Jr. Princess loses a tooth.... finally!

Well, it's official. We have slow tooth losing genes in our house. After a month of wiggling, Jr. Princess, with some Dad assist, finally lost her first tooth at 6 years and 6-1/2 months. (Starshine was almost exactly the same at 6 years and 8 months, way after all of her friends).

She was highly motivated to have it out today, because Starshine promised her a prize from her prize stash if it was out by the end of today. (I just learned that she has a prize stash that she uses to reward Jr. Princess for being quiet when they have sleepovers, etc. How sweet!) She picked a sticker and a stuffed bear keychain.

The funniest part was that Starshine was more nervous than Jr. Princess. She kept her head under the pillow while holding Jr. Princess's hand for support. I taught Jr. Princess how to say "It's not about you" just like I joked with M&M Dad when I told him he wasn't allowed to faint while I was giving birth.

Now it's off to wait for the tooth fairy...

First Day of School

The first day of school was a while ago, so we'll consider this more of a school update. Here's Starshine prepped to take on 4th grade. She was bummed that her BFF is in another class, but still gets to see her in guided reading, math, and recess so it's working out OK. So far her favorite has been the titanic unit. We're very proud of how hard she is working, and how independent she is becoming on getting her work done. She just got an A on her math test, so she's finally starting to understand she's good at math.


Here is Jr. Princess ready to take 1st grade by storm. She does have her BFF in her class, so she's happy, and she reports that her favorite part about school is recess (though she's excelling at reading and math). We already had her conferences, and it was pretty brief because there are only so many ways of her teacher saying "she's a joy to have in class." We agree -she's a joy to have at home, too.

Oh the love... (I wonder how long this will keep up?)

Overall, it's been a good school year and we hope they keep on loving it!

Starshine's Pie

Yeah, Yeah - I haven't blogged in FOREVER! Honestly, back to school time always gets to me. It's so busy with shopping, parent information nights, getting back in to the swing of homework, fall soccer, blah blah blah. So, I may just pretend those 2 months didn't happen, or I may try to catch up the blog on some favorite activities... who knows.

So, this week the girls had 3 days off for teachers convention, so I took vacation to have some fun with them. They, apparently, are tired out, too, because their wish list of activities for the 5 day weekend was pretty tame: movie, craft, cooking project, etc. Every fall we bake all kinds of things with apples (crisp, cake, etc.), but never pie, and Starshine always asks for pie. I'll be honest - pie's pretty far down on my dessert like list, and M&M Dad thinks all cooked fruit is a waste of fruit. But I finally gave in and told her we could make a pie this weekend. Last minute she changed her request to lemon meringue (M&M Dad was happy that no awesome apples were hurt in the making of this pie).

I was nervous - I have baked very few pies in my life and never lemon meringue. But, I must say, it turned out delicious. Grandma L - you would be proud. When it came time to crimp the pie crust rim, she waved me off and said that she could handle it. Grandma showed her when they were baking Thanksgiving pies!

Happy Birthday Starshine!!

Happy 9th Birthday Starshine!! (I had to distort the cake because of super cool candles that spelled her name)

Can you believe she's 9? I sure can't. Wasn't she just:

• learning to walk (oh wait, now she runs faster than me)


• learning to read (yup, she reads more than me now)


• cuddling with me (only if no one's looking)


• Wanting to spend every minute with me (super busy social schedule...)

Man - time flies! It was a rather calm day, because she chose, again, to not have a birthday party. Instead, we will be taking her and her BFF out to dinner and to a U of M soccer game next weekend.

So, her actual birthday was just about opening presents and eating cake (still a great day). She wanted a cool messenger bag, clothes, earrings, and a watch. Wow, she really is a preteen - no toys this year. We ended the day with a delicious plain cheese cake with a toppings bar. Yum!

Oh, and file this under things Grandma L never would have bought me for my birthday...
Clip-in colored hair extensions (I've been told they're all the rage...).

Fun Family Weekend

Last weekend we enjoyed another Minnesota fun family (extended) weekend. We started with a Thursday trip to Waterpark of America. The girls each earned a free ticket from their summer reading program, and we figured it would be nice to water park inside in the summer and not worry about getting sunburned. Unfortunately, M&M Dad made it one and a half times down the water slides before his motion sickness kicked in. We have no idea why the Dramamine didn't work this time. After a few hours of misery, he at least hung out in the regular pool with us, but I have a feeling future trips to the water park will be on a "girls only" day!


