Any Excuse for Snowflakes in May!!!

Like every other little girl on the planet lately, Kate is really into the movie Frozen. So when her preschool teacher said she could choose a day near the end of school to celebrate her summer birthday with her class, she of course, OF COURSE wanted to bring Frozen cupcakes.

Well, she lucks out that her mother is semi-obsessed with snowflakes, because I was eager to oblige.

She really wanted chocolate AND vanilla for the cake part, so we did half and half.

I sprinkled white sparkling sugar over blue frosting then added the snow flakes made of white chocolate. (Normally I consider white chocolate an abomination, but for snowflakes I'll make an exception!)

To make the snowflakes I melted white chocolate and put it in a little plastic sandwich bag with a corner snipped off. Then I piped it onto wax paper over a snowflake pattern. (I used a pattern for DIY window clings I found here, then printed it at about half size.)

This movie is a great chance to use snowflakes in some month other than December or maybe January. YAY!

The Grilled Cheese Tragedy

Kate usually really loves grilled cheese sandwiches. Most days she asks me to make her two for lunch and happily devours them both. So last night when we decided to have grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner, I assumed she would want two sandwiches so I didn't even ask. She asked me what I was making her and I told her two grilled cheese sandwiches.

She burst into tears. I was surprised and confused but reassured her that it was okay, she didn't HAVE to have two. I said I would just make her one. But she kept crying saying she didn't want that. I was baffled. I told her I thought she loved grilled cheese sandwiches? I asked what was wrong - what did she want?

Through her sobs she explained, "I don't want two grilled cheese sandwiches, I want THREE!!!"

Dance Class

Kate has started taking a little ballet/tap dance class:

SQUEE!

And that pretty much sums it up.

Kate's 4th Birthday - Bike

Kate had been asking for a princess big girl bike, and it was too much fun to oblige her!  Seriously, could a bike BE any girlier?

When I tried to put the bike away in the garage, she broke out in tears and begged to please just get to sit on it in the driveway a little bit longer.

I think she likes it.

I am so glad we have Kate.  She is just the icing on our family cake.

And speaking of cake, after church yesterday they served cake as a thank you to our bishop who was recently released. But Kate was absolutely convinced that the cake was for her birthday.

I didn't try that hard to dissuade her ;)

Kate's 4th Birthday - Bowling

Kate requested going bowling as a family for her birthday.

We had a great time! Well... mostly.

Claire discovered that the removal of bumpers alters the difficulty of the game significantly. Based on the bowling lanes policy, Claire was too old/too tall to use the bumpers.  We encouraged her to try to learn to bowl without them.  This was met with mixed reviews.  By which I mean violent mood swings.  She couldn't decide if she was proud of herself for learning to get better or totally pissed off that Scott and Kate were getting higher scores than her.  It was not easy for my little natural athlete to score worse than her slightly gimpy little brother.  I need to show her these photos though, and maybe she'll feel better.

Claire looked like she was learning to bowl:

Scott looked like he was having a seizure that serendipitously rolled a bowling ball down the lane:

Birthday girl Kate was adorable, even when she pushed her ball so slowly it didn't make it down the lane:

And what could be more flattering than a rear photo of you helping your preschooler bowl?

(I'm sure M is thrilled to be featured thusly.) Here, I'll try to redeem myself by showing him actually bowling:

In the end, I'm willing to post a picture of our score because I at least managed to break 100.

And you can see why Claire wasn't too thrilled with her performance. I actually think she did GREAT for her first time without bumpers, but in her mind Scott and Kate's scores needed an asterisk afterword to signify their totally unfair bumper advantage.

But none of this matters, because Kate will tell anyone who asks that SHE won.

And as part of the bowling alley experience, we ordered some food from the snack bar.  (We may also have been hoping that a little blood sugar boost might help with Claire's bumper-bereft tragedy.)  And since it was Kate's birthday, we got chips and guacamole:

Kate LOVES LOVES LOVES guacamole. Unfortunately while I was returning my bowling shoes, I missed getting a photo of her trying to lick the guacamole directly out of the bowl. We might have let her get away with it, but there were still chips left.

