Seaside

At least once a year, starting a few years ago, our family goes on vacation to the beach at a place called Seaside. Once Grandma and Grandpa came with us, this time Poppie is coming. Dada rents out this little house from one of his friends at work. It's really fun to go there, and I feel like us kids get a lot more freedom because we are allowed to ride our bikes on the street and do the family's shopping at this little store close enough for us to walk to! We also have memories there, like, once I wanted to start a slug club, because at Seaside banana slugs are everywhere! Seaside's also the place where we found out Mama was pregnant with Tuff, and where Opal and Berg learned how to ride their bikes!
At Seaside, it is important that we all know how to ride a bike (except for the two littlest's, who get to ride in a bike trailer), because once a day we all pedal to town where Dada buys us each a one dollar ice cream cone at this cute little candy shop. The shop is famous for it's 170 flavors of taffy, but they also have tons of flavors of ice cream and a wheel you can spin to win a free taffy or some other big candy. Another tradition at Seaside is getting sick. And it's always either me or Dada, or that one time it was Mama because she was pregnant. When Grandma and Grandpa came with us, I was the one that got sick. Grandpa lost Opal when they were bike riding and I wanted to go look for her so badly, but I wasn't allowed to, and was stuck laying on the couch. On Friday we are going to go to Seaside again, with Poppie like I said earlier. The house there has three bedrooms, a kitchen/dining room and a living room, and is nice and cozy, so I don't know where Poppie will sleep yet. Normally there is a boy's room, a girl's room and a Mama/Dada room, but I don't know what there will be this time.

P.S: I forgot to mention that we also go to a Goodwill where we are each allowed to pick out a five dollar or less toy to play with while we are there.

Sphero

Just the day after Easter, we got a sphero. A sphero is a little robot ball that can roll in water and on land. It can do cool jumps and stuff too, and it comes with two ramps. Eben is obsessed with it, though then again he is obsessed with everything electronic related. He is actually the one who talked us ( all of his siblings) into getting it. You see, in our family, if you really want something, you have to petition Dada for it. It always helps when we use fancy words, and start with a title for Dada, like,''Dear loving, caring, handsome Dada,'' because, .... I don't know why. Anyways, this time when we petitioned him for the sphero, he agreed that if we payed for all of it, and were completely good for two weeks, he would let us get one. The being completely good for two weeks part was hard, and I think it took us five weeks to do it because everytime one of us just groaned because we didn't want to do something, the whole two weeks reset. We finally got through it because Dada took away some days from our weeks when we did jobs, like cutting off six feet of ivy on all of the trees in the front lawn. When we finally went to Barns and Nobel's to get our sphero, Eben was so excited he threw away the receipt ( And we're talking about a $130 item!), and had to go back in and get it. Tuffy and Eben still really like it, but I think that I have gotten board of it. It should last a while longer ( the people that invented it dropped sphero from an adult's waist height thirty times to test it's durability), so I'll probably get interested in it again. Eben would reccomend getting one, and I probably would if I was asked. P.S. We named our sphero ''Dave".

This Resurrection Sunday...

Just a little bit ago, on Resurrection Sunday,

All of us got on our clothes, and then got to go and play!

Mama took our Easter pictures and little man got cold,

We bundled him in a blanket and we went inside ( to home). 

We went to church (Coal's first appearance), 

And then went home and found our Easter baskets! 

We had an Easter egg hunt, that was fun,

 Then the silver egg was found, by Eben's friend, Ian.

(The prize for the egg was a giant chocolate bunny, 

And when Mama awarded it, we laughed, it looked so funny!)

This Resurrection Sunday, or Easter as it's called,

Was a lot, really, truly, fun, all in all.

Opal Poem

Opal is sweet, Opal is kind.

Opal is my sister, so she is mine.

Cause' once upon a time...

Opal was born, in the birthing inn.

In the purple room, in the bathtub...

 BOOM!

There was Opal, sitting right there,

Mama was happy, the receptionist was scared!

 (The receptionist and Dada were the only others there.)

Well, now it's eight years later, and cute Opie is now grown,

By that I mean she's older, because she still lives in our home.
My Opal, you're my sister. I love you, you are mine.

You should stay here til' you're married... but that shouldn't be for a time.