Now that Campbell, bringing up the rear, really understands what is going on during the holiday it was really fun to watch the kids on Christmas morning. They get so excited and enjoy the day so much. With the amount that they get in gifts, it literally took the whole morning to get through all of the stuff with breakfast squeezed in in between some opening sessions.

Here is some video of the beginning of the morning where they are exploring their Santa gifts. Campbell running in and interestingly bypassing the gifts to see if the cookies had been eaten. Mara calling his attention back to what really matters. And all the way to Mara closing by saying how she is surprised by Santa.

Xmas2009 Video

16.1 MB / Time 6:39

Yesterday was a beautiful day down here in NC. We got a chance to go to the playground as a result yesterday morning and the kids had a blast getting outside. We went to a new playground, for us anyways, and it was huge. We went to City Lake Park that we heard about from the Sowell’s. Unfortunately the park was “closed” for the season which meant some of the attractions were closed, but the playground was plenty of entertainment. Here are a couple of videos of the kids having fun.

Zip Video

0.97 MB / Time 0:17

Climbing Video

2.8 MB / Time 0:52

You might need to use Quicktime to view these.

It has been a little while since we last checked in with Mara and her reading progress since seeing her off on her new adventure back in March. She did an amazing job getting through those BOB books and we were having some trouble finding the next step to take her on. The same series of books were no longer on sale at Costco, so we moved on to some other first reader books that we could find or just kept repeating what she already had read. Then the summer came and we enrolled Mara in a “summer camp” for reading put on through the UNC school system. She really enjoyed her first school-like setting and it was a great course to help parents to understand how to teach reading to their kids. It was one day a week for five weeks with some home lessons to do as well. It sounds more involved than it was, but the intent was to teach parents to teach their kids.

This year Mara will be attending Pre-K down the street. Her new teacher Miss Alicia sent a little introductory postcard to all of her students so this was one of her first personal pieces of mail. We saved it for her to read herself.

Here is a video of her reading the card. She had read it once to Mom earlier in the day. Mom indicated that she did even better the first time. Here she was a little distracted I think (with the camera on) and brother also comes by to interrupt. But she still does pretty good! There are some words in there I wouldn’t think she would get.

Postcard Video

8.5 MB / Time 3:25

One of the favorite things for the kids to do is go to the playground in the neighborhood. Its a simple one, with swings, a slide and a couple of other things. Mara has been getting more and more bold with the jungle gym. Once she wouldn’t go past the first rung, and now she has made it all the way to the top on the last couple trips to play there.

This video was taken in December. You will see that she likes spending time on the jungle gym so much she is willing to go without seeing Mr. Sprinkles, her best buddy, as well as just live on the apparatus for a few weeks. Needless to say, that did not happen, and she came down with her latest unique dismount.

MaraJungleGym Video

6.4 MB / Time 2:02

If you have trouble viewing this, it should be possible to watch it with Quicktime, which you can download for free here. It was recorded on my mobile phone.

Mara was getting crafty again last week. Grandma had gotten her a purse for her birthday and had put a Michaels giftcard inside for her to go spend. Lisa took Mara over to the store the other week for her to get whatever she wanted to put on her purse.

Now, Mara liked the purse as it was, with it plain. But after they were done with it, it was quite a sight to see. And she likes it even more.

Doesn’t it look fancy?

Her favorite thing to do with it is to carry some of her smaller buddies around in it. You can see who is hiding in the purse in the second video below. (WARNING, the videos are large)

Purse1 Video

241 MB / Time 2:12

Purse2 Video

147 MB / Time 1:18

Well, little Mara’s birthday just seems to live on and on. Of course her party was two weekends ago. But on Friday, her real birthday, she got to go for a trip to the movies to see The Chipmunks. She was decked out in her birthday gear for that event. Alvin is her favorite, or “the one with the red shirt,” as she likes to call him.

Baby, I can accessorize.

Later that night she went with Mom and Dad to her favorite eatery, Red Robin. She wore her crown again, but we didn’t get any pictures. When the serving crew came by to sing to Mara and deliver her chocolate sundae, she had a great big smile on her face.

Then came Monday, and Lisa was just too kind. She got Mara a dance outfit, a ballerina dress. Mara loves it! She didn’t want to take it off for dinner that night, but we were afraid she would get it dirty. On Tuesday she put it right back on, and wore it to her dance class at the little gym.

Watch this!

And I sing too.

Here is some video of what she learned in class.

Tutu Video

52.4 MB / Time 0:29

As mentioned on her brother’s site, we have some video from Christmas this year. Although a majority of the pictures over there were taken on Christmas Eve, this video was shot on Christmas day. It isn’t indicated in the video, but the first portion has all the kids at the beginning of the morning and them opening some gifts. The next portion of the video is just Mara opening some of the rest of her gifts while the younger ones take a nap. It just took so long to get through all the gifts that the kids got this year, we spent almost the whole morning opening things. Needless to say it was difficult getting them through the morning. With every gift for Mara she wanted to open it up and play with it right away. It took some finagling to get her to move on to the next gift each time. You might even catch a sourpuss face on her every once in a while as if she doesn’t want to open the gift, because she is still thinking about the last one we wouldn’t let her play with.

This is a VERY big file. Start to download it, then walk away for a little while.

Xmas07 Video

139 MB / Time 27:53

This past Saturday marked the last day at the neighborhood pool for the Evans family. Luckily the season went a little long for us, as they decided to keep it open past the Labor Day weekend. That is the beauty of taking over ownership of the pool by the neighborhood.

I Love The Pool

Mara has come a long way this season in her abilities. She began by using swimmies for the first time, and followed that up by swimming alone without anyone touching her. She has even gotten to the point where she is willing to jump in the pool by herself with little coaxing. On Saturday she was running and jumping in. Click a picture to see more photos from the day.

Look At Me…

On a whim, we decided to use the video function on our digital camera for the first time. It didn’t turn out too bad and we were impressed. For the sake of it, here are the raw videos, no fancy editing (warning, the file sizes are a little larger than typically posted here). Oh, and in the 2nd video, that isn’t added theme music for the south. That is a couple of guys that were sitting and playing in the pool area. Nothing like a little Banjo.

Jump In The Pool 1 Video

40.8 MB / Time 0:22

Jump In The Pool 2 Video

144 MB / Time 1:21

Reading already? Well, not really. But she puts on a good show.

One of the popular books at Mara’s daycare is “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” Mara has heard it so much and the wording is simple enough that she actually can recite the whole book. She showed off this skill at the beach and we taped it to play for everyone. The fact that she rarely looks at the book is a dead give away that she is not reading it. She needs to practice her faking more. Preston tries to get in on the act too.

Brown Bear Video

11.0 MB / Time 2:18

We have been trying to get Mara acclimated to the pool this summer and teaching her little by little techniques to use to swim. You might remember that we had so far only used a life jacket like float in order to get her “swimming” by herself. A few weeks ago on the visit to Richmond we got the use of some borrowed swimmies from Grace’s cousin. Mara has her own pair, but I think Dad was thinking she might be too small or young for them. Nope, they fit her fine and she was OK for that round. They actually balanced her better than the other float.

Well this past week at the Outer Banks she took it upon herself to swim by herself using the swimmies. It got to the point that she was telling Mom to not touch her. Before we left for the beach she was a pink frog, since she liked to jump everywhere while on land. Now she was telling us she was a pink fish. Take a look at the video and see a guest appearance by Campbell and Preston.

Swimming Video

20.9 MB / Time 4:17