Summer Vacation, Part 3

At some point on our trip, the girls became obsessed with the potty. At first, they started pretending like they were using the potty. (I'm not sure why they all seemed to think that you had to hold on to the toilet paper holder like that...).

And then it was their stuffed animals. "Bear go potty." "Mo Mo go potty." Great. I'm just relieved that no stuffed animals actually got put in the toilet...

On Sunday the 3rd, we woke up to pretty steady rain. We (I) needed to get out of the house, so we went over to the mall to the Build a Bear Workshop. We had never been there before, and the girls were clearly overwhelmed. (Us adults were, too.)

Oh, the choices!

Becca chose a bear.

Julie chose a pink bear.

Emma chose an bunny rabbit. Here, she's watching the other animals being stuffed, and she's not quite sure she wants to hand the bunny over to get filled.

Becca with her newly stuffed bear.

If you're not familiar with the whole Build a Bear scam, I mean store. Next you have to choose your bear's new clothes. This took forever. And what did our three new animals all come out with? Why, cowboy boots of course. A little background: the girls just found some of the pink cowboy boots from Target that my parents bought them in the spring. They've been hiding, waiting for fall, but the girls found them and pulled them out a week or two ago, and walked around the house for half an hour saying "I have boots!"


We also walked out of there with two princess shirts (the "p" word is for a whole other post), and one pink shirt. Pink shirts and cowboy boots. Those are my ladies.

The next step in the whole process is to give your bear a name and get a birth certificate. So, we have Becca's bear, Teddy Bear, Emma's bunny named Easter Bunny (of course), and Julie's pink bear's name is Pink Nose. She calls him Pink for short.

We got lunch at the mall, and on the way out, we found this interactive panel on the floor. The girls were skeptical at first (as usual), but then loved it (as usual).

Jumpin' Julie

Next, we headed to a family picnic with some relatives from my dad's side. When my dad was little, he lived in the same neighborhood with all of his cousins, and they pretty much grew up together. I'm not good with figuring out the whole second-cousin-once-removed thing, but suffice it to say that, for my generation, our parents were brothers/sisters or cousins. Whatever that makes us. So my "cousin" Kirsten wasn't going to be able to make it to the party my parents were planning the following weekend, so we got together on the 3rd instead. We had lots of good food, celebrated my "nephew" Jeff's birthday, and even got a break in the rain for a few moments to get outside to play.

Kirsten did the girls' hair, and when they started fighting over the diaper bag, she also gave them 2 new purses. Becca has not put hers down since.

They discovered Thomas the Train and snuck the toys away from the boys for a few minutes.

Julie and Papa playing with the bubble gun.