Riley's 4th birthday

Riley, our neighbor, had her 4th birthday today at Chuck E. Cheese. Riley is in between Sophia and Lilly, but she's closer to Sophia's age. I think the three of them will be really good friends when they are older, but honestly, I think Riley will be better friends with Lilly because Sophia thinks Riley acts like a baby.

Both Lilly and Sophia were invited to the party. Lilly was a bit overwhelmed and wanted me to hold her while we were in the crowd playing games. When it was time to eat pizza and have cake she sat contently at the table all by herself. She's such a good eater. Sophia, on the other hand, cried because her pizza was too hot! Then I had to bribe her to eat her pizza if she wanted to have cake.

Haley (and Carlie) were also invited which was great for Sophia because she had a buddy to pal around with all afternoon. Look how cute Lilly and Carlie look...

Sophia must have rode the carousel at least 5 five times. She also like to ride the racing horse and the mechanical car. She prefers the rides over the games.

Adrianna's Birthday Party

I took Sophia to Adrianna's birthday party this afternoon. Adrianna was in Sophia's class last year and this year Mrs. Peeler, their teacher, says they are attached at the hip.

Sophia was incredibly shy when we got there and hid behind me for the first 1/2 hour. Once she warmed up she had a great time. It was a beach party. The girls colored beach balls, created beach scenes with stickers and then ate pizza and cupcakes. When it was time to open presents Adrianna let each girl open one for her. Sophia opened a "speaker" for a guitar game.

Down by the Bay

Sophia's Reading books at school are from a series called Down by the Bay. On occasion, she plays "Down by the Bay" with Lilly. They'll put on their bathing suit and pretend that Pippen, the dog from the books, is playing with them. I think Sophia probably acts out some of the scenarios from the book and Lilly tags along for the ride.

Earlier this week Lilly came running into the kitchen begging for me to help her get her swimming suit on. Sophia was already wearing hers and jumping off the stairs. In her mind she was jumping off the dock into the bay. They even had Lilly's swim floaties on for a while.

In the video there is a point when Sophia instructs Lilly to hold her hand up and jump. You'll notice that Sophia only does this one or two times...but Lilly continues to do it until the end. It cracks me up.

Dorothy

The girls have been painting every day this week.

Yesterday Sophia asked me to paint Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I'm NOT an artist. That gene completely skipped me altogether, but my brother is quite talented.

Sophia gave me her little Dorothy figurine to use as a model for my painting. After I finished she decided to use my painting as her inspiration. I haven't decided yet if she got the artist gene!?

More cute pictures from our day at the CAC

Here's a great picture of Sophia before we left for the CAC for the Family Fun Day.

And here's a great one of Lilly sitting on a bench at the CAC.

And here's a close up of Lilly. So cute.

And, finally, here's a good one of Sophia after the event...basically refusing to sit on the bench with her sister.

CAC - Contemporary Art Center

This wasn't the first time we went to the Family Fun Fest at the CAC, but it was definitely the easiest.  Sophia is finally old enough that she can actually at least "seem" interested in the exhibits.  The main exhibit was awesome.  The artist created humans and human torsos and heads that looked completely real. Sophia's favorite was "the naked guy" as she called him. Click this and you can see him. I could seriously see moles and skin pores on his stretched belly. It really was unreal!

We also ate a few delicious sweets. Even though the event is held every other month this was the first time that it was catered. Sophia ate a brownie and Lilly ate an oatmeal cookie (well, she only had 1 bite) and Sophia and I shared the rest. The girls also each had a piece of chocolate cake with white icing, but there weren't any forks left so they used their hands and enjoyed every last finger licking.

We made tons of collages and the girls also got to create a water painting on a stand up easel. We have a double-sided easel so I pulled it out and they've been painting beautiful pictures all week long.

A springy kind of day

The weather has been extremely awesome the last few days. After getting snow last weekend who would have thought that it would be in the 70s this weekend? We went for a walk to celebrate the season - we even took Sadie with us. She was thrilled!

Lilly insisted on bringing her big red "outside" ball, but I had to carry it for her. I had to carry her a bit on the way home too. She's lucky she's still light enough for me to carry her.

We walked to the entrance to our Neighborhood and played around in the big open space. We played kick the ball, hide and seek, freeze tag, walk the wall, and find the biggest pine cone. Sophia won!

I took a lot of pictures, but you won't be able to see them. Now that Will put the Linux operating system on my computer, I cannot run any of the photo uploaders on my computer.  It's really frustrating and must be addressed as soon as he gets a break in his schedule. I've already warned him about it. 

Lilly - post popsicle

Exercise

Sophia is addicted to rolling on my exercise ball. She literally rolls herself forward and back all day long. In fact, she carries it from room to room with her so she can continue her "exercise".

And I simply adore this dress on her. It's so cute.

Fundraiser Update

We hosted over 25 kids and their parents on Saturday at the church for a fun day of decorating Valentines Day cookies and cards. We had a lot of cookies left over so my gals got to work icing and decorating the remaining cookies and we sold them on Sunday after the 8:30 and 11:00 services.

We raised $439.25 with proceeds from the event and the cookie sales (which netted just over $200.00 alone)going to the Ronald McDonald House in Norfolk. Actually, I went to BJs Wholesale Club on Sunday and stocked up on many many many things on their wish list. My friend, Jen, and her two girls helped us deliver the food on Monday.

Kate, the taller girl, is age 6 with dark hair
Caroline is a 6 weeks younger than Sophia, blonde

Oh yeah! This is totally off-topic, but Lilly got sick in the car on the way home. She literally barfed up every single strawberry that she ate for her snack. I basically threw away the white shirt that she was wearing.  Bummer.  It was the matching LOVE shirt that she has on in the picture to the left. It was her Valentine's Day shirt.  Oh well, she did get a lot of wear out of it.

