Bringing You Up To Date

This post is composed of pictures that highlight moments from the last three months.

Rick, Katie and I drove over to Rick's parents in Florida to spend Christmas and New Year's. (Actually Rick drove and we rode.) We wanted to do a road trip just because we usually fly.

 Christmas Eve. Katie putting a smile on Rick's face.

Rick and Katie Christmas Eve

Katie's Christmas portrait

Katie and her Auntie Linda Christmas morning. Whatever they were talking about must have been fascinating.

Katie and her big Christmas present, a trampoline. Do you think she was excited?

One day, my mother-in-law Carol, Katie and I drove down to Weeki Wachee Springs to enjoy the state park. There were a so many peacocks running around the park.

Weeki Wachee Springs State Park is known for their mermaids. There is an underground theater where the mermaids put on a show about Ariel. It was such a cult classic, 1950's.

During the mermaid show, this big, ol' manatee came floating along.

Katie and her Great Aunt Naomi playing Yahtzee. Katie is unbelievably lucky in dice. She has no problem throwing straights, six-of-a-kinds, full houses.

On the drive home we stopped at Battleship Park in Mobile, Alabama. In the harbor they have the USS Alabama which was in service in the Pacific during WWII. It is now a museum of sorts. You can tour the battleship at your leisure. I took oodles of pictures, but I won't overtax you with those. Rick commented that it reminded him of the missile base, and it really did to me also. Apparently our armed forces only have a few paint colors from which to choose and all branches have the same interior decorator.

Katie at one of the front gun positions. As a side note, the men that manned the gun posts did not sit on metal, folding chairs. They were there because earlier a ceremony took place on the battleship. Did you know that the main deck is a popular wedding spot? Also, I was surprised how many Japanese and Japanese-Americans were touring the battleship.

Also at Battleship Park, there is a submarine, the USS Drum. We were also able to tour the inside of the sub, but I didn't take any pictures of the inside. I was too busy gawking.

This scrape on Katie's arm is not like any other scrape. It is the first of many injuries that she received while riding her bike without training wheels. Rick had been working with Katie on riding her bike without the little white wheels, and it seemed to be slow going. Then one day he hung onto her shirt as she pedaled up the driveway. By the time they got to the gate, she was pedaling and staying up by herself. On her trip back down to the house, she was flying. Typical Katie. You cannot get Katie to do anything new until she thinks she's ready, be it potty training, learning the alphabet, or riding a two-wheeled bike. And when she is ready, she takes to it like she has been doing it her whole life.

The plastic bubbles on Katie's head are the type that you make yourself by smushing some plastic liquid on the end of a straw and blowing. As for the ladder that is the one that goes up to her loft bed. Other than that, I cannot explain this picture

Katie making a cake.

There's the short, pictorial version of the last three months. Now let's see if I can keep up on this blog.

Making Space on the Camera

I have had so much going on; a camera full of pictures to match and a crazy long blog post.

First off Katie's ballet recital was this past weekend. It took me 1 1/2 hours to do her hair and make up, but not because they were complicated but because Katie gets bored and wiggly. Have you ever tried to put mascara on a wiggly child? For the recital she was a Woodland Fairy and danced to a slow song as opposed to a cutesy song. She really is elegant and more expressive in the slower dances. Dress rehearsal was Friday night and the audience attended Saturday night. I may be subjective, but Katie did a great job. During rehearsal we can take pictures, but not during the real performance, so the following photos are from Friday night. Excuse the blur, but in the dark theater my flash is a little useless.

Such a serious ballerina.

This picture makes me laugh. None of the ballerinas are doing the same thing. However, what is hilarious are the 3-4 year old ballerinas.They have no qualms about yelling directions to the other dancers on the stage. One little girl cracked me up because she was very concerned about staying on her marked spot. Most of the time she was bent over, looking at the floor and trying to find her dot.

Two out of four is not bad.

The following photos are from performance night.

Posing before the show. Kate is in the tunnel that leads to the stage. The tunnel is actually underneath the left side of the audience.

Still in the tunnel but this time doing a leap. She got some pretty good air.

