Adventures of the Stone family: quick catch-up

Madi talks and talks and talks - plus she's real good at repeating what you say so watch out! Other than "I love you" I can't think of anything she doesn't say. Dan taught her Olympics so there for a while if any sport was on TV it was automatically the Olympics. Of the Olympics she liked swimming, jumping and ball the best - anything with a ball. If we're all going somewhere in the car she'll tell the boys to "load up." Very cute.

We skipped fireworks this year. Super easy to do when your child goes to bed at 8p. Because of the sweltering heat we skipped the parade too.

Madi absolutely LOVES being outside and it's even better if we're outside in water. Talk about a water bug! Took us a bit to find a life jacket that she liked. On a whim one day at the pool we had her try on a friends "puddle jumper" getup and Ta Da, that was the winner. Never would've guessed. When she has the jacket on she'll kick and swim away from you, no fear at all. She'll go down the kiddie water slide but wants you to be there to help. With the current drought there hasn't been much lawn mowing but when the mower does come out of the barn she begs and pleads to ride. Dad even lets her stear. :)

Almost all teeth are in, at least the ones she's supposed to have by now. Been cutting some back teeth lately so we're up a couple times a night to console her.

Switched day cares. There's a story! We were getting a bit uncomfortable with our current provider, started looking at options. Remembered Madi was on the wait list at our church's day care. Kept forgetting to call. Finally set a reminder and 15 min before it was to go off they called me - Madi was in!! This has more structure and learning/craft time plus a Christian influence so we were super excited. When I gave our current day care notice that Madi would be leaving she surprised me with "that's great - we're moving to Florida at the end of the month." WHAT?? Had God not provided for us we would've had 3 weeks notice to find a new place. Isn't He amazing? So our new "school" requires lunch brought from home every day which gave me a reason to get a little crafty during nap time. It felt great to cut & glue again.

I found a new bug for the front flower bed. Madi's just as fascinated with that one. They come in handy as teaching tools as she can now point out and say shovel, wing and ladybug. Hasn't quite figured out what the things on top of their head should be called.

She's been saying Please for a while but has recently begun saying Excuse You and Thank You. I sneezed the other day and she piped up with "excuse you." Really? Where'd you pick that up? Back to the first paragraph - she's real good at repeating.

We've already reached the spelling phase - popular words that could incite a riot have to get spelled out. Those include cheese, outside and boat.

Speaking of food, her favorite is still cheese, but the kid will eat anything. I truly do mean anything. Folks are always surprised at what she'll eat.

I know there are a million other things I could write about but like the title says - quick catch up. I'll leave you with a few pictures.