Sunday, March 29, 2015
Family bike ride
It's taken us a while, but we finally did a family bike ride with all 5 of us. Wes rode and pulled Kate and Adele in the trailer, and Emeline and I rode along behind. Yay for getting out as a family!
Five years old
Emeline turned 5! We really can't believe it. We are moving into such a new season of life with her as she heads towards kindergarten and into the world of elementary school. We found out recently that Emeline won the lottery to get a space for our local Spanish Immersion program. We are so grateful to God for this amazing opportunity for her to become fully bilingual and biliterate. She's excited about continuing with Spanish too!
So, Emeline at 5...where to begin? Emeline always seems to be ready to take the world by storm. She is excited about trying almost anything new. Recently, she's been asking to try skateboarding, so for her birthday, we got her a skateboard, and she will do a week of skateboarding camp in July. We love her adventurous spirit. She also has been begging to go camping, and we are happy to have a few camping trips planned for this Spring and Summer too.
Emeline is still doing great on her bike. She's getting really fast, and it's hard to keep up on foot. Wes took her for a bike ride where he rode too so that she could actually get some good riding in. She powered up some big hills. We also went for our first family bike ride as a family of 5. Adele is now old enough to go in the bike trailer, so Emeline rode her bike, Wes pulled the other girls in the trailer, and I tagged along too. Emeline also loves going to the baylands park to ride up and down the small hills there. She's also recently working on doing the monkey bars. She can go through a few rungs now, but not quite all the way yet. She is super strong. You will often find her climbing the walls in the house (literally) if she's bored. This girl needs to move.
Emeline did a gymnastics class earlier this year, and did great at that. You can see her strength on the bars. Spring soccer started recently and she has improved so much since she started last fall. She is a strong and fast runner and works hard to make goals.
Emeline loves to ask questions. She is super aware of everything going on around her and always wants to know more. I love hearing how her questions are getting more and more thoughtful. Every day she asks me what we are doing for the day. Then she asks me about tomorrow. After many bleary eyed mornings talking about the plans for the day, I put up a calendar, wrote down what days she has preschool, our moms group, church, playdates and other activities. Now when she gets up she checks the calendar and knows what to expect. She seems to thrive in knowing the plan for the day, and even the week. She also loves to figure out the logistics for any event, asking who will go where when, with what, etc.
Her inquisitiveness comes out a lot when talking about our faith. She asks lots of questions about God, Jesus, and tries to understand Bible stories we learn at home and at church. I love hearing her think and ponder these things, and we hope to make it a safe place for her to ask questions. She has a big heart and often initiates praying for someone if they are sad or hurt.
She loves to play games and tell jokes. Yes, most of her jokes are full of potty humor at this point, but it's fun to watch her enjoy more organize play. She's doing great at preschool, very social and always looking out for her friends. She's got her name writing down, and likes to practice sounding out words, but isn't quite reading yet. She seems to have a pretty good grasp of numbers too. She's often talking about how when she turns 6, Kate will turn 4, and Adele will be 2 or 3. She'll run through how old her sisters will be at all different ages. Her Spanish is coming along really well, she's started to put together some complete sentences and tries to speak it much more than before. She still prefers English of course, but I know a lot of Spanish is soaking in.
Emeline is also big on independence lately. Yes, this means some pretty intense tantrums if she doesn't get her way, but it also means being a lot more helpful when she puts her mind to it. She's learning to take a shower by herself and she's even helping me with the dishes. When she wants to, she can be really helpful in cleaning up around the house, helping with chores, and helping out her sisters.
I could go on and on about our Emeline. She is so full of life. But her are a few pics of her lately in all her 5 year old glory!
So, Emeline at 5...where to begin? Emeline always seems to be ready to take the world by storm. She is excited about trying almost anything new. Recently, she's been asking to try skateboarding, so for her birthday, we got her a skateboard, and she will do a week of skateboarding camp in July. We love her adventurous spirit. She also has been begging to go camping, and we are happy to have a few camping trips planned for this Spring and Summer too.