Curtain call.

 Outside the Paramount with the bouquet of flowers that Rick and I gave her. I was trying to keep the flowers a secret, but Kate saw them in the frig. So naturally I lied to her and said they were for Rick. She bought it.

 Posing after the performance. This picture shows how beautifully she does the classic ballerina hand position.

 A rare thing, Kate and I in a picture together.

 Daddy's Li'l Doodlebug.

 Doodlebug kissing her daddy.

One more pose and we are done.

Monday I had a MOPS brunch to attend. It is when we say good-bye to steering team and table leaders who are leaving and welcoming the steering team for the next year. I wasn't looking forward to the brunch. I didn't want to cry and was fearful that I would blubber. The was pretty sure I was going to cry during the blessing. The blessing is when you stand in front of the room with a Mentor and they read a personalized blessing that they wrote for you. The only thing that saved me is that the mentor that I am closest to did not deliver the blessing. It was actually a new Mentor so I didn't feel the same connection. After the ceremony, I stopped to talk to my favorite Mentor and I cried. I high-tailed it out of there before I got to the point of uncontrollable tears. Leaving MOPS is bittersweet. I truly feel that I have outgrown MOPS especially since I am no longer a mother of a preschooler. However, I am very sad to lose the regular contact with other moms. When it comes down to it, MOPS was the only place that I got to talk with other women. What am I going to do now?

Yesterday was Field Day at Kate's school. During Field Day the kids participate in contests like tug-of-war, transporting an egg in a spoon, etc. At one point it started to rain, but it stopped as soon as I got to my car to retrieve my umbrella. Kate wasn't in the best mood. She was very weepy and cried, cried, cried about not winning her heat in the foot race. Rick likes that Kate takes winning seriously; however, we are concerned about how she gives up if she is not winning. No one got a trophy or ribbon for winning a contest, but the recognition from the crowd was a reward that Katie craved. Here's Field Day.

Field Day. Katie looking a less than excited.

Another contest. Flipping a little bean bag on a Frisbee.

Hula-hooping. The little boy in the foreground had told Katie, "Don't cry. Watch me." The little boy's grandma also encouraged Katie to pick up her hula-hoop when it hit the ground and to try again. They were supposed to sit down once the hula hoop went down. I wasn't too happy about the grandma "ok-ing" Katie to cheat.

Tug of War

More tugging.

The egg in the spoon transport. The fun was taken out of the game because the kids had to carry wooden eggs. But I can understand not wanting to deal with the egg mess.

Foot race.

I have been taking pictures of my outdoor flowers. Last year I did not clean all of my planters out and lo and behold some of my petunias came back. One pot of last year's petunias looks better than the fresh petunias that I bought this year.

I had bought Katie a first grade workbook that she can do throughout the summer. One of the instructions said to draw a box around the word "the". I had to look at it for awhile before I understood.

 See instruction #3

Katie's boxes around the word "the" in the third line. They are cardboard boxes with the flaps open. Bless her little heart.

Hobo is still trying to conquer his fears. I noticed that when my in-laws were here he went into hiding more often than usual. He doesn't welcome new faces. This past weekend, Kate and I were outside tending to my flowers when Hobo walked up to us and let Kate pet him. I had to hold jealous Cody by the collar otherwise he would have driven off Hobo. Here's Hobo.

 

 The hanging basket of flowers that my mother-in-law bought me and Cody eating grasshoppers. ("Oh, crunchy Scooby snack.")

One last picture before I go.

Katie and I before dipping in the pool.

And that's all she wrote. Ciao.

My Rebel Petunia and The Firestarter

I have resurrection petunias. At the end of last summer, I did not clean out all of the planters. Good thing because lo and behold the petunias in those planters came back. I had no idea that petunias were perennials. Now yesterday I found a lonesome red petunia growing in the lawn on the north side of the house. How did seeds get over there? Here's a picture of my rebel petunia.

