asian festival

A couple of weeks ago we decided to try something new (to us) and visit the Asian Festival here in town.  They kept talking about it on the news, and Rachel loves that kind of stuff (anything having to do with a party, festival, fair, whatever...if it's a celebration, Rachel's in love!) so we tried it.  It was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed walking around and looking at everything.

We've had a rather big decision come up this spring, and have decided to send Rachel to a different school next year.  I won't go into all of the specifics right now, but she's both really excited and very nervous about it.  But the reason I write about that here is that we found out that in third grade they study Japan.  So she was excited to go to the Asian festival and learn more about Japan before she's even at the school. 

Both girls enjoyed dressing up in Asian garb (Something involving dress up?  My girls are IN!)

They had a special kids area with different activities they enjoyed.

There were dancing and martial arts demonstrations, and this crazy game, which was a cross between volleyball, soccer, and martial arts. 

It was a fun day.

fun to be four

She's in a big girl bed!  I kept from crying as I took down the crib/toddler bed, but it didn't escape my thoughts that this was the end of a season, and not one I am quite ready to leave.  But she was so excited, it was hard to be sad for long!  One of these days she'll get a new (bigger) room, too, but it'll take awhile to get our act together and get it painted and ready, so in the meantime she's still in the nursery.

She got a gift card for her birthday from Granny and Papa, and had a great time spending it over the weekend.  Some of the things she chose were this super hero cape/mask and the Sofia shoes to match the Sofia dress she's wearing.  She wanted to wear it all at once, so she called herself Super Sofia!

One of these days we'll download pictures from her birthday, but in the meantime here's a not so good picture of when we first got to The Great Wolf Lodge to surprise them for Rebecca's birthday.

Waking up at the Great Wolf Lodge on her birthday, surrounded by balloons.

Her Hello Kitty cake.  

four!

How did this happen?  Yesterday you looked like this,

And today.....this???

Today you are four, Rebecca.  How can my baby girl be four already?  Such a big girl!

You are a joy, Rebecca Joy, and make us laugh every day with the hilarious things you say.  You love the movie Frozen, singing, giving and getting hugs, super heroes, being silly every chance you can get, riding your bike, swinging, dressing up, and doing whatever your sister is doing.  You are enjoying learning your lower case letters, now that you know the upper case letters, and sounding out a few words here and there.  You can write an R and are so proud of yourself every time you do.  We are working on other letters, too, but R is the one you're most excited about.

When asked what you want to be when you grow up you usually answer a rock star or a dentist or an astronaut.  You also tell me almost every day that you want to be a mom someday.

You dislike eggs, corn, sitting down for any length of time, and taking naps (even though you fall asleep in the car if you don't get one, so you still need them!).  

Rachel doesn't even remember a time when you weren't a part of our family, and though I do remember, I don't want to imagine what our family would be like without you!  You are our comic relief, and we just love and enjoy you so much!  

We are surprising you for your birthday with a trip to The Great Wolf Lodge, and then we're having your "Hello Kitty" party at Grandma and Grandpa's house (you've been talking about having a Hello Kitty party since the day after you turned three,  I think!).  We know you will have a great time!

We love you, sweet girl, and can't believe how fast you're growing up.

Happy 4th birthday!

the coronation

Yesterday Rebecca graduated from Tuesday School, the little preschool she went to this year.  Except she couldn't remember what it was called and kept saying it was her coronation!  My daughter, the queen!!

This is when she was filing in and saw us...

Up on the stage with the rest of the graduates

Getting her diploma

With her teachers

Afterwards with her sister

a happy Mother's Day

Mothers Day began on Saturday for me.  I was in a charity walk on Saturday morning, and when I came home my husband and girls had cleaned the house!  What a great surprise!  Then they surprised me, right when I was getting ready to start making dinner on Saturday, by telling me that they were taking me out to dinner!  Yay!  And since it was Saturday and not Sunday, we didn't have to wait (I've had bad experiences waiting on Mother's Day and not getting a meal because it took too long and we had to leave!)  after a great dinner we went to a park and walked on the trails and the girls played a little.  It was a nice evening.  