Emeline is still doing great on her bike. She's getting really fast, and it's hard to keep up on foot. Wes took her for a bike ride where he rode too so that she could actually get some good riding in. She powered up some big hills. We also went for our first family bike ride as a family of 5. Adele is now old enough to go in the bike trailer, so Emeline rode her bike, Wes pulled the other girls in the trailer, and I tagged along too. Emeline also loves going to the baylands park to ride up and down the small hills there. She's also recently working on doing the monkey bars. She can go through a few rungs now, but not quite all the way yet. She is super strong. You will often find her climbing the walls in the house (literally) if she's bored. This girl needs to move.
Emeline did a gymnastics class earlier this year, and did great at that. You can see her strength on the bars. Spring soccer started recently and she has improved so much since she started last fall. She is a strong and fast runner and works hard to make goals.
Emeline loves to ask questions. She is super aware of everything going on around her and always wants to know more. I love hearing how her questions are getting more and more thoughtful. Every day she asks me what we are doing for the day. Then she asks me about tomorrow. After many bleary eyed mornings talking about the plans for the day, I put up a calendar, wrote down what days she has preschool, our moms group, church, playdates and other activities. Now when she gets up she checks the calendar and knows what to expect. She seems to thrive in knowing the plan for the day, and even the week. She also loves to figure out the logistics for any event, asking who will go where when, with what, etc.
Her inquisitiveness comes out a lot when talking about our faith. She asks lots of questions about God, Jesus, and tries to understand Bible stories we learn at home and at church. I love hearing her think and ponder these things, and we hope to make it a safe place for her to ask questions. She has a big heart and often initiates praying for someone if they are sad or hurt.
She loves to play games and tell jokes. Yes, most of her jokes are full of potty humor at this point, but it's fun to watch her enjoy more organize play. She's doing great at preschool, very social and always looking out for her friends. She's got her name writing down, and likes to practice sounding out words, but isn't quite reading yet. She seems to have a pretty good grasp of numbers too. She's often talking about how when she turns 6, Kate will turn 4, and Adele will be 2 or 3. She'll run through how old her sisters will be at all different ages. Her Spanish is coming along really well, she's started to put together some complete sentences and tries to speak it much more than before. She still prefers English of course, but I know a lot of Spanish is soaking in.
Emeline is also big on independence lately. Yes, this means some pretty intense tantrums if she doesn't get her way, but it also means being a lot more helpful when she puts her mind to it. She's learning to take a shower by herself and she's even helping me with the dishes. When she wants to, she can be really helpful in cleaning up around the house, helping with chores, and helping out her sisters.
I could go on and on about our Emeline. She is so full of life. But her are a few pics of her lately in all her 5 year old glory!
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Emeline's 5th Birthday
As most 4 and 5 year olds, Emeline has been talking about her birthday for months. She has been wanting to have a princess birthday, a Brave birthday, a Cinderella birthday, a biking birthday, and there are probably other ideas I've since forgotten. BUT the theme that stood out to me, was that she was constantly talking about who she wanted to dress up as for her birthday, so I asked her if she'd like to have a party where she can play dress up with some of her friends. She thought that sounded fun, but then she also said that she wanted to have an art festival. I figured we could work in some arts and crafts into a birthday party, so then I asked her what colors we should decorate with, and right away she said, "Rainbow!!". So off we went, planning her rainbow, dress up, art party.
We also decided to try our hands at a drop off style, kids party. I asked Emeline to pick 5 friends, who were also almost 5, to invite to keep it on the small side. She kept changing the 5 friends, and knowing what a social butterfly she is, we let her invite a few more, but still tried to keep it a little small so we could manage all the kids. All in all it was a great morning! The kids seemed to have a lot of fun! Here are some pictures of our celebration.
Rainbows galore! The rainbow fruit water turned out great, although oddly the kids kept asking for plain water. And Wes worked his usual magic with the streamers.
We set up all our dress up clothes in the living room, and let the kids go to town.
We hired our friend/neighbor/babysitter to do some face painting. The kids loved it! She's a great artist too.
After art was done, we served the kids some lunch. Homemade mac n cheese (too bad kids never actually like this), hot dogs, rainbow fruit skewers, and veggies and hummus.
After lunch it was time for cupcakes! We sang to Emeline, then the kids got to decorate their own cupcakes. I thought for sure kids would just dive in and eat the cupcakes, but this was the most quiet part of the party. They were all so focused on decorating their cupcakes. It was a hit!
And surprise! They were piñata cupcakes!
Once the cupcakes were consumed, there wasn't much time left before parents arrived, so the kids just ran around more and tried on a few more costumes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)