Visit from the Liang Girls

During the last week of July, Craig’s sister Laura and her three daughters (Kaley- 12, Kennadi-11 and McKenzie – 11) came to visit from Los Angeles. Laura stayed a few days and then left the girls with Nana and Papa for another week. Several of those days also included our three. Janice is a testament to taking care of yourself; she took on 6 girls like it wasn’t a big deal. One of the games that the girls all played was to set-up a store in the basement. They used the screen of some electric game as a cash register and opened a book up and ran a pretend credit card down the middle to place a sale. I was impressed by their imaginations but afraid of their knowledge of credit cards! Janice would pretend to be a shopper. Once she had made her purchases she would go upstairs and change outfits and pretend to be a new shopper at the store. Her imagination was just as strong as the grandchildren’s!

The Liang girls also spent some time with us. They spent the night at our house one night. They played games and slept in the family room (sleep is a relative term here.) We took them bowling one day and swimming another. We all had fun. Kaley was VERY patient with Rachael who adored being with Kaley.

Memorial Day Weekend

We tried to make Memorial Day weekend a weekend balanced between fun and work but it was primarily about soccer. We had five games over three days – spread out all over the place. As you can see from the team photos, Craig not only is the assistant coach for Grace’s team but this season he was also the assistant for Rachael’s team. Craig says it was more like herding cats rather than coaching, but he helped.






Rachael is #4 in green.

This is my favorite - it really shows how they play "soccer" at four years of age. What you can't tell is Rachael's tongue is out - Newman gene.

Hannah is #9 in blue.

Grace is #10 in purple.

After the games on Saturday we decided on the spur of the moment to go see a Legend’s baseball game (our minor league team.) That morning I had seen in the newspaper that the game was at home and there would be fireworks at the end of the game. Soccer games on Saturday were at 1:30, 3:00 and 5:00. The baseball game started at 7:00 and the soccer fields were on the same side of town as the baseball field. Hannah loves fireworks so we decided after Grace’s game to go see the Legends. The girls were dirty but not old enough to care. There really isn’t a bad seat at this facility so last minute tickets were still good. We had a great time. All I had with me at the baseball game was my camera phone. Hannah insisted I take pictures of the fireworks. I have included a few even though they aren’t very good. On Sunday we had two more soccer games and on Monday the entire family cleaned the garage. I should have taken pictures of the girls working – especially Rachael sweeping the floor. Now it is the most organized room in the house. So far the girls are mostly keeping it up – hopefully my theory of, “if you have a stake in it you will take better care of it,” is working. If only I could get that theory to work in their bedrooms!

The girls enjoyed the silly sprinkler over the weekend. I can't explain the goggles.