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!

Sigh.....

I can't believe it snowed last night.... sigh....

Starshine has been working on her literary terms all year in her English class, so I took this picture or her. It's a metaphor for how I feel about today's snow. My one poor daffodil is sad about it, too.

Jr. Princess - bike superstar

It was a fabulous Spring day today, so we all wanted to be outside after dinner. Starshine nicely rode her bike with me on my run to keep me company (I'm trying really hard to get ready for the 5k in a few weeks).

Jr. Princess stayed with M&M Dad and decided to practice her bike without training wheels. She's been thinking about this for awhile, but hasn't really tried very hard. So, Starshine and I were quite surprised to come back to see Jr. Bike Rider!

She's so excited about joining the big kid club. I can't wait for our first big family bike outing!