display where you could build your own junk robot. The kids all loved this but Katurah especially loved her "robop" and I loved to here her say it!

 

Seneca is going to stand any day now. She is all over the place trying to pull herself up onto everything. She can go from crawling to sitting up and vice versa seamlessly now as well. She is also trying to talk repeating my vocal inflections when I call for Katurah or Pantera. She says the dogs name "lettie" and "zee" for zeke, "lala" for pacifier, and of course Dada. No Mama, but Jess has to have something with this kid;)

 

Life is busy but so good!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Summer!!!

Summer break has officially began at the Hammond house! I am so happy to sleep in almost everyday. The kids have been pretty busy with friends over, shopping, puppy sitting, and Friday night campfires. Not a bad start to summer at all.


Seneca is into EVERYTHING now that she is mobile. She loves to get into the lazy susan that Katurah always leaves open. Seneca will pull herself up to kneeling on it which makes me super nervous because,well it spins. I had a gallon of paint behind the chair in the front room for over 2 months, I am terrible about putting all my stuff in the garage in between projects. I thought nothing of this gallon as Seneca was scooting around the other day. She managed to open it and dump it out then, slide in it before I caught her. I had just walked into the kitchen and my Dad and I were both right there...sneaky kid.

Katurah loves the "if you chance to meet a frown song" she is so cute when she sings it with a little sad face and a low sad voice until it says "quickly turn it upside down" then she grins so big and sing so fast and happy. She is still pretty hard to understand. The speech therapist thinks she is just trying to talk too fast like everyone around her because when we slow her down and ask her to repeat us, her sounds are pretty good. As a matter of fact last night she had a Captain America doll and was making him wiggle while saying "Shake your BOOOTY!" Clear as day, at least she has the important phrases down.

Amari is the constant mother hen in our home. She has taken it upon herself to start wiping Katurah's face, even though her face is covered in goo as well, kind of a mote and beam situation. But she is also more responsible then a lot of kids her age. She even got the priviledge of puppy sitting for a friend yesterday and was so serious about her task. She let everyone know how to properly handle this pup including "If he gets too wild, just scratch his belly and he will calm right down." She asked me to make her hair like Elsa for church last week and I did, of course you can imagine it made it through the first 10 minutes of sacrament meeting until it just looked like I didn't brush it. But the point is she felt like Elsa and she went around pretending to freeze everything and told Jess "Cutting the cheese is not for princesses!" She wanted to call her friend and asked me "Do you have Audrey's password?" instead of phone number.

Zeke is as always obsessed with his electronic devices. He is only allowed to play them at naptime and after dinner, so he always pretends to be tired hoping to get his kindle faster. Oh, but his Kindle died, I bought one of the new ones back in October and it has been a piece of junk since we got it but he will tell you "My kindle died because I didn't play with it enough" UH HUH. The other day I gave him frosted flakes for the first time. He looked at his bowl a little disgusted and asked what they were. I told him "They are frosted flakes and they are GRRREAT!" So he tried them and with another look of disgust says "I guess they are a little grrreat." I quickly told him it is ok if he doesn't like them and he said "Ok, I do not like them."

 Pantera has been enjoying her life with no school with counting down until it starts again and studying. She is determined to be ready for fourth grade. I love that she is so excited for next year already, but that is almost all she talks about...still. The other subject she enjoys is boys. She has a list of boys she has a crush on in about 5 diaries and likes to show them to everybody. One of the boys is in our ward and he told her today that he likes her too. After she told Jess and I all about it she said "I'm going to have a lot to write about in my diary tonight!" Boy crazy like her mom...yikes!