In a few weeks, we will be taking a family vacation to Disneyland. Kaitlyn doesn't really understand what that means. Emily is very excited, but can't get the time or distance concepts down. Patrick is trying to act cool about the whole thing, which tends to come off as bored.
Why do teenagers (or tweenagers) have to act like things are no big deal? They think that this is acting cool. I don't get it. Granted, Patrick has been to Disneyland or Disneyworld four times, China twice, Washington DC twice, etc. Vacationing is kind of old hat to him. Still, I miss my little 5 year old son. The one that yelled "Yahoooo" as the airplane was accelerating for take-off. People burst out laughing 10 rows away.
As for Emily's time concept, Kirsten has helped with that. She worked with Emily and Kaitlyn (mostly Emily) to create a nice paper chain for everyday until we get to go to Disneyland. It is pretty cute and has stickers of Disney characters on every link. Emily has the concept that we get to go when the chain is gone, but she doesn't really understand why we can only remove link at a time.
We tried to remove one link every night before bed, but kept forgetting in the madness of trying to put the kids down. Now we remove one every morning. It works much better and it is nice to see the chain getting shorter, even for us old folks.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Kaitlyn is now 2
According to our documentation from the Orphanage, Kaitlyn's Birthday is assumed to be Sept 15th. Since the 15th was on a Friday, we had a party on the 17th with family members. Since the party was after nap, it took Kaitlyn a little while to get warmed up, but the presents really got her out of her shell. Here are a few pictures from that day.
Kaitlyn really got into opening the presents.
Of course, she got lots of help from her big sister.
Here we can see her two of her favorite presents. In the background is the doll that she absolutely must go to bed with each night. She is holding the pens from one present. She loves to draw.
Kaitlyn really got into opening the presents.
Of course, she got lots of help from her big sister.
Here we can see her two of her favorite presents. In the background is the doll that she absolutely must go to bed with each night. She is holding the pens from one present. She loves to draw.Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
Another camping experience
We went camping again over the last weekend. This was just a two night affair at a campground only 45 minutes from our home. It was a lot of fun and created a lot of material for the blog. I will post some pictures in couple of days. Anyway on the semi-interesting stuff.
We had to set up the tent-trailer after dark. This is because we couldn't find our two kittens before leaving the house on Friday. We thought they had gotten out somehow, but it turned out that they had figured out how to get up into our gas furnace. I am going to have to take care of that before winter.
Setting up wasn't too bad. I learned something. The electrical system doesn't work until the sink is raised into place. Which is interesting, because we needed light to get it into place. Kind of a Catch-22 situation. Anyway, we will know next time and not spend 15 minutes working on the electrical system first.
Patrick found a rather large pole in the woods. He named it 'Doom' and used it like a pretend weapon (bazooka, javelin, spear, etc.). Shortly after finding it, a bug crawled out and stung him on the thumb. Quite funny (and ironical) now, but a little worrisome at the time. 'Doom' turned out to be lot of fun. My mother created a 'Hide Doom' game. It was annoying to Patrick, but pretty entertaining to the rest of us.
We went on family walk on Saturday. We had basically gotten around to the otherside of the campground, to the hiking trail, when something stung or bit Emily. It obviously hurt, but she was mostly a trooper about it (once the bandaid was on). You can always tell when she is really hurt, she acts pretty tough. When it is fairly minor, she acts like the world is ending.
Anyway, back to the hike. After a brief return to camp for first aid, we went back out on the path. A quite a ways out there, Emily needed to go potty. I tried to help her squat down, etc, but I apparently still need work with girls, because she wet all over the back of her pants. Boys are so much easier outdoors! We basically turned around and went back to camp at that point.
On Sunday, we cleaned up and got ready to come home, which was a fiasco. It started with the trailer. One of the four corners on the popup roof got stuck. In the process of trying to get it down, Kirsten got a nasty little cut (more like a chunk taken out) on her finger. In my attempts to get it down, I eventually broke the lift for that corner. My father and I had to hold that corner up and slowly lower it while Kirsten lowered the other three.
We finally got it down and then Kaitlyn was poopy, again. The poor girl had a case of the runs. Of course, we had just used the last diaper out of the diaper bag a few minutes earlier and you know where the extra diapers were! We were able to lift the top about 12 inches and Patrick (after about 10 minutes of work) was able to crawl all the way to the back of the trailer to retrieve three diapers. Whew, crisis averted.
