Xmas 2015

SOOO.... It's official. I've forsaken the blog. Uploading photos to Blogger has become a chore and I've started using Instagram more and more as a way to post photos. As evidence of how behind the blog has gotten, I found this draft post from earlier this year. It's pictures from LAST CHRISTMAS. I clearly got tired uploading photos and quit when I got to Christmas Eve. So this post doesn't even include actual photos of Christmas. You'll just have to trust me that it was lovely.

And we are looking forward to the next two weeks as well. We have fun plans for tonight, then we are driving to Seattle for Jeff's grandmother's 100th BIRTHDAY tomorrow. Then 2 weeks of Winter Break for Edie. I've signed her up for Ice Skating Camp with some friends, we will bake and decorate cookies, wrap presents and finish the second Harry Potter book. We will watch Elf, have early Christmas with my family, and host main course for the Progressive Dinner. We will do Christmas take 2 with Jeff's family, Jeff will turn another year older and then I begin work on losing the 10 pounds I will have gained, just in time for our family trip to Hawaii the last week of January. Should be easy peasy. I'm honestly not sure whether I'm more excited for Christmas or Hawaii. It's a bit of a toss up.

So here are some year old photos of our winter break LAST YEAR. I know you've been waiting:

Friday night movie night now includes friends. Kicking off the winter break was Polar Express with 2 of her pals from class.

Seeing the ballet performance "Winter White" at Mount Baker Theater. Sorry for the old lady photo bomb in the back.

Decorating our first tree in this house!

Should have gone taller - we under estimated our new ceiling height.

Making gingerbread houses with all her cousins and second cousins at Cousin Amy Sue's house (which happens to be down the street from us):

A Seattle playdate with Shreya:

And her little sister Simmi:

Family tradition that we started about 3 years ago of making and decorating sugar cookies for the holidays. Here she is with all her various colors of icing:

Eating her holly cookie:

We hosted the Culver Cousins' Christmas this year and here are all the littles in the basement watching movies:

Her cousin Sophie spent the night after the party:

We ice skated:

With friends:

We hosted the 1st course for my family's Progressive Dinner. Kristin was my co-host

Edie and I in our Christmas crowns at my parents house on Christmas Eve:

7

Edie turns 7 today.

She started 1st grade last week. None of the nerves from last year, only excitement about her teacher and friends. She lucked out and her beloved kindergarten teacher is moving up this year to teach 1st grade and Edie is one of only 8 kids who get to be in her class this year. That and her two best friends are also a part of that 8.




Summer flew by. This summer, we :
Spent 2 solid weeks on Orcas climbing rocks, tooling around in boats, and having Shreya's family visit









Had our first family sleepover on a boat at English Camp in Garrison Bay (with Jeff's parents)




Picked buckets and buckets of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries





Baked pies and made jam




Got stung by a bajillion bees (photo in earlier post)

Learned to steer the Whaler


Crushed it at tennis camp, engineering camp, art camp, adventure camp, and farm camp (picture from Wild Whatcom - an outdoor girls camp she did the week before school)

Went to the Lynden Fair








Had lemonade stands


Went swimming at the community pool and Lake Padden




Met her new cousin, Rio (and yes, I had a heart attack when this moment happened and "casually" asked her if she wanted a baby sister - she said definitely not - WHEW)


Became a chicken whisperer


Made popsicles


Saw a musical at BTG (pic in earlier post)

Partied hard








She's growing up into this amazing girl right now. I'm not an overly sentimental person and I don't do a lot of backward gazing when it comes to parenting. I love the phase of family we are in right now and I'm excited for what's coming. We have officially entered the 'sweet spot' where she is smart, capable, adaptable, sleeps all night, helps around the house and in the kitchen, and regularly entertains herself by playing, drawing and reading. It wasn't that long ago that I was pulling my hair out and questioning all of my decisions because it felt like I couldn't get Edie to leave the house to do ANYTHING EVER without melt downs and hissy fits. And when I dragged her, she would make the entire activity miserable. My biggest parenting struggles at this point are whining and interrupting. So, by comparison it feels like we are winning right now.

I told her we could do anything she wanted for her birthday. She asked for pancakes with a candle in them this morning and wants to go out for pizza for dinner. She didn't want me to pick her up early from the YMCA because they are going to have a little party for her. Pretty easy to please. Most of her gifts this year are art and Lego related.

She had her Harry Potter themed birthday party this last weekend and invited 14 kids, which then grew to 18 kids with siblings. If I hadn't cut her off at 18, it easily could have been 30. She is the definition of social. The thing that brings me the most joy as a parent is how completely comfortable and confident she is in her own skin right now. She likes other people, herself, and new experiences.



