French Braid Test Run

Laina's dance recital comes up in June and her pictures are in May. Laina's dance teacher had this great idea - - the girls should wear their hair in French Braids for the recital - GREAT, right! Yeah - - - if my three year old had long hair! Laina has been growing her hair for 3.5 long years now and its still barely shoulder length. Needless to say, we cannot do a french braid! So, I consulted with our trusty stylist, Jaime who thought she'd be able to put Laina's hair in two french braids. We decided to do a test run this week to make sure it would work before the recital and after adding lots of hair product to her head, the french braids came out very cute! Take a look!

Jaime and Laina

The braids! Pretty!!!

Laina's patience pays off with a lollipop from Jaime - she's rather proud of herself

My Gardeners

Joe has been wanting to plant a rose bush at our house since we bought it 6 years ago. This was the year! I think this was the perfect year to do it because Laina could totally help out and we will always look back at that bush and remember that she helped to plant it with Daddy.

A quick chat before heading out to garden

Helping Daddy

Teamwork!

Cooper gets in on the action

Always time to strike a pose

What child labor laws?

Almost done!

Now we wait for it to grow and bloom. Laina is looking forward to watering it often!

Play date with MacKay

On Saturday, Laina invited MacKay, Gannon, Kim and Rick over for a play date. We spent the afternoon playing with bubbles, swinging on the swing set, eating pizza and enjoying the 80 degree April day.

Laina draws a bunny

Laina has really gotten into drawing on her doodle. She started drawing dogs and cats and now she has drawn a bunny. I think it looks pretty fabulous!

Laina and Colby's Play Date

Colby and Karla came over to visit yesterday. Colby had a craft he had made for Laina that they delivered to us yesterday. It was this very cute picture frame he made with a nice photo of Laina and Colby together in the frame. It is so cute and is going right up to Laina's room. Laina had a great time playing with Colby. She loves when friends come over. This morning she asked me "Mommy, who is coming over today?" -- Sadly, the reply she received was "no one"....

Eating grapes

Grapes and smiles

Getting ready for the slide

Having fun with bubbles - I love their giggles!

Easter Sunday

As predicted....the Easter Bunny made an appearance at our house! He left Laina lots of fun goodies in her Easter basket including a Disney Princess hopping ball, walkie talkies, a Cinderella tiara to match her dress, lots of movies including the highly coveted "Backyardigans, Tale of the Mighty Knights", a ton of books - - - and a very fun indoor Easter egg hunt. The eggs were filled with chocolate eggs, quarters, lip gloss rings, and new jibbitz for Laina's crocs!

Because we celebrated the holiday with family on Saturday we made Sunday a complete day of rest. I cooked us a nice breakfast of french toast and then we just did nothing for the rest of the day and we went out for dinner so that it was a nice mellow low stress holiday - my new favorite thing!

Laina's easter basket

Cooper and the kitties easter basket, with Laina's in the background

Laina opening her eggs after the hunt!

Max finds his catnip sack left by the bunny!

The egg hunt

Laina and Daddy survey the loot!

French toast breakfast

Easter Saturday

We had an early Easter celebration with Grammy, Grampy, Auntie Di, Uncle Tom and Cuzzie Nik down at my parent's house. Cooper took his first long road trip and did great in the car, mostly sleeping on the floor in between my legs. Laina had a grand old time as she always does at my parent's house. It was nice to spend the holiday with family.

Laina in her springy butterfly dress

See Grampy does like animals

Happy Easter!

Cooper reunited with Auntie Di

Playhouse Disney Live!

On April 9th we took Laina to Playhouse Disney Live! in Portland. It was a cute show that featured Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Little Einsteins, Handy Manny and My Friends Tigger and Pooh. Laina of course loved the Little Einsteins and Mickey Mouse segments. They even had Rocket fly onto the stage. A fun time was had by all!

Coloring Easter Eggs

Wow, its been weeks since I've had my trusty laptop available at my fingertips. The hoops Joe and I had to jump through to procure a new power cord for my laptop are worthy of their very own blog entry but right now I'm focusing on the positive. We're back! There is lots to catch up on -- so here goes!

Coloring Easter Eggs the week before Easter. This year was very different then the past few years. I laid out all the supplies in front of Laina, showed her how to do the first one and she had at it like a typical independent little 3 year old!




I think this year's eggs came out the best of any! I bought the kit that had puffy paint too so that not only could we dye them but then we could add more decoration when that was done so that we extended the fun! Aren't they beautiful!

Technical Difficulities

So the power cord to my laptop went kaput. Of course like all things technology related in this world, ordering the replacement part was not as easy as it sounds. The part is ordered and en route to the house so that is the good news. The bad news is that my very cool super awesome wonderful laptop has one down side -- a battery that doesn't las very long. Normally this is just not an issue because I'm always plugged in. My laptop lives in my dining room so I'm never in a situation where I need to be able to use my laptop without the power cord. Unless of course, the power cord goes kaput. So here I am with no power cord and a battery that has also gone kaput and that leaves me at a technological standstill. We brought one of our work laptops home because me without a computer is not a good thing --- but my photos are all locked away on my laptop so I'm on hiatus in the blogging department until next week when my new power cord arrives. Rest assured we have been up to lots of fun stuff -- many new posts to come! In the meantime, Happy Easter to all!

Play time with Daddy

Laina and Daddy had a great time playing Play Doh this morning. They created some funky animals. I love watching them play together.

The artists!

Give me some suggah!

And oh my word, I know I'm her momma, but really she's so beautiful!

Gymnastics!

Laina started gymnastics this week. We have been taking Music Together on Wednesday mornings for a long time now. Unfortunately gymnastics occurs at the exact same time and so I gave Laina a choice and she chose gymnastics (I would love it if we could do both, but oh well). We visited the gym a few weeks ago to make sure Laina was really interested and then today was her first official class. She was so cute. She said "Mommy, I'm going do to everything by myself today" and she told me "I'm participating this week - not just visiting". This kid cracks me up with her sentences. I am so proud of my little girl. She is breaking out of that mold that SO MANY people have classified her as and she is just no longer my shy little three year old. I knew she wasn't shy...she just takes her time to warm up and you know what -- cautiousness is a great thing in this world. She jumped RIGHT into everything at the gym today. You'd never know that it was her first class and the other kids in the class had been attending for months. She had a blast. She ran around for 45 minutes straight. We made a good choice!

Laina in her leotard ready to head off to class

Swinging on the bars

Having a GREAT time!