Katie did not know what matches were. We were talking about the fire prevention/fire safety poster she needed to complete for school. I had suggested "Don't play with matches or lighters". Katie asked me what matches were. So I got a book of matches from the bar and lit one for her. When the flame appeared she was in awe. She asked me to light another one and another one and another one. Each time she got all excited when the sizzling flame appeared. Apparently she didn't realize that the glowing orange on the end of the stick was a flame because she asked me if she could touch it. Now she thinks that lighting a match is a magic trick and that they are sooooo cool. Because of this new fascination I now have to hide all the matchbooks. Otherwise we would have a firestarter on our hands. Here is her completed poster.

She did a great job. However, I did have to write the phrases on another piece of paper so she could put them on the poster and I helped her color the grass. It was getting way past her bedtime and the grass was the last thing to do.

This morning Katie and I overslept. I didn't set my alarm and Katie turned off her alarm. It was 40 minutes before school started. Katie was stressed and exclaimed, "Now I am going to miss recess!" But she did not miss recess or any other class because I got her to the school at 7:45 am. That is the quickest she has ever gotten ready to go anywhere. Perhaps I should always deliberately not set my alarm and it would save me the struggle of trying to deal with a sleepy Katie in the morning.

That's it for my excitement. Ciao!

Mystery DVD

We, Katie and I, have been deep cleaning Katie's room. I asked Katie to fire up her laptop to make sure a DVD wasn't in the drive. Well, there was one, "It's Tiger the Pooh. . . er. . . or is that Tiger Pooh?" How about Winnie the Pooh?!

Tiny Angel

This evening I found out that Katie is going to be in Abilene Ballet Theater's performance of The Nutcracker! Three classes from Ballet Abilene were chosen and the students will be "Tiny Angels". When I told Katie, we were at our car after having left ballet practice. The girl screamed. She loves The Nutcracker so much that in the past I have rented a DVD from the library of the San Francisco Ballet performing it and she watched it multiple times. Also, The Nutcracker is the bedtime book that we are currently reading. 

If you plan on seeing The Nutcracker, there are four performances and Katie will perform in two, Saturday night November 19 and Sunday matinee, November 20.

I am so happy for Katie. She lives and breathes to be on the stage.

"ABC. It's as easy as 1 2 3 . . "

I have been meaning to write a post for a week now. Last Monday, September 26, Katie made the ABC Club at school. In order to be in the ABC Club, the child must be able to recognize all of the letters, upper case and lower case, and make the sounds that each letter makes. She was so proud of herself that when I picked her up from school, she came running and yelling, "I made the ABC Club! I made the ABC Club!" Of course with Katie being Katie, the best part of being a member for her is that your picture gets posted outside your classroom door with the other ABC Club members. Yes, our little, limelight loving daughter was in heaven.

There She Blows

Today, the school nurse called to tell me that Katie threw up in the cafeteria after breakfast. Anson ISD has a rule that the child that goes home sick cannot return to school until 24, medicine-free hours have passed without any more puking. I picked her up from school at 8:45 am and technically she could go back to school tomorrow at 8:45 am because she only threw up that once, but now she has developed a nasty cough. Today was picture day at school and I am slightly bummed. I hope that the photographer will do a second appearance at the school to shoot anyone that missed school on Monday. If not, Rick wants to contact the photographer and see if the photographer can still take pictures of Katie if we bring her to him. We'll see. I was thinking of getting one of those picture frames that has a spot for each year's school picture. I'll hold off until I hear from the school about an alternate option. I don't want to start the collage off with a missing picture.(Sorry about the gross title of this post. I have been wanting to use that if I blogged about anyone throwing up. Yes, see what I think about in my spare time?!)

The Twirling Princess and Her Princess Friends

We're back from Disney World with 600 pictures and you need to view them all. Just kidding . . . Actually I am not done slogging through them.

All in all, we had a pretty good vacation. Katie had her moments when she won't listen and moments where she was over excited, but we made it through the five days. We did visit all of the parks, but spent the most time in Magic Kingdom.

We arrived Friday evening and just got ourselves familiar with our resort. We stayed at the Comtemporary and in an upgraded room which meant we could see Magic Kingdom and the nightly fireworks from our balcony.

