Art Camp

CJ started art camp this morning. The theme is Animals of South America. Mama was told there are lots of frogs there and today CJ put together this pop out frog card, complete with a red tongue. She was pretty proud of herself.

Mama's favorite part is that the camp is just across the street so no commute this week.

Mater Update

The sun has been out for a few days now and the tomatoes we planted are almost 4 rungs high on the cages:

We even spotted one green tomato out there:

Wilson's Open

The sun alone might be enough to make us smile, but a visit to Wilson Pool with two of her cousins, Uncle P, Grandma and Mama and Daddy ended CJ's fun birthday party weekend. We hope to make it back there many times over the summer.

Sparkles

Here are CJ and Grandma hard at work putting rhinestones on the dress Grandma made CJ for her birthday.

Hey Soul Sister

Fancy CJ

Maybe she's read too many Fancy Nancy books. Somehow CJ got the idea of getting ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry on top to celebrate her birthday party. So after dinner we found a local, homemade ice cream shop that served up such a sundae. The bright blue ice cream is cotton candy.

Cousin Fun

CJ was super excited that her cousins were able to make it for her birthday party. Afterwards we walked over to the local park for some water play, sliding and climbing fun.

The Music Party

CJ had a great birthday party. She wore her new twirl dress and we headed out to a local music school where family and friends joined us. The kids got flashing guitar necklaces and made kazoos until the show started. There were lots of songs and instruments and music games before we had pizza. Then CJ and some of her friends took a turn singing at the microphone. CJ sang "Hey Soul Sister" by Train. She needed a little help with the words, but stuck it out for the whole song. We had a musical instrument exchange and enjoyed Wacky Cake cupcakes with whipped cream frosting thanks to Mama's new cream whipper. Yum.

Best Friends

When the sun is out in Portland (notice a theme to our posts this week?), people go out. And eat outside. With CJ's cousins in town, we tried to think of a place with good food (and beer) that would also give the kids some room to move. We ended up at Laughing Planet. What's not to like about good beer, smoothies and dinosaurs to play with (even pink ones!).

CJ titled this post herself. She wishes her cousins lived closer so they could play together more often.

Spray Park Girl

With a sunny afternoon showing up after T-ball camp, CJ decided to put on her suit and take her purple bike for a ride to the spray park. Lots of fun!

The Big Day, Part II

We went home for cupcakes:

Opened presents (legos and a tambourine),

and gave the pups a quick hug before bed:

The Big Day, Part I

After a busy morning of T-ball and playing at the park,

we stopped to grab a special cupcake

(she literally checked every one in the shop to find the one with the most sprinkles!),

ran a quick party errand,

went home to change clothes,

built a lego "flower girl" (see below - also note the disco ball necklace she fell in love with):

she helped wrap her present (note the interesting use of ribbon pieces):

we met Daddy for a star show

(which met with many "oh, it's so beautiful" comments)

and then stepped out for a quick dinner at a new place:

Batter Up

CJ's starting T-ball camp today. It's for 5-7 year olds, so she just squeaked in.

I Don't Want to Be a Baby Anymore!

So says CJ as she turns 5! Last night she said she never wanted her pizza cut up any more and this morning she was upset about having to sit in a car seat (can't help you there, honey). And today she went off to T-ball camp on her own. She is getting so big.

Happy Father's Day!

A pretty quiet day around here. We tried to let Daddy sleep in a little and then gave him our gifts, including this photo book of CJ pictures. Our usual Sunday run, a coffee, an open house, some work around the house and Hawaiian food. Hope it was a good day, Daddy.

Graduation Day

What to wear? The ball gown of course (and because of the weather she had to wear long sleeves - at least the rain held off for the ceremony!). We brought a plant for each teacher and CJ drew them each a picture. Rather than signing her name, it was her idea to print a picture of herself for each of them and we put them on the back of her drawings. Turned out pretty cute. We enjoyed pizza and ice cream and the few children that graduated walked across a little bridge and received a handmade necklace with a heart on it. Inside was a rose quartz heart to remind the graduates that everyone back at the preschool still loves them.

Giddy Up

One of CJ's friends (who we have known from a Moms group since shortly after the girls were born) had a horseback riding party. Luckily I got the first shot of CJ riding the horse (the real horse) because she never wanted to get back on it. And it was the little pony, not the tall horse she could have ridden. She said she felt too wobbly and now that we look back at the pictures she does look like she was slipping to one side of the saddle. Regardless, she found 3 toy bouncing ponies in the other room and spent a ton of time bouncing on them before it was time for cake.

Squeak

This little mouse is glad Daddy's home.

It Works

We don't have a popcorn popper. Mama was looking for one on the computer the other day and came across this brown bag microwave recipe. So today after CJ's dance recital we picked up some pop corn and gave it a shot. It worked fine and the time was fine in our microwave. A little oil on the bottom when it was done, but not bad. A nice snack for CJ's lunch tomorrow.

The Performance

Here's a peek at CJ's performance:

Sleeping Beauty

Today was the performance for CJ's Sleeping Beauty ballet class. It didn't seem quite as organized as last term's Swan Lake, but CJ had fun - especially with one of her schoolmates in the class.

A Parade

One of our traditions has been going to this local parade each year. Today's weather wasn't looking so good and we had to squeeze it in between school and dance class, but we made it for a short and amazingly dry few minutes. She looks pretty happy about it, doesn't she? The lovely face paint is courtesy of school.

CJ Burrito

She loves having her picture taken!

Take A Close Look

Granted, this is hard to see in a small picture online, but CJ has done some work here. If you look, you'll see she listed each letter (A to D) and then copied the phrase. Some of them are hard to follow with the arrow and the right-to-left and bottom-to-top writing, but she even went so far as marking through the original lines as far as she had written herself.

The Calendar

CJ's in love with the calendar. She's taken the family one and written on every day. She loves having challenges (like staying in bed all night) so she can get up the next morning and put stickers on the calendar. She's even drawing happy faces and yes when she succeeds and sad faces and no when she doesn't (sometimes she still gives herself a sticker). She's taken a piece of paper and made her own calendar next to ours.

Today she came out of the office with the big news. It's 15 days til her birthday. Boy, she is good at this counting stuff.

Future Babysitter

CJ was smart enough to ask to hold her littlest cousin before we headed out. Gave us a great photo opportunity.

Happy Birthday Cousin C

We headed up to Seattle for a quick visit to say Happy Birthday to Cousin C. CJ loved seeing the fish Cousin O caught and playing with her cousins. Cousin C loved her first taste of chocolate and finished a whole cupcake. Thanks to Uncle P for sharing some of his yummy homebrew.

Happy Birthday Grandpa

Sorry we weren't able to be there with you.

Nuts

CJ is not a nut fan. Once she asked Mama for a pistachio, but for the most part she can do without nuts unless they are in peanut butter or maybe chocolate covered. Then Mama came across this brownie recipe and CJ didn't seem to mind the nuts in it.

Ok, ours probably weren't so "healthy", but they were interesting. We didn't have walnuts so we used almonds. And no cacao, so we used cocoa. They were a little crumbly, but definitely give you a little chocolate fix.