Too Cute for Words

Kristen had her 2 year old photo shoot today. She was terribly cute, and hammed it up quite nicely. The photographer had a blast with her, and only stopped when Kristen burst into tears. They were all so cute I didn't want to choose, and it turned out I didn't really have to... because of some unknown/unwritten rule at Portrait Innovations, you can only buy their $10 special once every three months. So, since I bought one last month for Caitlyn, I had to spend mucho moula for prints of three portraits. Oh, well. Now I know that I need to only get pictures once every three months!!

These three are the ones I got prints of... Grandmas get to choose which (if any, or all) they want! (Let me know...)

Daddy-Daughter Date Night

The Girl Scouts here put on a daddy-daughter night, complete with dinner (Russell said Caitlyn didn't eat much of hers because there was no KETCHUP for the chicken strips. Sigh.), a dance, and a magic show. Caitlyn had a good time (though you really can't tell in the pictures), but Russell had a migraine coming on. Probably why there's no pictures of him and Caitlyn together....

With her friends before the event...


The silly picture:


With her friend Meredith. They're not smiling because, Caitlyn said, they're tired.


And a video of them dancing.

New Look

The girls had a long weekend this week, and so we got some things that have been on the to-do list done. We went on Friday and got eyes checked; a new prescription for Megan, and Caitlyn will probably need glasses in the next year or so. And we drove around looking for a "comfy chair" for Megan's room. We found one (she's wearing her old glasses).... for FREE! Yay!!

We bought some pink sheets as a cover since it's an "ugly green", we just haven't put them on yet.

Then we went to Target to get new glasses. We weren't expecting them to come in for a week, but they called yesterday and they were in!!

Sigh.... she looks like a teenager now.... (Actually, she thinks she looks like Aunt Becca. That's a good thing.)

The Renaissance Slide Show

Make a slideshow - it's easy!

Circus, Circus!

The second grade program was yesterday. It was a lot of fun! (Alison, who didn't want to go, didn't want it to end!! And Kristen was just captivated by everything.) We got to sit on the floor in the very front, and watch Caitlyn be a ringmaster. She did a great job (and she looked good too)!

Sorry the videos are sideways... I forgot about that.
The first one's the song "Who Wants to be a Ring Master?" and Caitlyn has a solo. She's very proud of her "flat" (she worked on it hard the last week!).


This one's is of her speaking part.

It's Art Week!

Preschool's been at our house for the past two weeks, and we've been doing an art unit. It's been a lot of fun. This, however, was the kids' favorite project: diluted paint in spray bottles. Thankfully, it came off the side of the house. :)

Cider, Meet Helium

More eccentricities from our wonderful cat.

Un étagère

That's French for shelves over a toilet where we now have enough space to put everything, yay! (They pack a lot into those French words.)

Because Mom wanted to see a picture of it. :)

The Rest of the Story

Two months ago, Caitlyn entered the local PBS's writer-illustrator story contest with this story. Since nothing much came out of her experience last year, I basically forgot about it. And when the invitation came in the mail, I just threw it in the trash. Why get our hopes up?

Well, we got an odd phone call Thursday night. It was the director of the local PBS station, wanting to know if we were planning on coming to the awards ceremony on Saturday. I said that we weren't, really, and she said that we might want to re-consider (after asking if I could go to the one in Augusta on Tuesday night. Um, no... that's YM/PAD night). When I asked why, she said, "She's going to be really really happy. But you can't tell her that." So , I said that we'd come. (Then I had to come up with a reason why. I think it was "they want everyone there.")

Today, we drove down to the library, climbed the three flights of stairs to the (very small) auditorium room for the 2008 Writer-Illustrators Awards Ceremony. After much talk, they got to the awards. First, Kindergarten (awards, pictures and read three stories) then First Grade (do it all again), and then Second Grade. Caitlyn was so happy: her story won second place!


It was fun when they got to her story (which they said should have won for longest and most creative title), the person reading (it was the director) asked Caitlyn to come up and read the word bubbles. I think that was the most fun part for her -- she put a lot of expression and humor into it, and made it really funny.

Afterward, she got interviewed by the PBS people for a program they put together to air in June. (I'd say we'd tape it, but we don't get PBS on our rabbit ears...) It was a lot of fun.



(Caitlyn was very gracious, too; she called her friend Meredith afterward -- Meredith helped her come up with the idea -- and told her "Our story won second place!!" I was very proud of her.)

Alison and Puff

So, we got Grandma Fox's birthday presents for Kristen in the mail, and included in it the box was this book:
Megan and Caitlyn read/sang the book to Alison, who burst into tears at the end. She was SOOOO sad that Jackie Paper wouldn't play with Puff any more, that the poor dragon didn't have any friends. (Thankfully, the book has a last page, where there's a little girl waving to Puff, so we were able to explain that Puff made a new friend.) She eventually settled down.

The next day, however, whenever she saw the book, she'd pretend to cry and say, "It's so sad." over and over. It was all I could do to keep from laughing.

Kristen's TWO!

Kristen had a GREAT birthday! First, friends came over to play...


Then she got to unwrap presents...

(Her favorite was "my ball!")

And blow out candles...


What more could a two year old ask for? (More pictures over at Flickr.)

Growing Up

Sometimes, it's a lot of fun getting bigger!


Sometimes it's not.

(Alison swears that she can still fit into this costume -- it's a size 24 months! -- and has worn it for the last three days!)

April Fools!

We did this elaborate game for April Fools Dinner, where we put the elements of our dinner in a sack, and then chose out two to eat per "round". We did a collaborative thing, where you got to keep what you had from round to round. So, if you were lucky enough to pull out a plate/fork in the first round (like me), then you got to keep it.

Did I mention we had waffles for dinner?

It was a lot of fun, but I think I like this idea better...