The Things We Do

Isn't Gracen the cutest box of Ting you've ever seen?  Ting is a Caribbean drink that's similar to Grapefruit pop but muuuuuuuch better.  I brought my groceries home in one of their boxes and thought it would make the perfect place to sit Gracen in until she is completely steady sitting up by herself.  It's a great way to prevent her from tipping over and bonking her head on our hard tile floors.  I threw in a 10 lb dumbell to steady her and, voila, a homemade Bumbo.

Gracen just always has to be upright, watching the action!  The toys on the exercauser are wonderful, but all the action going on beyond the exersaucer is SO much better!

Gracen loves to play peek-a-boo.  I know it's a little early but she's been doing it for a couple of months now and it is so funny.  When I leave her on the bed, I come back and find her like this:

Face hidden by a corner of the blanket.  Then she'll pull it on and off again and again, thinking it's hilarious if someone calls "boo!" to her each time.  Cute, cute girly!

Yesterday we made bubble pipes out of plastic cups, straws, dish detergent and water.  Here's my tutorial: Just cut a hole in the cup halfway down and insert a straw.  Fill with equal parts dish soap and water and get ready for minutes and minutes of entertainment.  Warning: do not do with kids young enough to confuse blowing out of the straw with sucking up from a straw.  The first time we did this a couple of months ago, Eli threw up 4 times after sucking up a small amount of bubble solution!

There are two things that get dumped on my floor EVERYDAY.  1. The bucket of cars. 2. The bucket of train tracks.

One of our favorite things to do with cars is to cut up construction paper squares and make a color-coded "parking lot."  I read the idea in a book.  I get all my playtime ideas from books - Gracen has been getting up consistently at 5:30 and I am WAY too tired for originality!

Ooo, except for when boxes come home from the grocery store.  The more we get, the more creative we get.  This airplane comes complete with moveable propeller, steering wheel and "shifter thing" that makes the airplane go up and down.  Come on, you know the lever-thing I'm talking about!

We have also been making trips down to the gas station.  Several, actually, since the one and only gas station on the island has been without gas a few times in the last week.  But you never know that until you drive all the way down there.  This is a couple of the switchbacks we maneuver to get down there:

CRAZY, eh?!?

Also, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this but I have become obsessed with the clouds since we've been here.  They just look so cool and it took me awhile to figure out that its because we're the same level as the clouds!!  They seem to float low over the ocean and since our island is so small and so steep and since our house is so high up on that small, steep island, we are often in the clouds.  When we're not, they're floating by pretty parallel to our line of sight.  Doesn't it look cool to be looking at clouds from the side instead of from the bottom?!

No pictures of me because I'm the woman behind the camera.  No pictures of Jaron because he's pulling 14 hour days at the school EVERY DAY.  When we started this adventure, we assumed it'd be similar to chiropractic school but it is SO NOT!  It is hard stuff!!!  But "they" keep telling us it'll pay off some day.  Thanks for listening to my rant!