EVERYTHING GABI!!!

As always, playing with Daddy was one of the highlights of our days together... He really is a great tickler! :) Gabi often says how crazy he is... and how she loves that!

Our first Gabi Summer outing together was to the library one evening. We sat through a presentation on the night sky (during which Jed had to take Taggert out so Gabi and I determined to each remember one thing to share with him; I remembered the term "Goldilocks Zone," which refers to the distance from a sun that is neither too hot nor too cold to support life, and Gabi remembered that if you turn your back to the mon on those nights where the moon seems way too big and look backwards through your legs, the moon will "shrink" back to its normal size) and then went outside to look through telescopes at the moon and Saturn!

...and when Jed & Tagg went outside, Tagg learned a special new skill...

Jed had a meeting at church one night, so for our girls night, Gabi and I painted our nails! Those graceful hands belong to my Gabi, and it is quite important to note that each nail has at least two different colors on it, and the colors alternate in a pattern :)

One of my favorite Gabi Summer memories this year has to be the Wand Duel! They each had a stick and, as you'll enjoy seeing in the video, they took turns casting gobbledy-gook spells at each other! Tagg has been calling any type of stick a "Cada" ever since!! (Cada, of course, being the Taggert form of "Abracadabra" :)


This video chronicles one of my favorite memories from the summer! They grabbed sticks and started casting mumbo-jumbo spells at each other! Tagg has been calling any kind of stick a "Cada" ever since! (Taggish for "abracadabra" :)
When I was a kid, Grandma Klaiss would always put soap in her hands and use it to blow big bubbles for me when I would take baths at her house. I always loved it, and now I love sharing it with my kids almost as much as they love me doing it! When Tagg wants me to blow bubbles for him, he puts his little fist up to his mouth and blows with a sweetly concerned look on his face--priceless!

Now, brace yourself--you're about to see the best darn bubble-handler in these here parts...






Gabi was the most fabulous bubble artist ever! She did quite amazing things with them!




Gabriela was so great at playing games with Taggert. She interacted with him in such fun ways!



Ditto to the last caption :)

Get ready for a random sampling of life as the Taggert: Talking on the phone (while eating... not that I do that... ;) and chillin in Gabi's hamper and wearing random hats all the time and hiding behind books... bathing in flour/helping Mommy make pizza and eating cookie dough off the beater and hugging stuffed animals and bouncing on yoga balls with Daddy... is that the life or what?!






Gabi was so awesome with that camera :) She took tons of videos and photos--this is just one of many videos she recorded of Tagg. She would grab the camera and ask him to say things for the camera or just set it up on a table and record them playing together. In this one, he's demonstrating his smile for the camera... now you know what's behind all the scowly pictures--a little dude with a great sense of humor!


We went to the library just to pick out some books, and ended up leaving with a chart for each of the kids to participate in the summer reading program! I was so excited that Gabi wanted to do it: it's always great to see your child take on a challenge--a month isn't long when most kids have at least twice that long to complete it--and the fact that we were about to depart on a roadtrip to Las Vegas made it even more serendipitous and sweet! She finished all her reading and got some fun prizes--the best of which was that Smile Buddy up there! (The one that so graciously posed for a photo shoot ;) And she continued to amaze us with her kindness by being so willing to help Tagg achieve his summer reading goals by reading to him in the car and occasionally at bedtime.

...By the way, that sweet picture in the collage below was taken to memorialize Tagg wanting Gabi to hold him all the time when she first got here :) And in case you were wondering how HOT it was the first time we went to the library, just take a look at those red faces in the bottom pictures! Yikes! ...Sometimes I do wonder if we really are in that Goldilocks Zone ;)

The creativity and energy this girl has are astounding! She is constantly coming up with fun stuff to do and ways to make normal things more interesting :)

Our libraries are awesome; the summers are filled with free exciting things to do! I'm happy to say we took advantage of it (Thanks, Grandma Kim!) and met the top two largest snakes in the world while we were at it, not to mention all the other creepy, slithery, slimy things we saw. Notice the little girl in the biggest picture above--she was trepidatious about this whole thing to begin with, but when that long, scaly predator slinked off the table towards her, she freaked out! Everybody on that couch scurried as far back as they could, and it couldn't help but make me think that we must all be a little batty to be bringing our kids right up next to a deadly animal for fun... well, luckily they stayed tame for the duration of the presentation and it turned out to be nothing but interesting and fun! Way to go, Phoenix Public Library!

Just a quick note about these guys--check out that turtle... he was born with only three legs, so this guy who took him in screwed a wheel onto his shell as a prosthetic leg! Brilliant! That turtle could cruise with the best of 'em!

Queen Gabriela... what more can I say? :) Love that girl!