She picked out her outfit for her birthday last night and it included a floral print seafoam green dress, yellow and fluorescent green shorts, navy blue knee highs with white fuzzy hearts printed on them, and a sequined hoodie. Oh, and grey and lavender tennis shoes. Because she needs to be able to run fast in her tulle lined party dress? Duh Mom. And for some reason, I'm not worried that she's going to get made fun of at school, because she wore that ridiculous ensemble with such confidence that I almost think she could turn the look into a trend. On her first day of school, she very seriously asked me if she could borrow a formal shrug-style cardigan I wore to an old-timey costume party last year. It is shiny grey satin with huge ruffles and I bought it at Value Village from the used bridesmaid section. She was legitimately pissed when I told her she couldn't wear it. And maybe I should have just let her? I basically gave birth to Punky Brewster 2.0.  I see pictures of perfectly manicured kids on Instagram. Like kids who let their parents pick out their clothes, or maybe those kids naturally enjoy wearing horizontal striped boat necked tops, black leggings and neutral ankle booties and I barely remember those days. If something doesn't have cheetah, sparkles AND rainbows, Edie just isn't interested.

It seems impossible, but she still loves playing kitty and all things cat. It drives me bananas and if she says, "Mom, you can be the big sister kitty and I'll be the baby kitty" one more time, I'll.... we'll. ... I'll probably be the stupid big sister kitty. But I will hate it the whole time!! Gah!

She's reading like a champ, although her enthusiasm for it goes in major waves. She's signed up for more swimming lessons this fall and maybe one day we will take the training wheels off her bike and teach her how to ride it for real. Maybe. Are there people we can pay who come and do that for us? Because this is a parenting experience I can live without.

At 7, in her own words:
Favorite book: I kind of have two. Secret Garden and Star Girl.
Favorite dinner: Pizza with cheese and kalamata olives
Favorite flavor ice cream: Rainbow sherbet
Ice cream or popsicle? Both
Teacher: Ms. Linville
Best Friend(s): Iona, Julia, Shreya
What I want to be when I grow up: Veterinarian
Best advice: Don't talk to strangers
Favorite thing about being 6: That I learned how to do the spinning monkey bars
What you are most looking forward to about being 7: Spelling better, and getting to know the new pet fish in our class (his name is Bubbles)

Tooth Fairy

Edie lost her second tooth yesterday. I picked her up from camp and she was holding her mouth wide open for me to see as I approached the check-out table to sign her out for the day. The tooth had been loose for ages, and she bit down too hard while getting out of the pool at camp and out it went. She wrapped it in a paper towel and then wrapped THAT in her towel and, baby teeth are ridiculously tiny. We had a hard time finding it for a minute, despite being still in the paper towel.

She wanted to know how the tooth fairy gets into her room at night. She got down on her floor and measured the crack under her door and the key hole to see which was bigger. She left a note (more like a form really) challenging the fairy to answer some key questions about her existence. It requested her height, length (wings), age, and a picture of her. She drew boxes for each of the answers to be written in.

As you can imagine, this added some stress to the already terrifying experience of sneaking into your kid's room without waking them up in order to exchange jingling change for a tiny, hard to find tooth in a pillow. Eventually, we settled on this - Jeff would compose some riddles to answer her questions and I would write them in tiny scrawl inside the boxes. In the picture category, the fairy replied, "Fairy's done have cameras!"  and FYI in case you were wondering, tooth fairies are "taller than a blade of grass but smaller than a tree"

Regardless, I'm getting closer and closer to thinking I can't keep up this charade for another 10 teeth. I definitely grew at least one more grey hair last night when I opened her door at 11pm, the door making a loud, old door noise and I heard her regular, deep breathing stop and she rolled over to face me in the door frame. GAH! I had to abort the mission and try again 30 minutes later due to stress. It was touch and go, but eventually we were successful.

Yesterday at camp pick-up with one of her best friends Julia. And her tooth:

Photo Dump

Some photos from the last month or two. I know I've been terrible about updating the blog. On the upside - it's mostly because we are busy in a good way. Edie is the queen of summer camps, Bellingham is great, we have a brand new niece, and work is hopping. I have an event in Utah next week (that I've been planning but don't have to go to personally) and another, enormous event for 900 people on the 19th in Seattle. There have been city permits and super random venues involved - let's just say there are saxophone and bongo players (together), henna artists, and off-duty police being coordinated and that's just the least of the random factor. Despite a million moving parts, for some reason I can't seem to muster more than a low level of angst over the whole thing. The client is actually the nicest ever, but it feels like summer slacking can't really start until it's over so I'm counting down the days. In the meantime, this has been happening:

Wading into the ocean on Orcas:

Someone finally decided putting her face in the water was fun!

Chuck Wagon Restaurant in Burlington - they have trains running around the ceiling!

12 Year anniversary dinner at the Cliff House. Me and my peach pie.

Edie's art show after a week of art camp:

At a fairy party at the garden store with Grandma:

Just crafting together. It's good to brainwash them early into thinking that planning and throwing detailed parties is awesome. Here we are making holes in a styrofoam box that we wrapped in kraft paper so we can stick cake pops in for display.

With our newest niece Rio!

Katherine's birthday party: