Lilly's 3rd birthday party

Everyone had a blast at Lilly's birthday party this morning. There were a total of 12 kids including Lilly and Sophia.

Each kid colored a strawberry shortcake color page and painted a strawberry magnet. Then we played pin the stem on the strawberry. The best part was when they all got to feed bok choy to the farm chickens and then pick strawberries.

After we picked berries we sang and let Lilly blow out her candles (well, I helped a bit because I thought she was getting a little too close to the flames). The kids ate cupcakes and red Jello jigglers and the adults ate strawberry pretzel salad.

The strawberry fields were actually closed to the public today because there weren't very many strawberries left to actually pick. The girls were all able to fill their baskets, but we all had to play "hide and seek" to find the best berries.

Lilly opened her presents at home after we ate lunch. She wanted to have pizza so we picked one up on the way. She got some really nice gifts. Sophia insisted she play with all of them too! She got a build your own ice cream sundae/banana split. It was a big hit. Sophia claimed her Vet Pet Barbie. She also got a bathing suit, a set of princess pjs, a straberry shortcake movie, beach sand toys, and a few arts and crafts gifts. She absolutely loves all of it.

Here's a picture of the group (minus 3 kids). One had to leave early, one was using the restroom and the other didn't want to be in a picture.

Friday is Lilly's real birthday and we'll be celebrating with her Kindermusik class. She'll also be taking snack to school for her classmates on Wednesday...which happens to be her very last day at Kids of Grace.

Strawberry picking

Tomorrow is Lilly's birthday party. I'm pretty sure she thinks it's her actual birthday, although it's not until Friday the 27th.

She's been telling everyone we run into that she's going strawberry picking for her birthday,

We're all set...except I'm afraid the balloons (which I picked up at noon today) will be deflated by tomorrow. I just found out that they only last for 8 hours! Oops. may be making a speedy trip to Party City tomorrow morning. Good thing they open at 8:30.

I've got the camera packed and made sure the SD card is actually in it this time.

Lilly told Will she's really excited to eat cupcakes and open presents.

FUN FUN!!!

Going to school

I took these this morning as we were headed out for school. I thought they both looked really cute today.

Lilly only has two days of school left - Monday and Wednesday next week! Unreal. I'm not sure how we're going to fill our mornings on Mondays and Wednesdays after next week, but I hope I can find something fun for us do while Sophia finishes out the school year.

Lilly learned lots of songs this year at Kids of Grace, but did she learn her colors? No. Did she learn how to use scissors? No. Did she learn her letters? No. I won't say it was a waste of time or money because she really enjoyed going to school (until today when she cried as I dropped her off) and making friends. She really enjoys her time with her friends and each night at dinner she tells us what each of them did that day. It's cute.

She's a pro at counting! And the girl has some serious rhythm. She can tear up the dance floor with her moves.

Sophia's last day is Wed, June 15. Sophia's had an exceptional year. She has completed reader books 1 -4 and is about to finish reader 5 any day. Within days she'll also be finishing up her first math workbook. Beach Manor follows a structured curriculum. The follows a strirst academic thing they do is Phonics book 1. When they have completed that book they are allowed to begin their first reader book. They do not get their first math book until reader 3 (I think) and they don't start on their second phonics book until they successfully complete reader 4.

One of Sophia's best friends this year is a little girl named Elizabeth. They are both in Mrs. Peeler's class and they also take Spanish together. I was talking to Elizabeth's mom last week after spring parent/teacher conferences and she told me that Elizabeth just started her first reader. . . . I steered clear of the sharing with her Sophia's progress this year, but I'm so proud of her.

Birthday Bike

Nana and Poppy got Sophia a new bike for her birthday. I picked it up from the store after lunch and Will put it together this afternoon. After the rain let up, she went for a cruise down the street on her Huffy 18" "Puppy Love" bike...with removable training wheels.

Sophia and I went to almost every single store that sold bikes to look for the perfect one for her! We checked out Target, Walmart, K-Mart, Dick's, Sports Authority and Toys R Us. I had her test drive a dozen before we finally settled on the blue puppy bike. It's got everything she wanted: a bell, streamers on the handles, and front carry pack. This one also came with it's very own water bottle (a bonus that none of the other ones had). It also has decorative paw print inserts that you can put in the wheel spokes. Cute.