We had lots of splishing and splashing going on with Gabi's summer friends! Besides having Paige over to swim one day, we four rode our various two-wheeled apparatuses (Gabi on my old razor scooter--Hollah BYU days!--Paige on hers, and I on my bike with Tagg in the rear) about a mile and a half over to Westgate to play in their fountains. We saw a bunny on the way (refer to the bottom-left-hand picture above), Tagg rode (and hugged :) a lion statue, and we just had general enjoying-the-heat fun! Good times :)

(P.S. Tagg climbed up on that chair all by himself and just sat there observing like a little old man for a while!)

Another water day was shared with Sonya! That slide was so burning hot that we had to grab the towels from the car in order for them to go down it :)

While we were in Vegas, Jed's mom gave him Star Wars Monopoly, and after we got home from the trip we played it all the time!! We all got a bit addicted to it :) There are some different rules to make this version more Star Wars-ish, and one of them involves getting multiple thousands of dollars with just a couple rolls of the dice. So... guess who took advantage of that rule? Gabi! And... guess who saved all her money so that she could keep on staring at that massive pile of cash? That's right! :)
I got a marshmallow gun from some fabulous friends for Christmas last year, and since the kids have discovered it it has become one of our favorite toys! We set up a pyramid of disposable cups and took turns knocking them down while Gabi was here, and now Tagg runs across the room to "catch" his marshmallow treats and it's so adorable!
We went on a "playground adventure" one day cuz we wanted to go to as many parks as we could, one right after the other. We drove over to a part of town we weren't familiar with, hoping to find some parks we hadn't been to before... but we could only find one! It turned out to be an awesome one though, so we had a blast! We did end up driving past a license plate with Gabriela Victoria's initials on it, which upped the excitement of the day :)
Jed introduced Gabi to the wonders of Bruce Lee, and she loved it!
We all took a bike ride together to my favorite park in our neighborhood, and on the way back home, we passed a family playing soccer in one of the retention parks, so stopped and kicked the ball around for a while!
We got our family pictures taken, and when we saw how amazing they turned out, Gabi and I wanted to earn some money to get the prints! I suggested a lemonade stand, and Gabi was so excited about it! It took a lot of preparation, but it all totally paid off! We set up our stand outside of the library and spent a couple hours meeting, hydrating and feeding people! We had regular, strawberry, and raspberry lemonades (fresh berries, even! It was stinkin DELICIOUS!), as well as cookies and brownies (the food was Gabi's idea, and people loved it!). It was a blast, and we made about $40! So, needless to say, our home is now full of gorgeous pictures of our wonderful family!! It is so awesome to look at those pictures and have such great memories of earning them together; I loved working with Gabi and cooperating to pull off what turned out to be a much bigger undertaking than either of us initially pictured :)
We had a Family Home Evening with Gabi, and it was really over-the-top fabulous! We did a "Knights" theme, and I took care of the dinner: cornish game hens and veggies that we had to eat with our hands, Medieval Times style! Jed took care of the lesson: he made a very realistic tin foil suit of armor for Gabi and, after he suited her up, he taught us about how to put on the "armor of God!" It was so enlightening and Gabi loved it! (So did Tagg... we did the lesson after Tagg went to sleep, so the next morning he had a great time trying on the suit!)

I love having Gabi here for Father's Day! We always do something memorable and fun to celebrate Jed, and this year we gave him a Christmas in June! We decorated the top piece of our Christmas tree with lights and little knicknacks that reminded us of our favorite things about the daddy of the house. We also continued the tradition of wearing our "My Dad Rocks" and "My Hubby Rocks" shirts, but we added a "DAD" tie for Taggert! We are so glad to have such an amazing husband and father to be building our family with.

Here's the poem I wrote to explain all the kooky little gifts we put under the tree and the trinkets we put on it:

The McClure Daddy's day

Only comes once a year

So we found our own way

To give him some cheer!

He lights up our home

So we lit up this tree

This morning's for the poem;

Tonight's the DVD!

He's surely not topsy

But his reading's the best!

To say he's our fav Pop-sy

Is never in jest!

He makes a great warrior

For our family's joy --

And he's not boring or

Blah. Jenga cloned a cute boy!

You love Argentine steak

And soccer (Boca!) too --

Your tie proves you're not fake,

Our ties prove we love you!

When the clouds swirl around

He runs out to look,

And with his love for ghosts he's bound

To one day get spooked!

This Daddy's the BEST!

There's no question we've found

The guy above the rest
Our fave in the whole town!

In ten years when we look back at this poem, I have a feeling it's going to seem a bit cryptic :) so here's the glossary:

The DVD: Jed wanted to share The Princess Bride, one of his classics, with Gabi. So her and I snuck to the library and checked it out. It ended up wrapped under the Father's Day tree :)

Topsy: A hilarious short story that Jed discovered; it's about an obese dude named Topsy and we love it to pieces because of the animated way in which the Daddy reads it!

Warrior: Jed really enjoys watching shows about warriors from different time periods--that was represented by a foil sword ornament made by Gabriela :)

Jenga: Jenga Fett is a character in Star Wars who was the clone-father of Boba Fett. We called Jed Jenga and Tagg Boba for a while because it was just too perfect :)

Argentina: This delightful country got props on our Father's Day when its flag served as our tree skirt. Too bad we didn't have any of that Argentine steak... Mmmm....