Next up was camping at a state park. This was a huge hit last year with the girls (and reasonably tolerated by me because of the camper cabin) so M&M Dad found a new park to enjoy. This site was spectacular because there was not another campsite or at least a 1/2 mile. We had wonderful, peaceful nature, and not loud, boisterous neighbors!


Of course, this also meant that the cabin was a half mile from parking, too! The kids were troopers carrying stuff (and M&M Dad took extra trips), and it was a lot of fun.


Our awesome cabin of solitude...



The kids are totally gaga for bunk beds...


We found a geocache down by the lake... (Too bad M&M Dad also found some wasps while rehiding said geocache - ouch!)


Starshine reading us constellation stories by the campfire after a delicious dinner of pudgie pies and s'mores...

And lots and lots of hiking... (There was a real bathroom 1/2 mile from the cabin, so we were SUPER motivated to go on lots of hikes! The girls were outraged when they found out Dad could just go to the bathroom in the woods instead of using the stinky outhouse!)

The girls also had fun teaching us all of the card games they have learned over the summer. I'd say the only downside was the boatloads of mosquitoes. I have never used so much Off in my life!

We capped of the weekend by taking M&M Dad to the Twins game for his birthday.

The Twins didn't put up much of a fight against the Yankees, but we still had fun and it was a beautiful day. Starshine, though, was shocked at all the people booing at A-Rod and Jeter. Afterwards, we went to his favorite Neopolitan pizza restaurant and then home for homemade ice cream sandwiches - delish!

Happy Birthday Sweetie- yeah, you're just as old as me again!

Work Picnic

Every year my technical community hosts a family picnic, and the kids LOVE IT. And why not - it's all kinds of kid activities, treats - and it's free!

Here Jr. Princess is on the pony rides... she's sporting a hat Dad won at bingo...

Starshine went, but has since determined she is too old for little pony rides. Of course, she was delighted to find that the Cheerios dig as open to 8 and under, and she was not officially 9 yet!

And they both loved the rock wall, especially after watching a lot of repelling on Expedition Impossible this summer.

Jr. Princess was like a little monkey. I'm pretty sure she went higher than her sister (don't tell Starshine that!)

There were also carnival games, super jumps, a gymnastics area, and petting zoo - and I'm sure I'm missing a few. After dinner we enjoyed my favorite - the employee-made ice cream sandwiches using Haagen Dazs ice cream - yum! Then it was off to Bingo, where, after a while of no luck whatsoever, Dad and I both won, and then he won one of the prize drawings. He picked an awesome box of company products that just happened to have everything the kids love.

Jr. Princess loved everything, but I think she was most excited about this cotton candy...


It was a wonderful evening.

Little Leader

We found the nicest note in Starshine's Summer Care folder a few weeks
ago...

"Starshine has been invited to the Leadership team this week because she
is very kind and responsible"

We couldn't agree more! She LOVES her new found responsibilities, which have included judging the sand castle contest, and planning for an upcoming carnival. She's such a good kid!

Just Jr. Princess

This week, Starshine is away with a friend at the friend's grandparents cabin. When we called on day two, we heard tales of tubing, swimming off a pontoon boat, AND jet skiing. Man - next year I'm going to see if I can come, too!

Of course, Jr. Princess was upset at not getting to go, but then she found out how fun "Just Jr. Princess" time can be. So far she has enjoyed going to the farmers market and several parks with Dad, the library and swimming at the lake with Mom, picking whatever tv show and game she wanted, and not having to share anything. M&M Dad and I have been enjoying alternating quality one-on-one time with Jr. Princess, with some precious alone time -- Oh, and not having to referee any arguments!

Tonight she finished up with a rousing time of water balloons with Dad.

I'm guessing this week of being an only child will work out just fine (Um, except that I really miss Starshine!)

May the force be with you

After lots of fun at numerous princess themed parties, Jr. Princess was invited to her very first boy birthday party. It had a Star Wars theme, and she LOVED every minute of it. The uber creative mom made little Jedi costumes for everybody, they got to make light sabers, and then go outside and do Jedi training (which, I'm sure, involved a lot of boys fighting with light sabers).

I bet Uncle wishes he was invited!!

100 Push Up Challenge!

OK, I'll admit, I've been super lazy about strength training lately, which is super dumb because when I work at keeping my arms and shoulders strong, I don't have problems with neck pain.