She loves it...and it fits her really well.

When we originally started looking I put her on a 16" and a 20" to test for the appropriate size. The 20" was just too big so we settled on the 16" for her. I had no idea that we could even get an 18" bike until we discovered this bike at Toys R Us! It's a better fit than the 16" and she'll be able to ride it longer (another bonus)!



Bike riding was fun.....until she realized there were puddles to jump in!

Happy Birthday to You

Happy 5th Birthday, Sophia!

Sophia turned 5 today... well, in exactly 1 hour she'll turn 5. She was born at 11:27 PM on May 14th (Mother's Day 2006).

We had a great day and a super fun butterfly party. I'm sad to report that I didn't have a SD card in my camera so I don't have ANY pictures. Unbelievable!

There were a total of 15 girls at the party including Sophia and Lilly. The girls decorated their plain white goodies bags with tons of different types of art supplies (markers, stickers, glue and glitter, fake flowers and pom poms). Then they filled the bags with all of their crafts, candy, and goodies we gave out. First we made foam butterfly magnets - easy easy.

Then we used markers and glitter glue to decorate butterfly sun catcher wind chimes. They were so cute! The girls got really creative (and messy). After that we played a version of pin the tail on the donkey, but instead I gave each girl a butterfly and had them "decorate the flower field". I used construction paper to cut out different shapes and sizes of flowers/stems/leaves and pasted them onto a white poster board. It was cute to see the final product.

I could tell they were getting antsy...so we headed outdoors to catch some butterflies. Will spent a good twenty minutes strategically scattering butterflies in the field beside the library and in a matter of 90 seconds all the butterflies had been collected. I made nets for each girl using a plastic sandwich bag and a wooden skewer. I cut out enough mini butterflies for each girl to collect 6. While we were outside we "broke" open the pinata. I found a butterfly pull-string pinata which actually failed to open after all of the strings had been pulled off...so Will broke it open and left a trail of candy across the grass.

Then we headed back indoors to ice, decorate and eat giant home-made butterfly cookies. The girls also traded in their butterflies and nets for 6 fun pieces of candy and a swirly drinking straw. I don't know what I was thinking, but I also had a cupcake for each girl. You would have thought they would have been filled up with cookie, candy and juice boxes, but they all ate their cupcake too! Well, Lilly didn't eat hers and I watched Adrianna throw hers away and we found another one that was bald of icing, but for the most part the girls consumed them. (smile).

Normally I wouldn't have opted to open presents, but we had time to kill before most of the parents returned (about half of the moms didn't stay for the party). The girls swarmed around Sophia like bees on honey to watch her open presents. It was hard for us to keep the cards and the gifts paired together, but we succeeded! Sophia received some wonderful presents. Some of her favorites included: a fairy princess Barbie doll & book, Strawberry Shortcake cafe, a Rapunzel doll & Tag Reader book, a Zhu Zhu pet and a dance stage, and a Fuzzoodles craft kit. She also got a bunch of other princess stuff and a really cute bathing suit. A very lucky girl with super nice friends!

Sophia took these pictures

Sophia's class photo

This is Sophia's 4-year old preschool class, minus a boy named Charlie.

Mrs. Peeler, on the left, lives right down the street for us. Mrs. Rodgers is on the right. Both are AMAZING teachers! They gave Sophia an extra large Hershey's chocolate bar for her birthday. How "sweet" was that?

For the last week Sophia has been telling us that she has a boyfriend. I take that back. She's has two! Grayson is her favorite. He's pictured here -sitting at the bottom of the slide with her great friend, Adrianna. I think he's the cutest boy in her class...she's got great taste! Her other boyfriend is Aaron. He's in her Spanish class and not in her regular class so I'm not quite sure who he is yet.

Birthday cupcakes

These are the cupcakes that we're serving at Sophia's butterfly birthday party tomorrow. The butterflies on top are actually plastic rings for the girls to wear.