Hair At Last!

Kate had her last day of preschool and I took a few pictures of her.  As I was looking at the pictures, I was able to take a step back and realize that she has long curly hair now!

When did that happen?  Just 2 years ago we were here:

At the time, Kate's hair seemed pretty straight and thin and it was growing SO SLOW!!!  I guess I was comparing Kate's hair to the way Claire's was at the same age.

I tried to find a photo of Claire at almost 4 years old to compare to, but I didn't have much.  I had to get creative to make it "bloggable," sorry.  This is a photo of Claire's hair at almost the exact same age as Kate is now:

Claire's hair:  Longer, thicker, and curlier than Kate. 

Still, while it's not quite Claire's hair, it feels like all of the sudden I've woken up to discover that  Kate's hair has really come into it's own.

(And thank goodness, because Kate is the one who actually requests that I do fun styles like this heart with her hair sometimes!)

Perfect Way to Spend a Cold Rainy Day

I didn't realize how much I missed hot chocolate tea parties with Claire now that she's outgrown them.  But today I rediscovered them with Kate:

Kate and I were stuck inside today while she waited for antibiotics to finish de-contagious-fying her strep throat.

The cups are so tiny they are almost impossible to hold.  Kate spills everywhere - the mess is horrific.  The tiny sticky teacups are a total pain to wash (by hand I might add). The hot chocolate is so full of creamer and vanilla syrup and marshmallows that it's practically like taking shots of syrup.

The only thing sweeter than the hot chocolate is Kate's excitement.

Totally worth it.

Gravy!

On Monday nights we have a family night. Sometimes we play pictionary together as a family.  Each of us takes a turn drawing a picture while everyone else tries to guess what we're drawing.

Except when it's Kate turn to draw, she doesn't really draw anything.  She just scribbles all over and keeps going while we guess random things.  When she finally hears something called out that strikes her fancy, she will declare, "YES!" and then her scribbles retroactively become that thing.

Last night she was scribbling big arcs of brown interspersed with bits of pink and blue and white. We all called out lots of things and we weren't having much luck.  Finally M called out, "Gravy!" and apparently Kate liked the sound of that one.

I'm not sure I like the idea of gravy that has pink and blue bits in it...

Kate's Church Commentary

Lately Kate is really excited about listening to words in everyday conversation and trying to identify the letters they start with.  On Sunday this turned into trying to just identify the words we were singing.  For one of the hymns we sang "Be Still My Soul."  Kate got really excited and repeated a few words here and there. But then she got this confused look on her face and asked, "Why he steal my soul?"  "No, Kate, not steal, STILL."

Later someone made reference in their talk to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The speaker was briefly outlining the plot and mentioned how the Nazis shoot Indiana's dad in the stomach.  Kate was quite bothered by this and kept asking why they shot him in the stomach.  (The gist of the explanation I gave was mostly that it was because they were Nazis. What more reason do you need?) Finally she pointed out, REALLY loudly I might add, "No one got shot in the stomach in my Barbie movie!" I think she was just trying to point out the obvious superiority of HER movie over whatever this other junk we were all talking about.  I mean, who wouldn't choose mediocre writing and atrocious computer graphics over a movie where someone gets shot in the stomach?!?!?

And finally, this same speaker mentioned the idea of being in God's presence.  Kate got this excited look in her eyes and cried out (again, quite loudly), "God's PRESENTS!  Like from Santa!!!"

I Should Start Making These to Give at Baby Showers

I don't know about you, but I always wear my snow white dress when riding my scooter:

This one LOVES dressing up.

I've always said that every mom needs two buttons to put on their kids when they go out in public.

#1 would say:  "Daddy dressed me."

#2 would say:  "I dressed myself."