Growing Up and Moving On

It was about time we got another letter home from day care. R is moving up again, from her current Preschool classroom to a Pre-Kindergarten classroom that she'll be in until she starts kindergarten next year.

It's also very exciting because she's moving up with all but two of her current classmates, and her current teacher is also moving into the new classroom with the group.

Anyway, as part of their discussions about getting bigger and growing up and moving into new classrooms, the children apparently decided to talk about what they wanted to be when they grow up.

Girl: a teacher
Girl: a doctor to fix kids and animals
Boy: a policeman
Girl: a fireman
Boy: animal helper
Girl: a mother
Girl: a princess
Boy: a basketball player
Boy: a scientist

Can you guess which of these is R's?

R's Chocolate Bar Cake

I'm having a neighbor over who just adopted the sweetest, cutest, tiniest little baby -- they got word that they had been chosen to bring him home and dropped everything and went up to the hospital for his birth and then lived in a hotel for a week until they could officially, officially bring him home. Just a few weeks ago, the 30-day waiting period, during which the birth mother could still change her mind, ended, and he became legally theirs.

Anyway, she's coming over tomorrow. I made my mom's amazing streusel coffee cake to serve when she visits and R helped me (recipe at end of post, for those who are interested).

R is such a good helper. She knows how to mix and stir and clean up messes and she's just really great to work with in the kitchen.

After we were finished making the cake she wanted to make another cake for her friends. I told her no, we didn't have all the ingredients.

She insisted, "But Mommy, we only need three nuts!"

I said, "Only three nuts?"

And then she recited the following recipe for "Chocolate Bar Cake." I share it with you all here.

R's Chocolate Bar Cake
3 nuts
1 scoop of sugar
2 scoops of cream
3 chocolate bars
3 scoops baking powder
2 scoops popcorn

Directions:
1. Chop the nuts.
2. Mix everything together.
3. Cook for 50 minutes.


Grandma's Awesome Streusel-Filled Coffee Cake
3/4 C sugar
1/4 C margarine
1 egg
1/2 C milk
1 1/2 C flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease square 9x9 pan. Mix sugar, margarine, and egg together. Stir in milk. Blend dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add to wet mixture. Spread half the mixture in the pan. Sprinkle in half the streusel mixture (below). Add remaining batter and sprinkle remaining streusel on top. Bake 25-35 minutes.

Streusel mixture:
Mix together 1/2 C brown sugar, firmly packed
2 T flour
2 t cinnamon
2 T butter, melted
1/2 C chopped nuts

New Photo Wall

After getting nice prints made of our pictures from our San Diego trip, I really wanted to coordinate our photo displays and make them more cohesive. I consolidated photos from our living room, bedroom, plus our new photos and here's what I came up with. I didn't buy any new frames, but just worked with frames I already had kicking around, and I actually think the mismatched look works well (except for the one light green frame, which I will eventually spray-paint black, I think).

Here's a closer view of the pictures on the wall. There's a diagonal row of family photos going through the middle, and the far left has pictures of me and J from our wedding and Surf and Cali's wedding, and then it moves into pictures of R over time and at the top of the diagonal on the right side are pictures of RUS. I'm so happy with it and love walking past it every day!

Two Girl Cousins and One Boy Cousin

We got together with J's family this past weekend and one of the things that is VERY different about seeing J's family is that there is a girl cousin on his side of the family! Little Frog and R are 8 months apart and the absolute best of friends whenever they get together. And of course, not to be left out, RUS, who always wants to do everything R does, had no problem keeping up with the two girls. Here are some of my favorite shots from the weekend.

We took the kids to a nearby park with some great playground equipment, including a bunch of butterfly bushes and a flower garden and lots of music-making playground toys.



Later in the day, we hung out at JW and C's house and had fun playing on Little Frog's backyard playset with one of J's best friends from high school. We had such a relaxing, fun visit with everyone, and it got even better when Big D and Aunt T came by late in the evening.
And of course, one of the very best things about going to someone else's house--especially someone elses that have kids!--is discovering all the toys they have! Here are RUS, R, and Little Frog wreaking havoc in Little Frog's room. I have to tell you that RUS's favorite thing in Little Frog's bedroom was the Ariel vanity and mirror. He is the cutest thing when it comes to wanting hair accessories in his hair. And once he discovered Little Frog's battery-operated hand-held fan it was all over. He didn't want to play with anything else. (You see him holding it in the group shot above).