Spring school photos

Sophia's spring photos were taken on the pony again this year. I thought she had the perfect outfit! Lilly looks adorable, I just wish she would have smiled. She didn't smile for her fall photo either.

The last photo is Lilly's class. (Ms. Brenda is the teacher on the left, Ms. Tina is on the right). Top row left-right (Maddie, Quinn, Evan, Gracie) Bottom Row left-right (Hakon, Lilly, Sophia, Rhona).

Sophia's class picture should be here in another week or two.

Putting on the shows

Since I wasn't feeling good on Friday night and Will was working and the girls wanted to play I asked them if they could put on a few shows for me to share with Nana and Grancy.... The ran upstairs to change their outfits and came down ready to perform.

Grab your popcorn. There are a lot of videos.

This a mother's day song Sophia learned at school:



Twinkle Twinkle Little Star



At first Sophia wants Lilly to join her for the song she made up called We'll Be Friends To The End. Lilly doesn't join in, but when Sophia finishes Lilly jumps up for begin her turn. She's a little camera shy at first. She asks Sophia to join her, but when Sophia immediately begins singing one of her favorite songs, It's a Hard Knock Life, Lilly gets mad. This one cracks me up.



Sophia performing It's a Hard Knock Life



A song Lilly learned at school




This is Lilly singing a random song she made up about a cowboy



Classic sibling rivalry - this one cracks me up too.




Both girls singing We'll Be Friends To The End (Sophia's made up song)




This is a ridiculous song that Sophia came home from school with....Who knows! (I didn't catch the very first part of it, but it's all about mimicking. IE: Thumbs up, elbows in, knees together, tongue out, etc...)

Mother's Day

I had a great Mother's Day. Will let me sleep all afternoon while he entertained the girls. Lilly and I have both been sick for several days with nasty head colds/sinus infections so it was wonderful to have a break. He also gave them both a bath tonight! Another blessing.

I had to teach children's church this morning and Sophia doesn't like to miss cherub choir practice....here's a picture of the girls on the way to church this morning. Sophia is wearing the fancy dress that Nana got her for her birthday. She LOVES it...and the fact that someone at church called her a princess made her love it even more. Side note: We had a bad morning on Friday because she wanted to wear her new dress to school. (It's definitely NOT a school dress!) She demanded to wear it. I said no. She insisted she wear it. I said no a little louder. She mouthed off and told me that she was definitely going to wear it and I had to put her into a time out.

Lilly also got a fancy dress for her birthday, but it's a little long. It will fit perfect next year! When the package arrived on Thursday, they immediately begged me to try on their new dresses and then didn't want to take them off. Too cute.

Birthday party

We went to a 3rd birthday party yesterday for Lilly's friend, Summer. She lives down the street from us. There are two older kids in the family, but they are both older than Sophia. The girls enjoyed jumping on their trampoline and playing in the backyard. Here they are as we were about to walk out the door.

Teacher appreciation week

It's teacher appreciation week so we made oatmeal raisin cookies and molasses cookies on Sunday afternoon for Sophia and Lilly's teachers. They each have two teachers. That's a lot of cookies! (Will also asked for a batch so I made extra oatmeal raisin for us to eat).

I also got Sophia's teachers each a $5 card at Starbucks to include with the cookies.

One of Lilly's teachers, Ms. Brenda, shared hers with the class at snack time on Monday.

One of Sophia's teachers, Mrs. Rodgers, mailed her a thank you note...and we all know how much Sophia loves to get mail! It's not hard to imagine how excited Sophia was when she saw the envelope.

Another beach day

After dance class on Tuesday we went to the beach with Riley, Haley and Carlie for a few hours.
The girls had an awesome time digging in the sand and they kept finding sand crickets which they saved until it was time to leave. (YUCK).

Our celebrity

Last night I was browsing through my copy of the free Tidewater Parent magazine and on page three I saw Sophia's picture!