So, this week some colleagues were discussing their quest to do 100 push ups following this website (http://hundredpushups.com/), and I thought, hmmm this might be just what I need to get my neck back in shape in a fun way! Of course, I need some moral support from my super awesome husband, so I informed him that he was going to try, too! (OK, he's less than enthused about trying this, but he knows keeping my neck pain-free is in his best interest.)

To make this a fun family affair, I told the girls they can be our trainers! They are going to love using a clipboard and timer while bossing us around. And because we're super Biggest Loser fans, they yelled out:

Starshine "I'm Bob!"

Jr. Princess "I'm Jillian!"

Yup - that pretty much describes their personality differences. Starshine will be nice and supportive, and Jr. Princess wants to be the boss of us!

We did the initial test yesterday

Me - 25 (girl push-ups)

Matt -26

Not bad, but no where near 100. And no, I don't actually think I'll get to 100 push ups, but wouldn't 50 be cool? Wish us luck!

Nature Center Visit

A local nature center we've never visited just opened up a new kid explore area. They had a fun play rock area to crawl around on...

And a teaching garden and water area. We came the day after the open house, but it sure didn't look like it was ready for oodles of kids. (And while it was free that weekend, they intend to charge $4 per person in the future. I think they're going to have to up the fun factor to charge $4)

After the kid explore area, we went for a nature hike...

And had fun playing I Spy with this cool frog sculpture made out of recycling and garbage...

Kick off to Summer Reading

OK - I'm a little behind in blogging because a stomach virus slowly swept through the entire family. Today I hope to catch up with some posts of what we've been up to so far this summer.

My kids don't really need much encouragement to read. They love, love, love it! But apparently other kids are not so enthused so the local library always has a big party to kick off their summer reading incentive program. And my kids love a party...

First up was wacky hair...


Face painting...

and hot dogs, ice cream, and crafts. After going inside to check out some new books, we discovered there was going to be a hula hoop contest! The girls are super hula-hoopers so we stuck around, which was very cool because an acrobat was there doing some AMAZING things with hula hoops.

Surprisingly, when the time came for the contest, Jr. Princess decided to not compete. Starshine, however, was excited. She did great, and so did a few other girls so they made them do some extra challenges (while hula hooping) to narrow it to the top 3. She made it though all the difficult challenges of standing on tip toes, standing on one foot, hopping on one foot, and turning in a circle. Unfortunately, the judges were not really hard core about eliminating people for not really doing the challenges, so she went out at 4th place when squatting was introduced. She was super bummed because the top 3 got water park passes for their families! Even without the victory, she had a blast!

Oh, and I think they're already 25% of the way to the libraries reading goal for the summer!

Sleeping in a Box

Our garage door opener has been on the fritz lately, and the accessories are falling apart. This wouldn't normally be that notable of a blog post, except that the new one arrived late this week in an awesome box. And Jr. Princess cannot resist a good box. This time she wanted to sleep in the box. No joke - she packed it full of blankets and stuffed animals, and has been enjoying it thoroughly. It does, however, warrant some follow up explanation after she tells people "I slept in a box" because that kind of makes us sound like the crazy child abusers who keep their kids in cages...

Oh - and when I told my coworker that one of these weekends we were going to install the opener ourselves, he said "Oh that's a divorce waiting to happen!" Yikes!

Happy Birthday Jr. Princess!

I can't believe Jr. Princess is turning 6 years old (sniff sniff...). This year, she got to have her very first big girl party!


We gave her oodles of choices, but she was set from the beginning to have her party at an indoor play place. She was super excited because Grandma and Grandpa M were going to be here that weekend, but unfortunately, Grandma M's sister passed away, and the funeral ended up being that Friday back in Wisconsin. M&M Dad and Starshine went back for the funeral, and I stayed to host the party. Yup - I was on my own to host a party for 10 giggling 6 year olds... Luckily one of the mom's took pity on me and stayed to help.


Here we are waiting for our room to open up... We were all set to bake a cake for the big party, but decided store bought would be best as I attempted to simplify the activities down to my one woman show. So, I took Jr. Princess to Costco to pick out the cake of her dreams. It was DELICIOUS and huge - we ended up giving leftover chunks of cakes to the neighbors and still had plenty for a few days.


Here is our first guest arriving...


And the beforementioned delicious cake...