Anyway, sorry the pictures are all blurry. It's hard to get clear, crisp iPhone pictures of constantly-moving targets.
Heck, I even find it hard to get clear, crisp pictures with an iPhone when the targets are standing perfectly still and smiling! But this picture is still awfully cute, isn't it??
Every day R would ask us, "Am I sleeping over tonight?" and we would tell her, "Yes, we're sleeping over for TWO nights!" or "Yes, we're sleeping over tonight but we're going to go home tomorrow." She then announced several times to Little Frog, "I'm sleeping over for ONE MORE NIGHT but then I'm going home tomorrow."

The day we left, we had plans to visit Great-Grammie and Aunt L (more on that in another post!) but in order to get some outdoors activity we decided to head over to Valley Falls and do a little trail-walking. It was such a perfect, beautiful day. I'm so thankful we managed to fit that in because it was one of the highlights of the weekend, just enjoying the weather and showing the kids all kinds of things. J skipped some stones at the lake. I tried to skip a few stones too and failed miserably although I did make some interesting ripples. R was brave and slipped down a steep incline to get near the lake. RUS just loved being outside!

Happy Birthday Li'l T!!

Li'l T is THREE today!!!! Happy birthday, big guy!!!! Here are a few birthday wishes!

Playing Catch-Up

I'm updating some old posts with new pictures and posting a lot of old pictures that I never got around to blogging . . . so be prepared to scroll back a bit, or just click on the links below.

Posts that have been updated

• "Princess Tea Party," May 2011

New posts that have been backdated

• "A Castle!" May 2011
• "The Sprinkler Ball!" June 2011
• "40th Anniversary Photo Shoot in San Diego," July 2011
• "Philadelphia Zoo With Friends," July 2011
• "Bedtime Stories," July 2011
• "Reason #4,723 that we love Philadelphia," July 2011
• "Swim Lessons 2011," July 2011

Posts I'm still working on getting up, so stay tuned!

• "Big Girl Bike!!!" June 2011
• "R's 4th Birthday Party," June 2011

R develops her photography skills at GiGi and PopPop's House

We went to Connecticut this weekend to visit J's side of the family and had an AMAZING time. The first thing we did was head straight to GiGi and PopPop's house, where we had takeout lunch from Paul's. We just hung out and relaxed--RUS enjoyed picking up all of GiGi's delicate lighthouse decorations while we continuously told him "no, don't touch that!" and tried to distract him with plastic dinosaurs and duplo blocks. Too bad he's too smart for that kind of foolery.

Then we went outside to let the kids just run around. Well, outside, all RUS wanted to do was run into PopPop's shed, which is full of power tools and other lovely things that almost-two-year-olds cannot play with. We finally tried to corral the kids into a photo session. Only, R wanted to take the pictures. Here's her first attempt--it's actually really good, isn't it???

Here's her second attempt. Still! Not too bad!
Then I took the camera away and took a few pictures myself, including the one at the top of this post and this lovely one of GiGi, R, and PopPop making silly faces.

Interactive Stories Online

I just discovered this site--Storyline Online. I haven't introduced it to the kids yet but it looks really cool--various children's books read aloud by screen actor's guild members.

Daycare Carnival

The other day the kids' daycare had their annual summer carnival. We went and had a GREAT time. They had set up THREE bounce houses (YIPPEE!) and had various carnival-esque games that we didn't take pictures of, and R got her face painted. Here are the pictures I did get.

The kids bouncing in the bouncy castle (R's favorite!)
RUS using the digger in the sandbox. I just adore this picture.
At the bottom of the slide!
Climbing up for another round!
Face painting!

"This Picture Has a Story"

R was sitting at her art table and found this picture she drew sometime last week. She pulled it out, looked at it intently, and announced, "Mommy, mommy, this picture has a story!"

"It does?! Will you tell it to me? Can I write it down?"

"Yes!"

She and I ran together to the art table. I picked up paper and crayon and proceeded to transcribe the following story, based on the picture above, which, yes, does have a grease stain on it.

Title: "Growing Flower Sun Goes Down"
By: R

Once upon a time a biiiiiiig blob came down and a flower grew. And little fishies showed up and saw the blob and the fishies kept swimming and looking. The flower grew higher and higher and higher. And the hill started to grow. And the sun came out. And the sun went down. The End.

Pirates in the Morning

One morning before day care R dug out a pirate patch she received as a birthday party favor and J helped R make one for RUS. Arrrr!!!

