Autumn's last days as a 6 year old...wah!

OMG, EVERYONE. Autumn is going to be SEVEN on WEDNESDAY. How can this beeeeee? I've been working on her present. Her birthday party, which won't be huge, will be in June. It's a frozen party and I've been looking for one of the nice Elsa dresses but they sell out quickly and only those pricey 3rd party sellers have them--for $200!!! Which, no. So, I'm making her a dress and I'll give it to her on her actual birthday. I finished the dress remarkably quickly (I still have to hem it but I'm going to do that after she tries it on) but the cape is giving me some trouble. I'm back on track after a consult with nanny so I'll put it on the other blog after I do my Tamara's wedding post.

In other news, we went to the Fair on the Square in Collierville. I worked the Collierville Arts Academy booth Saturday and did a short demo on Sunday. So far no new students but a sensei can hope. On the plus side, I got to play with lightsabers.

We met one of Autumn's friends from school there Sunday and we had a good time. I am terrible at playdates so the Fair was a super fun way to do something different.

We met the neighbors at the school park on Wednesday. I don't know why, but it never dawned on me to hang out after school on a day when I don't have to run off to work to let Autumn play. She had a good time.

And while we were there, they decided to meet again at the library on Friday. That went better than I expected. They had fun for about an hour, looking at books and playing on the pretend fire truck.  By the way, Autumn read her biggest chapter book yet! She read the junior novelization of the Frozen story--26 chapters! I'm going to have to direct her to different books now that I know she can handle that length.

Oh, and check it out, our roses are blooming! I need to prune them big time so I cut a whole swath and put it in Mike's office.

And, last thing for this week, Autumn and Mike went swimming at a friend's house. The water was super cold so I wasn't going near it! They were pretty cute, though. I swear Autumn is part fish! She splashed around and danced and practiced her swim strokes long after Mike wasn't able to take it anymore. Nice job 6.98 year old!

April Mobile Moments!

Greetings, all! I totally missed blogging last week. We had Tamara's wedding and I pretty much spent Sunday and Monday doing NOTHING, ha! But, now it's back to regular schedule, waaah. But, it's a good time to get caught up on our April doings. I'm about to write an adoption update (short version: nothing at all is happening) before I do all the wedding posts over on the pinwheel blog so be sure to go by there this week.

A couple weeks ago, Autumn got to hang out with Micah and Liana. They got dirty. Just a little. Heh. I am not sure if all of this is the result of Autumn pretending that the dirt was her ice powers but at least part of it is.

The big family garage sale happened in early April. Kyle and I love working the garage sale, mainly because of Pd's shenanigans. This year he sold the sofa. Lainey found out when she came home later that day. It was pretty amazing. She's been wanting to replace it so it wasn't out of the blue but I don't think she quite expected her sofa to be sitting outside that day!

One fun thing about Tamara's wedding was getting to see Cheri more often. We stopped by to get a tiara for the bachelorette party and were able to visit with her sweet dogs.

Less sweet, but almost as furry, Molly enjoyed exploring the bachelorette party items. She actually got stuck in that zebra bag at one point and I had to rescue her. Ha! Kitties are so silly.

In the midst of all this, Autumn, who is never sick, was sick. Poor thing! I think it must have been some kind of 24 hour bug because she was only down for the count for a morning and afternoon and then all was well.

So, you know Mike likes coffee, right? Well, part of his coffee obsession is this grinder. We bought it ages ago and it was a great investment but it's still pretty funny to see people's reactions to his industrial strength coffee grinder. It needs fairly routine maintenance. This time around, Mike got Autumn to help him out. I think here she's sweeping out old coffee while Mike lights the way.

Last thing! Autumn's ballet class has been doing ballet buddies. An older dancer leaves notes and little gifts for her ballet buddy secretly and then this week they revealed the ballet buddy's identity. Too cute! Someday if I ever have enough teens around, I should totally do this with my kids classes. Autumn loved it. On the big reveal day, parents were allowed to come watch and take photos. I have a class during Autumn's so I only peeked once in a while. When they did the class photo (the girls got to wear costumes), I snuck out and snapped one. 

That's it for this week!

Easter photos!

Click over to Passing Pinwheels for fun photos!

Busy Spring Days

We have had the craziest spring. It might slow down a little in about two weeks. At least, I hope or I might pass out! Even Autumn is tired. I don't have a picture of it but after she came home from Mike's parents yesterday, she had been there most of the weekend, she passed right out in her bed. When Mike went to check on her she was on top of the comforter, flat on her back, spread eagled. Ha! I don't have that picture, but I do have this one:

And then a happy wakeup!

I am not a big fan of April Fool's Day. Some stuff is pretty cute, like the funny items places like ThinkGeek will put online but I'm generally not a participant. But for some reason, I decided to do this to Autumn's lunch. I think Autumn took after me because she was more baffled as to why I'd do it than anything else!!

 Autumn's class had some major Accelerated Reader success this last grading period. Everyone who met their goals got to have a mismatch day. This time around, everyone got to have a day because they all met their goals! Autumn went all out this time around! A braid and a ponytail, two different shoes, different socks, many colors and patterns.