Jr. Princess was most sad that her sister wasn't there, which was super sweet. It may not have turned out how we expected (because life is like that), but she ended up having a fabulous time playing in the playplace, making a craft, eating cake, and opening presents.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful little girl.

Suze Orman lessons are kicking in

Starshine has gotten the same allowance since she was 5. She has asked me a few times when she will get more, and I have told her she can get more if she would like to tell me what additional responsibilities she would like to take on. At which point, she normally rolls her eyes and moves on. She's a good little saver, and hardly spends any money as is, so I'm sure she's not too concerned.

Well, today she left me the cutest note on my bed...

Dear Mom and Dad,

May I please get more allowance!!! I will do a job to get more. The
job I am thinking of is taking out the garbage, which means get all of the trash from the wastebaskets, and on garbage pickup day I will put the garbage out on the
curb.

Wow - what a well thought out proposal. If she throws in recycling we have a deal.

Girl Scout International Festival

After 2 month of hard work, and much cursing over Asian fabric that frayed if you looked at it, I finally finished all 10 costumes for Starshine's Girl Scout Troop's Chinese dance for the International Festival.

Here they are doing their ribbon dance...

They did an awesome job!

Oh, and something miraculous happened after a crabby morning because she had to be up early, and I had to do her hair in a bun, where she complained ENDLESSLY that I wasn't doing it right...At the end Starshine told me they had THE BEST costumes, and she, for sure, had THE BEST bun of the whole troop. It' the little things that make Moms smile...

5K Fun

We went to the annual 5K and Kids race at m work a few weeks ago. Last year Jr. Princess won the 4 and under race, and was super upset that she had to run with the 5-8 year olds this year and probably wouldn't win. It took a while to explain to her that this event wasn't about winning. If running was about winning, than Mom would never run :). So, we set her goal at trying to beat some older looking kids.

If you look closely, here they are lined up at the start line. The tall girl (bent over) between them kept trying to budge in front of them.

But here's Jr. Princess streaking past the (much older) budger...


And Starshine finished as the 2nd fastest girl. Who knew we had such fast genes in the family. They certainly aren't coming from me!

Here we are relaxing after all the hard work.

After all the super jumping, free snacks, healthy races, and good times, Jr. Princess found her true favorite part of the event. As we were leaving, a colleague of mine was cleaning up the food table. "Hey Pink Mom, do you guys want a case of Gogurt?" Yes we do! She carried this whole case to the car with an enormous smile on her face. Ah, the simple joys in life :)

Ninja Warrior

Lately, the girls favorite show has been Ninja Warrior. So, this weekend, M&M Dad promised he would set up a course for them. It was the perfect activity for this rainy day.

Balancing on the ledge...

Leaping to the bed...

Walking across paint cans...

Vaulting over the chair...

And lots more. It was an awesome good time.

After they were done, Starshine secretly came up and grabbed the video camera. She decided to make her own ninja warrior course. It was so cute, I helped her edit it down for you guys...

Easter

Starshine decreed that I was not allowed to blog about Easter. So, please skip over to her blog to read all about our fun day.

Another 5 year old statement

Jr. Princess learned about facts and opinions at school, so for fun at dinner last night we took turns coming up with statements and she had to decide: fact or opinion. Who knew it would make me laugh so hard, I almost cried. It went something like this:

Dad - "St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota"
Jr. Princess - "Fact!"

Starshine - "Pink is a pretty color"
Jr. Princess - "Opinion!"

blah, blah, blah through several rounds, and then

Mom (trying to be tricky) - "Jr. Princess can be sassy sometimes" (thinking she would either give me a look, or say "opinion", but instead...)
Jr. Princess - "Oh, that's a fact!"

OMG I laughed so hard :).

5 year old statements

It's the little things Jr. Princess says and does everyday that makes me smile.

For homework, she had to write two sentences using her sight words "as" and "not". She sat right down with her pencil and wrote:

"as you no you are not to do that"

and

"You are not spostoo do that"

:)

Nature Walk

This is Mom talking - Jr. Princess saw Starshine writing a blog post today and decided she wanted her very own blog post. So, this afternoon when she went out with M&M Dad to do her "using resources wisely" project for Girl Scouts, they took pictures so she could dictate the following to me: This is Jr. Princess talking- Dad and I went to pick up garbage and we saw a swamp.

I found a bottle.

It was cool to be by a swamp. And I loved looking at the swamp.

The swamp looks really cool when you look up close.

I took a picture of a swamp. Swamps are yucky!