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...