We got the top back down and were ready to go when Kirsten said, "Eric, do you have the car keys?" Kirsten had put them in her jacket pocket. Then later we had packed all of the coats in the trailer! So here we are lifting the stupid popup roof again. We were getting pretty good at it by now, so it only took a couple of minutes to find the jackets and retrieve the car keys.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, but it sure was nice to get home.
We had to set up the tent-trailer after dark. This is because we couldn't find our two kittens before leaving the house on Friday. We thought they had gotten out somehow, but it turned out that they had figured out how to get up into our gas furnace. I am going to have to take care of that before winter.
Setting up wasn't too bad. I learned something. The electrical system doesn't work until the sink is raised into place. Which is interesting, because we needed light to get it into place. Kind of a Catch-22 situation. Anyway, we will know next time and not spend 15 minutes working on the electrical system first.
Patrick found a rather large pole in the woods. He named it 'Doom' and used it like a pretend weapon (bazooka, javelin, spear, etc.). Shortly after finding it, a bug crawled out and stung him on the thumb. Quite funny (and ironical) now, but a little worrisome at the time. 'Doom' turned out to be lot of fun. My mother created a 'Hide Doom' game. It was annoying to Patrick, but pretty entertaining to the rest of us.
We went on family walk on Saturday. We had basically gotten around to the otherside of the campground, to the hiking trail, when something stung or bit Emily. It obviously hurt, but she was mostly a trooper about it (once the bandaid was on). You can always tell when she is really hurt, she acts pretty tough. When it is fairly minor, she acts like the world is ending.
Anyway, back to the hike. After a brief return to camp for first aid, we went back out on the path. A quite a ways out there, Emily needed to go potty. I tried to help her squat down, etc, but I apparently still need work with girls, because she wet all over the back of her pants. Boys are so much easier outdoors! We basically turned around and went back to camp at that point.
On Sunday, we cleaned up and got ready to come home, which was a fiasco. It started with the trailer. One of the four corners on the popup roof got stuck. In the process of trying to get it down, Kirsten got a nasty little cut (more like a chunk taken out) on her finger. In my attempts to get it down, I eventually broke the lift for that corner. My father and I had to hold that corner up and slowly lower it while Kirsten lowered the other three.
We finally got it down and then Kaitlyn was poopy, again. The poor girl had a case of the runs. Of course, we had just used the last diaper out of the diaper bag a few minutes earlier and you know where the extra diapers were! We were able to lift the top about 12 inches and Patrick (after about 10 minutes of work) was able to crawl all the way to the back of the trailer to retrieve three diapers. Whew, crisis averted.
We got the top back down and were ready to go when Kirsten said, "Eric, do you have the car keys?" Kirsten had put them in her jacket pocket. Then later we had packed all of the coats in the trailer! So here we are lifting the stupid popup roof again. We were getting pretty good at it by now, so it only took a couple of minutes to find the jackets and retrieve the car keys.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, but it sure was nice to get home.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Everything is fine here
There isn't too much going on in the Murphy-Thursam household recently. We are just enjoying the last lazy days of summer. We went to a 'Fun Center' on Sunday. It was the company picnic for Kirsten's work. It was fun. First, we played some mini-golf. Emily only lasted one hole. Kaitlyn always had a hole-in-one. She carried her ball with her always and then would drop it in the hole and take it back out. Emily and I rode the Go Karts together. She kept saying, "Go super fast, Daddy!"
Later, we had a good time playing some of the fun arcade games with the girls. We won (and were given) enough tickets to get two of everything, except suckers. This caused a little bit of a problem, until Patrick used some of his tickets to get a sucker for the other girl. Then on the way home, both girls took a couple of licks from their suckers and were done. Go Figure!
Here are a couple of cute pictures of the girls:
Emily in my working hat
Kaitlyn loves to where dress-up high heels
Later, we had a good time playing some of the fun arcade games with the girls. We won (and were given) enough tickets to get two of everything, except suckers. This caused a little bit of a problem, until Patrick used some of his tickets to get a sucker for the other girl. Then on the way home, both girls took a couple of licks from their suckers and were done. Go Figure!
Here are a couple of cute pictures of the girls:
Emily in my working hat
Kaitlyn loves to where dress-up high heels
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