Your tie proves you're not fake: I made Tagg that DAD tie but needed to know how the heck to tie it so Jed souldn't find out about it until the little man came strutting out with it on, so Gabi and I asked Jed to teach us how to tie a tie. He showed us how to get the proper dimple to prove that you really are that awesome :)

Our ties prove we love you: Gabi and I made paper ties for him at the Children's Museum (there's a picture of it on this post :)

Swirly clouds: Jed loves tornadoes (yikes!) so Gabi and I made him one of those pop bottle tornadoes. It was a leaky mess but it was fun and thoughtful nonetheless!

Ghosts: Jed's fascinated with the supernatural and always wants to go ghost hunting (or at least watch the shows where someone else is doing it) so Gabi paid homage to that part of her Daddy by making kleenex ghosts of each member of our family!

We ended up at the doctor's office 3 out of the 4 weeks Gabi was here--luckily one time we were there for a well-check, but one time we had to go there because Tagg woke up with hives. :( They hives looked pretty bad, but Taggert was in a really good mood and acted like he didn't even notice them there! So we had a really fun time playing with balls, tongue depressors, flowers, and spinny chairs! Gabi was the official photographer of the event, and among other things, she posed me in each stage of bouncing a ball, which was so much fun! She was also the official videographer, and caught the clip below of Tagg galloping!














Jed and I took Gabi and Tagg to the Phoenix Children's Museum, and there were so many unique, fun things to see!

Gabi gave me a tour through her castle while we were there, and...

Tagg loved playing in the bathroom sink that was just his size (finally!), and Daddy enjoyed waiting for us taking too long in the bathroom... ;)

...But he enjoyed the homemade noserings even more! :)

Jed & I found a song that I knew how to play on the piano and that he figured out how to play on the guitar with no music or anything! (Amazing!) And we put on a little concert, during which Gabi filmed a music video--it was so cute, she zoomed in on the music at times, and on our hands or faces at times... I would post it because her taping job was so adorable, but we hadn't practiced it enough at the time to make it post-worthy ;) so you'll just have to take my word for it :)




Gabriela introduced me to Miley Cyrus this summer, and I actually really like her! She has some great songs with fabulous messages! Gabi and I decided to learn the dance Miley does to the song Hoedown Throwdown in the Hannah Montana movie, and it was a blast! :)

Gabi and I had a dance class in the pool during Taggert's naptime one day, where we made up dances and taught them to each other... Mom, Dad, and Alanna--do you remember Madame Aug's Dance Studio in the Basement Mall and me performing dances to Mariah Carey songs in front of the fireplace in the family room?! :) No wonder Gabi and I get along so well! ;)

Clockwise from the top-left:
1. I try to dedicate as much time to Gabriela as possible during the month that she's here because we're trying to make a year's worth of memories in one month, so naturally some things fall by the wayside... the organization of my closet was one of them. But luckily, Gabi loves organizing things and one day she busted out with "Why don't we clean this closet up?" Behold the result!
2. We went out to run errands one day and saw these crazy clouds that looked like cotton balls in the sky!

3. I did some garage saling and picked up some great pieces of furniture that I then listed on craigslist--the desk in the picture above was one of them, and it had so much personality! When Gabi saw it she didn't want me to sell it, so we had a "do-an-art-project-on-the-desk-with-a-tablecloth-protecting-it-just-in-case" afternoon. I think it helped soften the blow :)

4. This girl was the best helper in the kitchen--she measured and whisked (the refrain "Whisky, Whisky, Whisky!" elicited some raised eyebrows when Jed first heard it ;) and made the best pizza sauce I have ever had! (And I'm not just saying that :)

We made our yearly pilgrimage to Cabela's, where Gabi was again in charge of the camera and took a picture of literally every animal there! But I only put her favorites and my favorites in these two collages so there would be room for the adorable pictures of her and Tagg (and of course the one of me getting "scared" of the polar bear...)

Speaking of scared, there are NO quotation marks when I say I was SCARED by the animatronic dude at the bottom right of this picture... Now, I've been here before and I knew he moved and talked, but I didn't realize it was motion activated! When I walked past and he started talking to me, I almost peed my pants! :) It's the little things... ;)

I included the picture of the beaver because there was a picture somewhere where Tagg bore a striking resemblance to the little critter... but I'll have to post that later cuz I don't know where it is.

It gets harder every time to say goodbye to this amazing girl. We have made so many memories together and her qualities of thoughtfulness, flexibility, acceptance of people and intelligence make me want to be a better person. What a great package deal I got when I fell in love with Jed and got to actually MARRY him! I am consistently amazed at how much wonderful people can affect my life and make it more worth living all the time. I love you, family!!! And I'm SO glad you love me, too!