Mother's Day began with cards and breakfast in bed (with about an inch of jelly on my toast, which I had to scrape off!).  They were so excited to give it to me.  

Sunday afternoon my parents came so I could be with my mom on Mother's Day and my girls could wish her a happy Mother's Day, too.

After showing off for Grandma and Grandpa, the girls stayed home with Daddy while my parents and I went up to my brothers house so he could wish her a happy Mother's Day, too.  He and I took them out to dinner.  It was nice, without lots of kids vying for our attention.  

This morning my mom took me to buy flowers for my planters, for my Mother's Day present.  Can't wait to plant them!

So it was a happy day (or, couple of days, I guess, is more accurate!)

odds and ends

Rachel's friend Kaden, who moved away when they were two, recently sent her "Flat Kaden," after reading the book, Flat Stanley, in school.  Rachel took Flat Kaden on adventures for a couple of weeks, then wrote about all of their adventures, and sent it back to Kaden at school.  She LOVED it and wrote and wrote about everywhere she took him.  Hopefully Kaden liked hearing about his life here with Rachel!

It's been summery and warm this week.  Rebecca's been loving spending big chunks of our days outside.  And wants pigtails every day.  So cute!

I have had a cold forever, it seems.....again.  Not sleeping, coughing a lot, uncomfortable, and oh so tired.  I thought spring would finally bring better health, but not so, yet.  Ugh.

the help

It's a cookie baking kind of day.  But my help stopped helping as soon as there was a beater to lick....

brave

Not only has Rachel had her share of dental issues lately, but so has Rebecca.  A month or so ago Rebecca had a cleaning (the same day Rachel had her appliance put in her mouth....which fell out the same day...just part of the many dental woes I referred to recently) and we found out that Rebecca had two cavities.  Rachel's never had any, so I'd never had to deal with that before.  I was really nervous about my three year old having to get a shot in her mouth and go through that whole ordeal.  And I felt like a horrible parent for not keeping her teeth cleaner.   They were on opposite sides of the mouth, and they'll only numb one side at a time, which meant we'd have to go through it twice.  Ugh.

So I was dreading yesterday for a month.....the first of the fillings.  We told her about it the night before, and she wasn't acting scared at all, which both surprised and thrilled me.  She hopped in the chair and  acted like a pro the whole time.  I, on the other hand, was a nervous wreck.  They used laughing gas, which worried me, but she did just fine with it.  They took X-rays and determined that the cavities were so small that they wouldn't have to numb her at all.  Hooray!  They did just a little bit of drilling and then filled and sealed them, and we were out in no time...and since they didn't have to numb anything, they were able to do them both yesterday so we don't have to go back again.  She didn't shed a single tear (unlike what her sister would have done, and her drama is all I've ever really known when it comes to my children and medical treatments, so that's what I've come to anticipate).   It was so much easier than I had anticipated, and I was so proud of Rebecca!  

We went out to lunch to celebrate.....a rare treat.  She chose Wendy's.  She said, "It's my special day!" over and over and had a great time.

happy Easter!

updates

The oven saga is finally over.  It works!  Yesterday the part came, but while trying to put it in, my husband discovered a different problem....a wire that was burned through in the back (which is probably why the heating element kept going out.  He took the wire off, and that meant I then had no stove, either.  We went all around town the other night trying to find a replacement wire, without any luck.  But we did get the name of a place that might have it, so I went there yesterday and got what we needed.  When he got home lastnight my husband put it all back together, and it worked!  So I survived a week and a day without my oven, and we didn't have to go out and buy a new one, even though that would have been nice.  And we didn't even have to resort to eating take out.  I used the grill and my crock pot and did just fine.  