 Katie and I at the Orlando airport.

Katie and Rick watching the fireworks from our balcony.

Fireworks. Cinderella's Castle is in the middle of the white flash. It looks like it is blowing up.

Saturday was our first day in the parks; however, before we even got off of the resort's grounds, Katie fell and skinned her elbow and knee pretty bad. So it was back to the room for us until Katie could calm down. Throughout our stay, Katie shared her boo-boo story with everyone. I mean EVERYONE. Anyway, we started off at Magic Kingdom. Katie met the princesses and got autographs, as well as rode rides. Magic Kingdom's rides are all pretty tame and she really liked Snow White's Haunted Adventure. We had a dinner reservation at the Prime Time Cafe in Hollywood Studios. The meal was outstanding as was our waiter. 

Sunday was Katie's birthday and we had made her a 10am appointment at the Bippity Boppity Boutique. We had purchased the Castle Package for her which included hair, make up, nails, costume, shoes, wand and tiara. Katie wanted to be Ariel, but she did not choose the pretty ball gown, she chose Ariel's everyday outfit because she wanted fins. Rick and I tried to persuade her to do the ball gown, but she would not have any of that. Actually, I was rooting for the Belle gown. It was absolutely gorgeous. But since it was her day, we let her wear fins. She also got to pick out fake hair. She immediately insisted on black, but we reminded her that Ariel had red hair and Katie relented and chose the red. Whew! She would have looked so goth with jet black hair.

In all the preparation to get ready for the trip, I forgot to buy a card and wrapping paper. Rick made a card and used newspaper for wrapping paper. As you can see, she was happy. Besides the vacation, we got Katie a Princess snow globe and a Princess bracelet.

Waiting for the Bippity Boppity treatment.

While she was at the BB Boutique, her back was to the mirror and when the stylist was finished she swung Katie around. Oh how happy Katie was.

Katie cracked us up. As we strolled through the park, she waved a royal wave and bowed her head every once and while. She was delighted when people commented on what a pretty princess she was and when they wished her a happy birthday. (Her sash says, "Birthday Princess.")

Katie is extremely out going and friendly. She was continually striking up conversations with people. In each line that we waited in, she made a friend. Each monorail or shuttle bus that we rode she made a friend. It didn't matter if the other person spoke English or not, Katie chatted with them. When she was talking with a little Italian girl, the two of them carried on a conversation in their respective languages and by their expressions it was a fascinating conversation. In the above picture Katie is making friends with a Disney photographer.

 Posing by Cinderella's castle. She sure has the princess stance down pat.

 We were greeted by Cinderella when we went to her castle to dine at her Royal Table. 

 While we ate, Snow White stopped by . . .

. . . and so did Aurora. (Katie was intrigued by her long hair.)

 Belle made an appearance also, but she didn't have on her ball gown. However, below Belle had her gown on when we stopped by the Princesses' character meeting area.

 And we can't forget Ariel. Katie was pretty pumped to chat with her.

While watching a performance by Mickey and the Gang on the castle steps, Katie twirled and danced and was in her glory. Rick commented, "Like mother, like daughter." (On our wedding evening, Rick and I were sitting on the porch of the Grand Hotel and my wedding dress was made for twirling so I did.) After the show was over a woman sitting near us was chuckling about Katie because she was posing. The lady commented how good Katie was with picture-taking. She also asked me if I entered Katie in beauty pagents. I told her I did not and then she advised me to do so. All I could think of was that show Toddlers & Tiaras. Those little beauty queens and their stage mothers are rather freaky/scary. So it's safe to say I won't be doing that. 

The professional poser.

Katie and Rick waiting for the parade to start. We were very lucky that we found an empty table at a sidewalk cafe.

Here's Katie making another friend. This lady was from London and worked at Disney. Katie also struck up a conversation with the ladies sitting on the curb. Of course each conversation included a recap of how she got her two boo-boos, as well as a showing of the scabs.

Rapunzel and Katie in the Storybook Garden

Well, that was the first few days. I will continue tomorrow. Stay tuned . . .