Fall-time

Someone had a birthday... it was me! Thank you for all the kind birthday wishes.

We went to my parent's house to hang out and celebrate.

Miss Kate loved the french doors. She opened and closed them 100 times.

Kate also loved the yard! She loved how cushy the grass was under her shoes.. my parent's yard looked so green compared to ours. Must be the type of grass? Ours is dead. :(

Anyway, that's about all the celebrating we did because I was attending a conference for work on my actual birthday. The conference was great (hosted at GT), but it was exhausting.

This weekend, I had to catch up on some rest. That didn't stop us from going outside.

Kate wanted to take her car outside.

What is this junk in the trunk??

Acorns, of course.

Tonight at dinner, Kate had a meltdown over CHEESE.

I put cheese sauce over her cauliflower to try to get her to eat it, and she only ate a few bites. She was all about the sweet potato fries instead. Until she got cheese on one. She freaked out!!

We finally ate the end off, and then she was all smiles.

This is about 5 seconds later. The moods of toddlers amaze me!! And she likes cheese!!!!

My best bud Elizabeth also had a birthday this past week. To celebrate, they had a Mad Men themed party - great idea!! I've never seen the show, but it is supposed to take place in the early 60's I believe.. Anyway, here's Michael and Elizabeth.

Me and Liz.

Relax, these are candy cigarettes! :)

Elizabeth and I have known each other since we were toddlers. It's always great to see her.

And last, I'm going to attempt to turn this fabric into a Dorothy outfit for Kate for Halloween.

Wish me luck!! Photos of the ensemble to follow.

Miss Smiles

Kate is full of smiles these days. It's like something clicked, and now she gets it: I smile when I'm happy! She always smiled before, but now it is a lot more often. More smiley photos later.

We are still playing outside a lot since the weather has cooled off. Kate loves to go outside and will pull us to the door saying, "ou-sii??"

We are still playing with our chalk. Sometimes she repeats the colors after we say them. She is good at saying orange.

She's been collecting tons of acorns from the front yard. She calls them "asi" or "adis" or something like that.

Here's a video of her looking for bumblebees. When we leave for school in the morning and go outside, she says, "bumbaaaaas!!!" When we get home in the afternoon and she gets out of the car.. "bumbaaaaas!!!!" She's obsessed.

We're smiling!

Smiling some more..

And more!!

(This is one of the shirts I decorated for Kate a while back)

I think it's amazing how Kate sticks to her schedule. Maybe all kids are not like her, but she really enjoys the same events every day. Her bedtime routine is one of them. She knows after her bath, it's time to read books. She gets the same books every night (she picks them).

Kate's favorite books are Hop on Pop and Dr. Seuss A-B-C's. I think because there are bumblebees in them.. :) She gets really excited when we get to the bumblebee pages and points to them. So cute!!

Tonight after she finished her books, she said "the end". HA!

See you later!

Back to the Zoo

More zoo! More zoo! Kate loves it, and so do we. It's 10 minutes from our house, so why not.

One of Kate's favorite places at the zoo is the petting area. All the goats and lambs.

We scrubbed her little hands afterwards, and I scrubbed those shoes when we got home. :)

Kids at this age are so funny together. They still don't really play together, but they like to look at each other to see what they're getting into. This little girl had just learned to walk.

Kate likes this bus a lot.

And the slide was her absolute favorite!!

I know this is a bad photo, but check out her face!! She loves it, but you can tell there's a little bit of scared until she gets to the end.

Weee!!!

Bouncy things are good. Then we are exhausted and go home.

So it was Labor Day weekend... we went twice!! I know, we are crazy. But we have the family pass! It's basically a free trip when we go now.

Kate has learned how to go up the steps to the slide. We supervise at the top though.

I'm sure we will be going to the zoo lots more in the coming months.

Before I go, here's a new thing that we get in Kate's Bouncing Bears class... the bite report!

If your child bites someone or gets bitten, you get this little sheet in your cubby at the end of the day. Poor Kate, she's gotten 3 bites so far!

Very exciting news: I'm the Room Mom for the Bouncing Bears class! I was asked if I would do it, and I accepted. It's pretty easy - I had to get all the parents and kids information in the class so I could send out emails. I keep all the parents informed of things going on at the First School and also things going on in our class. If the parents have an issue or suggestion or anything, they can contact me. And then I found out that I'm also responsible for getting a card and a cake for the teacher's birthdays! That's OK, too, since I like to make cakes (but I think I like to make them so that I can eat them... oh well).

:)

Playing Outside

Kate has learned how to say "outside". She will go to the door, look over to us and say,

"ou-sii?"

We've been collecting the fallen pecans off the ground in the backyard. But we are on the move! Can't stay still for long.
We head to down the driveway to the basil where the bumblebees are..

Kate calls them "bu-bus"

We were so lucky to see our good friends Amy and Trey this past weekend, and they brought their daughter Hannah Claire. Kate had so much fun playing with Hannah Claire. Here they are both looking out side and saying, "Da-da!"

Hannah Claire brought Kate some sidewalk chalk. She loves it. It gives us something else to do "ou-siiii"

I had to play, too.

Picking up berries from the dogwood tree (we finally don't eat everything, thankfully).