I can't remember if I wrote abut Rachel's dental woes, but there have been some.  They resulted in two trips this week to two different orthodontists, for two different opinions, to figure out what to do about a molar that's growing in at an angle.  The consensus was that the baby tooth it's getting stuck on needs to be extracted in order to make room for the permanent molar.  She has some other crowding issues, but nothing too terrible, it sounded like, and it all sounds much less traumatic and expensive than originally feared.  I'm not looking forward to dealing with the extraction, as shes so dramatic and fearful when it comes to anything like that, but we were told we can wait until summer, so I'm happy to put it off for a little while.

Rebecca is enjoying talking about letters, their sounds, and finally is even writing some letters.  She learned now to write an "R" last week while Grandma was here, and she's writing them everywhere.  She talks a lot lately about words that rhyme and is getting a little better each day and coming up with words that really do rhyme (a lot of times she will say things that start with the same letter rhyme, so we're working on it, explaining that they don't start with the same letter, but need to end with the same sounds to make them rhyme...she is slowly catching on).  

They're both loving the warmer weather and play outside every chance they get.  It makes it hard to make Rachel do her homework in the afternoons when she gets home from school and it's so beautiful outside!  I'll be glad when summer is here and there's no homework to worry about and they can play outside to their heart's content!

birthday fun

Rachel's eighth birthday was a success.  She came home from school that day higher than a kite, so excited and wound up and ready to open presents!

She'd been wanting a riding outfit for her doll, Saige, for a long time

 Modeling her new purse....

Being silly with her sister....

 

The best reaction came when she opened her new purse, which contained money.  She was SO thrilled.  She had just told me the day before, "Mom, the only time I ever get money is if I lose a tooth or if I have a lemonade stand, and I can't do either one right now."  I told her she'd better lose more teeth....knowing the next day she'd be opening that present.

Then it was time for dinner at Red Robin, where she didn't want to be sung to, but they did it anyway!  She tried to slide down in her seat and hide, but I wouldn't let her!  I don't have any pictures from dinner, though.

Then we came home for cake and ice cream.  She wanted a Ron Roy cake (her favorite author) so these are pictures of his books on the cake.  

The morning of her birthday I turned the oven on to make her cinnamon rolls for breakfast, which she had asked for.  The oven wouldn't heat up. I was able to make them in the toaster oven, but I had a birthday cake to bake that day!  I emailed some friends and Emily came to the rescue and let me come over and use her oven to bake it.  (Now we're in the process of waiting for a part to arrive to see if we can fix it, but if we can't, then we'll be buying a new stove.....we went stove shopping and picked the one out that we'll buy, if necessary.  I'd love to have the new stove, but to say its not in the budget right now is a huge understatement, so I'm hoping we can fix it and put off a new stove for a couple of years.  In the meantime, dinner includes anything I can grill or make on the stove!  Thankfully the weather is nice at the moment, so I enjoy the grilling, anyway!)

And then was a rousing game of Clue.  She didn't quite get it, but as the game went on she understood a little bit better.  She enjoyed it, even if she did start losing interest about 3/4 of the way through.  (Here she is, so excited about opening the game!)

One of her presents from Grandma and Grandpa was a trip to American Girl for dinner with Grandma.  They went the next day for that.

And she got to go shopping for whatever she wanted (with a budget, plus her own money, if she chose to spend it--which she didn't.)  She bought a little dog for Saige and a stuffed animal unicorn that walks and its horn glows....completely unnecessary and impractical, but Grandma wanted her to pick out whatever she wanted, and that's what she chose!

Saturday was supposed to be her party with her cousins, but they have so much going on right now with soccer and track that they weren't able to make it, so instead of a party this year, we told her she could take her best friend to see the movie, Rio 2, which just came out and she's been dying to see, and then out for ice cream.  She had a great time with her friend, but the movie wasn't that great, so I wish we had just had her over to play instead or went somewhere else fun, but oh well.  Hindsight is 20/20....  She still had a fun day.