For the past 2 summers she has participated in a princess camp at her old dance studio. I recognized her right away! I visited the dance studio's website today and wanted to share how they are advertising their princess camp this year. Go to this page: Princess Camp. You'll see the image of several girls at the top of the page. She's the one dressed like Snow White (blue top, yellow skirt, pink crown) in the middle of the shot. If you scroll further down the page you will see another shot of her crawling out from underneath a parachute - she's wearing green in this picture.

This morning I showed Sophia the picture in the magazine and she beamed! She seriously thinks she's a celebrity. Not an hour later (and without me knowing), she had set up shop outside on the sidewalk. She put on a fancy pink gown, carried out a chair, magazines from the bathroom, and a notepad & pen. She was officially selling her autograph! She was so frustrated with me when I told her to come in the house because I couldn't be out there with her.

Then to top it off....this afternoon while we were bike shopping at Toys R Us she asked me if she could have a toy. I told her no and reminded her that I'm not buying her any more toys. I told her now that she's almost 5 that she's going to have a earn her own money by helping out around the house and saving up an allowance if she wants to buy toys. Her response - THAT'S WHAT I WAS TRYING TO DO THIS MORNING.

Humph.

May is the birthday month!

Both girls have birthdays this month!

Sophia will turn FIVE on Saturday, May 14 and Lilly will be THREE on Friday, May 27th! It really is unreal that they are growing up so fast.

I've got their birthday parties lined up.

Sophia's party is going to be on her actual birthday - from 1-3 at the library (in the meeting room). She wanted to have an art party and invite ALL of her friends. If everyone shows up there will be 16 girls (including Sophia and Lilly) enjoying the activities. We're having a butterfly themed party. We'll be doing 3 or 4 butterfly crafts - including decorating butterfly shaped cookies and painting butterfly suncatcher windchimes. I also found a pull string butterly pinata and plastic butterfly rings to place on top of each cupcake. We'll play pin the butterfly on the flower and a few other games.

Lilly is going to have her party a week later (a few days before her actual birthday because her b'day falls on Friday of Memorial Day weekend). Lilly's party is going to be at 10:30 on the 21st. We're going to do a repeat of Sophia's 3rd b'day party. It's going to be at a strawberry patch and we're going to have a Strawberry Shortcake theme...and Lilly LOVES Strawberry Shortcake. The Easter bunny actually brought her a Strawberry Shortcake movie in her basket this year. We'll be inviting all of Lilly's classmates and a few of her other friends. All the kids will get a basket to pick as many strawberries as they can. Lilly has the cutest blue dress with big red strawberries all over it. I can't wait to see her in it.

Ladybug Whisperer

Let's just call Sophia the Ladybug Whisperer!

While we were at the beach this morning Sophia found 5 or 6 ladybugs as soon as we arrived at the playground. She was able to pick one up and it crawled around her arm for a long time before it flew away. When we left the playground and headed for our spot on the sand she found another one and was able to pick it up too.

THEN....when we got home I saw her out on the deck trying to pick something up. Pretty soon she came into the house with another ladybug! We put it in her plastic bug catcher toy and she gave it a stick and a leaf from our backyard tree. We named it Sunshine and she coddled it all afternoon. Eventually she lost it - inside the house. Maybe we'll find it. Maybe we won't, but at least it's only a ladybug.

A day at the beach

I decided it would be fun to go to the beach today, so we threw on our bathing suits, packed a lunch and headed out to Sandbridge for some fun in the sun. I didn't realize until we got there that it was only about 68 degrees and extremely windy!

The girls played on the playground for a while before we walked all of our gear down to the water for our picnic lunch.

Sophia loves to ride the swings. Trust me, she could do it for hours! Even though she has finally learned how to swing by herself, she still prefers to be pushed. Lilly tried the slides a few times and ran around chasing Will alot.

As soon as we hit the sand Sophia ran for the waves and jumped right in. Lilly cuddled up in a beach towel and began munching on whatever she could get her hands on.

The water was really cold, but once I got used to it, it wasn't too bad. I don't understand how Sophia can stand it, but I guess she doesn't notice the cold because she's having so much fun. She didn't want to leave when it was time to go. I have a feeling that we'll be spending lots of time at the beach this summer.

