Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Our big 5 year-old girl!

Jell has been looking forward to turning 5 for about a year now. We've been hearing about it in relation to all sorts of things, "Maybe those pants will fit me when I'm 5," "Maybe I'll like strawberries when I turn 5," "When do I get to be 5?" "I'll be big enough to climb that fence when I'm 5," and especially, the most important - "I get to go to kindergarten when I'm 5!" The morning of her birthday, she came into our bedroom to ask if it was okay for her to get up now since it was 8 o'clock. I replied, "guess what?" "What?" "You're 5 now!" She gasped and her jaw dropped to the floor, "REALLY? I'm 5 now?" (As if we hadn't been counting down everyday for weeks!) She laughed, and turned to her sis, "Meri, guess what?! I'm 5 now!!!" So although it's a week late, and was a tad overshadowed by bed rest and wedding preparations, and lacking a friend party, here's Jelly's birthday!
And the favorite present (and it's not even too loud and obnoxious. It's pretty cute actually - the box has color-coded notes to follow to play songs like "twinkle twinkle"):Free birthday dessert at Applebee's where we celebrated with Grandma and Grandpa Berne:
Happy Birthday Red! (Really can't believe she's 5 - can't believe I'm old enough to have a 5 year-old!!) We love you and the exuberance/intensity/curiosity/laughter/joy you bring to life!!

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Summer livin'

I got oddly ambitious when I saw a yummy-looking recipe and so we made our own homemade fudgesicles. I wasn't really sure why since you can buy a box for a couple of bucks but the girls enjoyed making them in our sweaty, air-conditionless kitchen, and we all enjoyed eating them in our slightly-less-sweaty-because-of-the-breeze driveway. They were yummy! And ended up all over faces and strategically-placed aprons. By the way, anyone have any tips on getting homemade popsicles out of their containers without just pulling the stick out?
And here we have our themeless homemade water park. Who needs six flags? We have an $8 pool from Fred Meyers, a slide from a garage sale and our sprinkler!Ta Dah!And on one of those recent not-so-nice summer days in Portland, I took the girlies to Omsi. We pass Omsi everytime we roll into town and they've been begging me to bring them for forever. So here they are finally, in seventh-heaven:Future city-designing architects with distinctly different styles:They'd been quiet for awhile so I went to see what they were actually up to. Just having a princess tea-party complete with make-overs in their homemade salon:
Love the creativity they have all on their own!