We have been enjoying our summer vacation, doing various activities. One day we drove up to Hershey Park again, since we liked it so much in the spring. Karina's favorite ride is the bumper cars, and Lydia is hoping she will be tall enough to ride it next summer:
I like the Skyview because it is relaxing to enjoy the view as you slowly move along.
Derek has mostly stopped napping. He kept waking up for the day around 5am, and would take a long nap in the afternoon, so we have been trying to transition him to no nap and a later wake time. He has been fighting against the forced schedule change and keeps sleeping in the car every chance her gets. One day when we didn't leave the house (and so he couldn't nap in the car), he became incredibly cranky in the afternoon. The girls and I got so frustrated with him and his irritability, that I finally took him to his room and his bed, and left him there. I went downstairs and he began crying frantically. Less than a minute later, the crying stopped. I went to check on him a little while later and found him on the stairs, asleep:
The fact that I was able to get so many different angles of him asleep at the top of the stairs is an indication that he was one sleepy guy:
Another day, Derek fell asleep on the couch while Karina watched TV.
One of the downfalls of having birthday parties for the kids is too many presents. The presents have always been really nice, but we end up with a lot. We finally got to use up a few of the crafts this summer. This was a tyrannosaurus rex dig. The kids took out their hammers, chisels, and brushes and dug out the dinosaur.
Derek continues his obsession with construction vehicles. He and Lydia have recently started watching the show 'Bob the Builder' and they love it. Here they are dressed up in their construction worker outfits:
Derek's vocabulary has taken off. He can say 4-5 word sentences, which he never did before. He usually calls Karina 'Kia', Lydia 'Ee-ah', and himself 'Doo-doo'. The girls thought the name Doodoo was hilarious and then I finally told them what doo-doo means, and it became many times more funny. Poor guy has no idea. He sometimes now calls Karina 'Karia' and Lydia 'Lydeeda' if he makes an effort with the pronunciation.
I remember that Karina used to call herself 'Keena' and would call Lydia 'Lala', when she was around 2 and a half. At that age, Lydia used to call herself 'Lahya' and I think she always called Karina 'Kawina' without a simpler word in between.
I took the kids to Clark's Eliok Farm one day. Karina is getting to be too old to really enjoy it, but it was still a fun day. They ran through a maze through pine trees:
They played on wooden trains, buses, and fire engines.
The theming at Clark's Eliok Farm is fairy tales. All the nursery rhymes were recreated in one way or another. This is from 'There was an old woman who lived in a shoe' and the kids got to go on a slide through the shoe.
The goats in the petting zoo were extremely calm and gentle.
Both girls kept begging to ride a pony, and I gave in. I hope they enjoyed their 1 minute each on 'Spice' who is 30 years old.
Of course, Derek needed a turn too.
Karina enjoyed twirling around in her pretty dress and new sparkly shoes.
We have been swimming several times a week recently. We also finally got Karina and Lydia into private swim lessons. Both girls can swim a few feet now, though Karina has made more progress, and there is still work to be done with their technique and distance. Every day Karina begs me to take them to the pool. Derek also loves to jump in the water and he often tells me and Nate to let go of him so that he can float by himself with his floaties on.
The video is of Karina swimming about a week and a half ago. For years she refused to go in the water at all and was terrified to put her head under the water. Something finally clicked, and now I can't take her away from the water.
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