Slides

Easter Sunday

Sophia woke up extra early and searched for her Easter basket for a while before I secretly sent her in the right direction. It was hidden behind a chair and I swear she looked EVERYWHERE except there. She even looked under the pillows ON the chair.

Lilly couldn't find her basket even though it was in plain sight so, of course, Sophia helped her and then proceeded to rifle through it for her too. I kept reminding Sophia that it was Lilly's Easter basket and not hers.


I took the girls to Sunday school and church. We plucked a few flowers from the yard to stick on the cross. Lilly didn't want to get in the photo, but doesn't Sophia simply look adorable?

After church and lunch Will and I took the girls to Hunt Club Farm (1/2 a mile down the road) for their Easter egg hunt, petting zoo, playgrounds, bounce houses and hay ride. Lilly loved petting the goats and sheep while Sophia would have preferred to play in the bounce houses all day. Elmo made an appearance and while the girls insisted that we go and see him, they both immediately became shy when Will approached him.


Take a look at the great time we had

Last 2 days of spring break

After spending a low key day at home on Friday to rest up from our trip to Busch Gardens, we found a free family Art Palooza to attend on Saturday afternoon. It was held at our new performance art center at Town Center. The girls and I spent two hours exploring our creative sides. We made face masks, lunch sack hand puppets, crowns and spoon instruments; decorated miniature cupcakes; played some instruments; and then stood in line (for a long time) to get their faces painted and to request a few balloon animals. Sophia turned herself into a dog. Lilly got flowers painted on her arm and then immediately tried to wipe them off so they smeared quite a bit, but they were really pretty while they lasted.

It was a great way to spend the afternoon! I love this picture of Lilly.

Busch Gardens

We took the girls to Busch Gardens on Thursday (day 6 of spring break)! They absolutely loved it. We couldn't have asked for better weather - it was in the high 60s all day. We arrived at 10 am - exactly when the park opened and didn't leave until 7. Her's a picture of the girls right before we entered the park.

Once we finally got into the park and got our bearings, Sophia and Will rode a roller coaster together while Lilly and I explored the jungle gym a few times in the Sesame Street area of the park.

Speaking of Sesame Street, we took a break and ate lunch with Elmo, Big Bird, Ernie, Bert and Cookie Monster and watched their indoor show. Neither of the girls wanted the characters to get anywhere near them! At the end of lunch when the red Elmo cupcakes and the blue Cookie Monster cupcakes appeared, Sophia let Cookie Monster give her a high five. Elmo walked by our table at one point and picked up Sophia's empty drink and pretended to take a sip, but other than that, we didn't have any interaction with the characters.

The girls rode almost all of the rides that were appropriate for their age. They really enjoyed the boat ride because the boats were actually floating. Sophia rode the swings two times in a row. Will went on the dragon egg Ferris wheel with them and we all rode on the carousel and train together. I really liked watching the girls ride the bumper cars. We also saw a great show of "pet shenanigans". We topped the day off with an overnight stay at a hotel in Williamsburg. All day long, Sophia kept asking when we would leave the park and go to the hotel because she wanted to see her "bedroom". When we arrived at the hotel that night, they jumped on the bed and shrieked that they wanted to live in the hotel. We woke up early and drove home on Friday morning and had a low key day at home.

Take a look at a few of their favorite rides:

Spring Break - Day 5

Today we went to the Botanical Garden again, but with different friends. Kate (dark hair & age 6) and Caroline (blonde & 4) are Sophia and Lilly's friends from church and I'm really good friends with their mom, Jen. Will even gets along great with their dad, Jeff.

On Wednesday mornings the Garden has storytime for kids at 10. The four girls sat through all the stories and then played in the water and in the play houses until 1:30. We packed it up for the day and on our way out stopped to take a peek at the bald eagle that lives in one of the tall trees. It has eaglets. I'm not sure how many. We didn't see the eaglets or their nest through the telescope, but we did see an enormous eagle. She turned his head in the direction of the telescope and Sophia was convinced that the eagle was looking at her.

It was 88 degrees out today. Another perfect day to spend time outside. I can't wait for tomorrow.