Neither Sophia or Lilly would sit with Ronald, but look at how adorable Caroline looks sitting with him.

Play date last week

Last week we had a play date with Charlotte and Norah. Charlotte will be 5 in April, Sophia in May. Norah will be 3 in June, Lilly in May...so they are both exactly the right age to be great friends with the girls. Their mom is Rebekah. She's Lilly's Kindermusic teacher and she was Sophia's piano teacher for a few months. Sophia no longer taking lessons. She never wanted to practice and I didn't want it to become a battle so we're putting lessons on hold for a while.

Anyway, since Rebekah teaches piano every afternoon she wasn't able to come with the girls. Instead their babysitter dropped them off and took their baby brother to run errands. The girls all had a blast. They were so good too. I will definitely have them over again.

The week before we had a play date with Sophia's friend from school and the house was trashed when they left. They didn't follow the critical rule of play dates. *Always help clean up before you leave!* The mom didn't even offer. Oh well. Sophia likes Elizabeth so we'll probably have them over again.

Her blue period is over

Today, after Sophia created two magnificent works of finger paint art, she announced - I AM DONE WITH MY BLUE PERIOD. I AM DONE WITH MY BLUE ABSTRACT PERIOD. And then she painted a green piece.

Here's Lilly's masterpiece. I'm not sure if it's clear in the small picture, but she made handprints all over it. Love it!

Valentine's Day Party

Tomorrow is the annual Valentine's Day Party fund raiser I coordinate for my group of young moms at church. This year we're sponsoring The Ronald McDonald House of Norfolk. It's a nice cause. The "House" is a home away from home for families who would otherwise have to commute daily and not have the option of staying with their child during his/hers hospital stay. It's run completely on donations.

Our Party is a cookie decorating and card making extravaganza. Kids wills be winning goodies all throughout the day too while they play a few games - in the hopes that in return their parents will buy tickets for 5 Valentine's Day Baskets (of all sorts) filled with V-day candy, crafts, stickers, etc... The catch is - they're attractive and kids will want them, I think. So with raffels sale and a child entry fee of $5.00 (adults are free), we should be able to provide some immediate assistance for items on the Ronald McDonald wishlist. We're going to decorate and deliver all the left over cookies on Monday the 14th.

I've got 30 kids registered for the event. Last year we had about 17 registered and we actually got close to hosting 35 kids, if memory serves me right. So this year I have enough goodies bags & prizes for 44 kids. If more do end up showing up (and I highly doubt it) then I do happen to have a plan b.

The event is from 10 - 12. I plan on arriving at 8 to lug in all the stuff from my car and get a little settled before all my friends get there to help set up at 9. It's always a really fun morning...and Will and the girls are looking forward to all the left over candy they'll be able to eat when it's all over.

Going to Kindermusik

All week the girls have been wearing "small gestures" of Valentine's Day. On some days it was as simple as wearing pink. Other times their shirts had hearts on them, or read LOVE or something like that.

I have really cute outfits for Lilly starting today through Monday for her to be really festive for this very lovable holiday.

Check out how adorable she looks this morning before going to Kindermusik. I bribed her to look at the camera in exchange for a popsicle. It was worth it (and they are sugar free).

psicle.

More snow

How ironic is this?

I'm not kidding. This morning when I was brushing Sophia's hair before school I noticed a piece that was flipping out on the right side. It was about 4 inches long. Not curly and not on the surface, but down below. I was able to comb it in. I wondered to myself what happened to it? I thought maybe a rubber hair band broke it off.

So I dropped her off at school. Came home. Emptied the garbage in the first floor bathroom and the last thing to fall into the larger garbage was a chunk of hair. Ah ha! Now it makes sense. She definitely never told or showed me that she cut her hair...which leads me to believe that she's hiding it from me. That little stinker!

We'll be having a serious talk about this. It cannot happen again for 2 reasons:
1) We're growing her hair right now
2) She's going to be in Rob and Christina's wedding in September and I want to have options on how to fix it.

On the other hand, I now have another chunk of hair to save to her to see when she's older. I predict that her hair will only get darker. Mine definitely did...and boy to I try to preserve my youth. :-) I had highlights put in this weekend. When I got home I told Will to put on his sunglasses before he looked at my hair. It's really light and bright. I do really like it, but when it starts to grow in it's going to look so stark.

Anyway, you gotta love Sophia!

Dress

Sophia loves to wear this dress. Personally, I can't stand it. I keep putting it into her costume bin so she'll only wear it around the house, but she constantly wants to wear it out of the house. It's made out of lycra or something like that so it must be comfortable.

Oh well...

The Super Steelers lost the Superbowl, but the Redskins and the Cowboys didn't even go...so....

Better luck next year, Steelers.

Moving right along

I'm so proud of Sophia!

She just started her third reader book at school today and earlier this week she got her first math book. They don't send it home until she's completed the entire book so I'm anxious to eventually see what she's up to.

I'm pretty sure that right now they are reviewing shapes (and perfecting how to draw each one) and colors, but will move onto number progression (ie: 1-100) after that. WOW!

Some of the words that she can read are:
the
bay
down
by
fish
go
is
and let's not forget welcome!

Here are some videos of Sophia's tap class on Tuesday:

The best of friends

These two photos were taken this morning at dance class. It's Sophia and Haley...best friends...at least they are for the time being. They have a love/hate relationship. They're either totally in love with each other or completely mad at each other...for some insanely stupid reason. It's usually because the other one talks to or just looks at another one of their friends.