They also got to have a pajama day because they had the highest percentage of correct answers on their tests. I'm the AR mom so I help them track their goals and talk to them about their favorite books so I brought them milk and cookies on pajama day, their reward for their accomplishment. While I was there, I did this with some printing help from one of the room moms. I'm going to put this on the pinwheel blog and pin it since most of the versions I see of this are pretty vanilla: 

 And at the end of that day? Park time with Papa, Linday, Kyle, and Ellie! Papa was feeling perky so he climbed a tree.

I hope everyone has a great week and a great Easter! See you next week!

March Mobile Moments!

Why do I keep forgetting to do this on Sunday?? I might have to change my update day to Monday!!

Some of you may have heard: I HAVE A GRILL! I am soooo excited about it even though it means I get no birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day, Anniversary or miscellaneous gifts for the rest of the year! Mike surprised me with it and I have grilled something at least once a week since it arrived.

I don't even remember what Autumn did but at some point this month, she got in trouble. That resulted in these awesome notes. "I'm staing in my room furever!" "I'm rilly rilly sorry that I did somthing rong!" I shouldn't laugh but, seriously, how cute is that?

When Autumn wasn't punishing herself, she was helping out. We don't get to go to the store together much anymore so this little trip was fun. She's a good helper. 

Magic shows are still happening! I need to come up with some new tricks for her because she's getting pretty good with the ones she got for Christmas. Autumn's presentation is getting better, too.

The grill box has gotten some fun play time. She was in there this day with a flashlight, a blanket and some pillows, reading to her stuffed friends. 

 Last Saturday, Autumn had a playdate with Aunt Penny while I was in aikido. After I got out of class we met up for lunch and I got to hear about all their super fun adventures.

For example, Autumn tired out Ace and Conan that morning so they all took a break to watch some cartoons! Too fun! Autumn is still talking about how fun her Penny time was.

Last one for today! Sunday we got together with the neighbor kids to watch Frozen. They only got about 15 minutes in and decided they'd rather play. Everyone had a good time playing with the leftover lips and mustaches from the shower I gave for Tamara and Landon which I still need to blog about. 

Cold Days at the Beach

I fully intended to do a post last night annnd then I forgot. I have no good reason--Mike, Donnie, Liz, and I just played Diablo longer than we should have, hahaha. I've been bad about posting to both blogs but hopefully I'll be better. Last week I had my black belt test and I passed!!! I spent the whole week tired, thirsty, and out of sorts but I woke up this morning feeling pretty perky if a bit pollen-itchy. Anyway, I have a few beach photos! I need to get some of Mike's because he has some cute ones but these will do for now. It was pretty cold most of the week so it was pants and jackets out on the beach. Autumn and Mike went out to play a little paddle ball game. I wasn't about to go play in the wind so I used my zoom lens! I mean, really, if the always hot Mike and Autumn have on hoodies, I'm pretty much going to freeze to death.

Autumn made a little friend who was there when we were there. Her parents were, um, chill. They were quite far away and facing away from us while the girl just kind of wandered the beaches! Kyle and Lindsay were side-eying the situation, too, so I know it wasn't just my "studies too much about kidnapping/abuse prevention" paranoia! At one point, they disappeared entirely so we all kind of looked around and were like, "I guess we, strange people you haven't even seen less than 100 feet away, will make sure she doesn't drown or get kidnapped??"

We also got to go to the little amusement park we've visited for years now. And, you know what? Autumn is just about too big for the kid area. T_T

But not yet. 

One last thing...Autumn took this picture of Ellie before we left. How sweet is this??

Of Birthdays and Ice Days

We had a great week at the beach!! I haven't uploaded my pictures from the trip yet BUT I do have some other fun ones! Here are Autumn and Tyler at Hudson's birthday party last month. Hudson was a lot luckier than I was with party planning. Whereas my ice cream social got an ice storm warning, he had a crazy pleasant day!

 Birthday boy and his candles.

The ice storm did a whole lot of nothing around our neighborhood but further north people were hit pretty hard. My mom came to visit that Wednesday and said she couldn't believe the difference a few miles made! We made the best of the sprinkling of snow. Autumn and I piled up what we could and threw a few snowballs but that's all the winter fun we managed. We did get out of school for 3 days which was fun.

When school was back, the kids got to do their rescheduled Dr. Seuss dress up day! We all had a lot of fun. Autumn was one of the only blue fishes at the school. I was trying to think of something fun but she was all, "I am going to be a fish." No deals. Ha! Her friend on the left there was a "new fish" and her other friend decided to be a blue fish, too, since he had a blue shirt on.

I also knew that Autumn was the only blue fish in the school because I took photos of every child in costume in the entire school except for 24. There were only two cameras and one stopped working so I got to take ALL THE PICTURES. I didn't mind but I might have planned my day differently with a little warning! They were all super cute. I saw a ton of Cats in Hats, Loraxes and Things! Too fun!