Dutch Wonderland 2011

On a whim, J and I decided to take the kids to Dutch Wonderland this morning. It was a great time, especially because R was even more into the rides than she was last year. They had some new ones, including this one where you lay down on your stomach to ride. It was like pretending we were SuperGirls.
Here's our family photo, complete with J's hand standing in for my face.
And then the kids wanted to be the grownups!
J and RUS riding the train. This is a great way to start off the park adventure because you drive through and see a lot of the rides as you're riding. RUS, surprisingly, was not all that into the train until after we started moving. He seemed a little unsure of many of the rides--he needed some time to warm up to them, really.
After we'd been at the park for several hours--including watching one of the diving shows, "The Frog Prince" complete with three diving frogs who save the day--RUS finally rode some rides he got really excited about. The pandas and the bulldozers were his favorites, judging from his reaction to them.
I was impressed R was brave enough to ride this ride by herself. The frogs actually bounce quite high! And here's the other jumping frog. She wanted me to ride it with her, but only one adult per ride. If we had waited for me to ride with her we'd have had to wait through three other adults whose children really wanted them to ride with them--and I wasn't feeling it, so I convinced her I would stand and cheer her along on the sidelines.

This is why I love asking RUS to blow on stuff

He always makes this face and it cracks me up every single time.

A Lovely Saturday

J had an all-day work event that he needed our car for, so I had the kids at home to myself. It was the most lovely day. Here's what we did:

We played in the backyard pool. (Unfortunately, in a fit of absent-minded photo deleting, I accidentally deleted the two pictures I took of RUS in the little pink baby pool. Oops :( )
We colored on and played inside the awesome cardboard house that JW and C sent R for her 3rd birthday--I hope it makes it through at least one more summer!
RUS napped, and R and I played three board games--Hello Kitty Bingo, Dora Memory, and a Zoo Animals Match-Up game.

Then R and I made S'mores Cups while RUS ate graham crackers.
The S'mores Cups were actually a trial run-- R's daycare class is doing a 2-week unit on "camping" and I saw this recipe online and thought they'd be perfect to bring in as a little treat for the kids. R loves them! I do, too. YUM!!

Here's a closer look at them. Basically it's a graham cracker base with a Hershey bar rectangle on top, then 1/2 a marshmallow and then once they are cooled, you dip them in more Hershey's chocolate. Did I already say YUM? Here's the recipe.It was so lovely!

Dreaming

J told me this morning that last night R knocked on our bedroom door at 2:30 a.m., saying, "I have to tell you something." Turns out she had a dream:

I was on the beach with Grampie. Then Mommy and Daddy came too. And then a whale came and swept us all away. After telling about the dream she lay there, falling back asleep, and asked, "Did that happen?"

Then after she got up this morning, she talked about a different dream. We were in our bathing suits. We were all there at the beach, and then a shark came and ate us up.

J was quick to reassure her that that had not, in fact, happened.

Love and Marriage

I used to be really really really great about keeping photo albums. I had album after album with just about every picture I'd ever taken, many of them lovingly labeled with locations and dates and people and even comments about what was happening in the pictures. Then I got really lazy with that and stopped labeling but still putting pictures in albums. Then came digital photos, and for awhile I was great about ordering pictures online and organizing them. But now? I don't print any pictures, like, EVER. The blog books I make are pretty much our only photo albums.

Anyway, long story short, I have two large photo boxes chock full of random photos. And I do mean random, because when my house burned down in graduate school a bunch of my albums got wet and the photos destroyed. So I went through them and salvaged what I could, but I never really put things back in albums. And when we moved away from Texas, I spent one afternoon going through a whole lot of old albums tossing pictures I didn't want or need and keeping only the best ones, just stuffing them in a box. There are all kinds of pictures in there, from childhood photos to pictures of me and my friends going out in college to pictures of big family moments and get-togethers.

But anyway, all of that is really just a very long-winded way of saying, I have a lot of pictures just sitting in a box. I finally decided to put them in albums again, so that I could actually look at them and show to the kids. I bought some cheap albums and--with no organization whatsoever--just started putting pictures in albums. It's been QUITE a trip down memory lane.

A lot of stuff has happened. There have been a few weddings in there. Including Surf and Cali's wedding, from which I have several really nice prints. R saw them and we spent a bit of time talking about why I was wearing a long brown dress and what was going on. We explained. Pointed out a few other pictures.

R listened carefully. Looked very intently at the pictures. And then announced that she wanted Grammie and me to be her bridesmaids. She's going to marry RUS.