Five years old already

Isa is growing up so fast. We're in our second and last year of preschool, and working on choosing kindergartens for next year. It's so hard to believe my baby is already five years old!

She learned to read over the past year. She started out with the Bob books, which use three-letter words. They're a great way to introduce kids to reading. She picked up steam really quickly and now she is reading easy readers and some chapter books on her own. She is currently hooked on The Magic Treehouse, and I can barely keep up, gathering them from the library so she can read them in order.

Yesterday I picked her up from school and she said "Guess what Mom? I sneaked some snow from the playground and put it in my pocket!"

I said "Oh, honey, I bet it melted. Is your pocket wet?" I thought she'd probably gotten a little handful of snow and she'd be disappointed that it was gone.

She reached in her coat and said "No it didn't. Look!" She pulled out a pocket-sized lump of ice. She was so proud of it. She named it Icy, and asked me to put it in her snack container. She told me I couldn't run the heater on the way home. When we got home we put it in the freezer. Now she has a memento of our one substantial snowfall so far this year.

She has such a great imagination. We went to Disney World for her 5th birthday and to celebrate the holidays. She still believes in all the characters. I love how she is able to believe that scary characters aren't real, but good ones are. When she asks me "Do you think mermaids are real?" or "Do you think fairies are real?" I usually say "What do you think?"  I hope she never loses her belief in magic, or her ability to create a little of her own every day.

Spring has sprung...now summer is here

First day of summer and Happy Father's Day! We've had a busy, crazy spring.

After all our parties and stuff were over, I didn't get many more x-mas and birthday pics because, well, this was happening:

Here she is nibbling a chocolate bunny at Easter. We stayed home for Easter and had a great time. She played with the pink paper Easter grass for days.

Another highlight of our spring were these tiny turtles. We stumbled across them (literally) in the yard one day and checked them out. Then we checked on them every day for about a week until they both moved on or...something (yeah, let's go with "they found a happy turtle home").

Isa finished up her first year of preschool at the end of May. She loved her class and teachers. We thought about trying early kindergarten since she is so smart and mature for her age, but she gets along really well with her classmates, and we didn't want to rush her into a five-day-a-week full time school.

Especially since for her 5th birthday, we're GOIN' to DISNEY WORLD! :)

Fairy Isa

It will be the last year we can just do whatever we want without worrying about missing school, and she turns 5 in December. So we thought it would be a great time to go before she ages out of a lot of the Disney stuff. It's also coming up on mine and D's 15th anniversary, and that's where we went on our honeymoon.

Princess Isa

Planning our Disney trip has taken my mind off of other things, such as D. finding out he's allergic to even more stuff: oats and wheat. He had another severe reaction that clued us in to that, one involving 911 (again!) and the e-room. But this time he actually swallowed part of the offending food so it was like a little bomb going off internally. NOT fun. After that, he injured his back, and it took him weeks to recover. But he is feeling better now and we're thankful he's back in good health.

I even figured out how to make him cake for Father's Day.

All those nice gluten-free treats and mixes out there cause big problems for D. They either contain or call for eggs. So we reverted way back in time before I knew about Depression Cake. All the way back to when the only way I knew to make eggless cake was to dump a can of Coke into a cake mix. And darned if it didn't work out perfectly fine for a GF mix.

I used Betty Crocker's GF version. The reason I chose Betty rather than a different brand is, the original Coke cake worked best with a mainstream brand of mix. It took less coke than a standard mix - just about a cup. But it rose and baked fine, and was sturdy enough to hold up the massive pile of frosting I put on there (frosting is GF by nature. Thank the Universe for small favors).

I would post a recipe but there really isn't one. A standard GF cake mix (I know Betty works and others probably do too; would love to hear from others who try it) and a cup of Coke (or diet coke, or sprite...). Stir, pour into a pan prepared the way it says on the box, and bake according to package directions. Easy as pie...er...cake. I still haven't figured GF pie out.

Happy Holidays!

Isa had her first "big" birthday party at Wheels play gym earlier this month. It was great to celebrate with her and all the kids. Most of her preschool class made it as well as some friends we hadn't gotten to see for a while.




That same weekend, we went to see Frozen on Ice. Isa had a great time. The snowman song was the best. Even though the place was Frozen-mad, she picked out an Ariel snow cone cup for a souvenir. Still loyal to The Mermaid.

Unfortunately she got sick right after that and missed most of the last week of preschool. She misses her friends already, but she gets to see them before school starts again since one of them has a birthday party coming up.

On Friday we went to a party at the Hillsborough Rec Center and I got Isa to wear this holiday outfit by telling her she was dressing up as a candy cane. :) These little parties are great! She got to make fake snow (mix shaving cream and corn starch - who knew?), color gingerbread people, make a snowman ornament out of popsicle sticks, and play games with the other kids. I got to go yarn shopping while she did all that. :D

We've been busy gearing up for Christmas. We did our first cookie house, and I made a ton of homemade gingerbread for us, work, Isa's classmates, and various other people. I went a little heavy on the frosting...we like our snowmen and bears fluffy.

"I ate all the extras"

Just 3 more days! Hope you and your family have a great holiday season and a happy new year.

Fall fun!

We're having a great October so far.

The first weekend, we hit the library book sale. Nevermind that we'd just shopped at the preschool book fair (you can't have too many books). We got a pile of books at the library sale. Even though it's pure chaos, we look forward to the sale every year, and we always load up. I've slowly been picking up easy-reader books for Isa since she's starting to learn sight words (when she has the patience to wait on us to point to them - maybe for one book out of three!).

Then I took a day off to go to the zoo, because they have LION CUBS!!!!

We were lucky to get there when the cubs were pretty active. They were all nursing for a while, then some played while some wanted to keep bugging the mama to nurse some more.

"I got up and moved for a REASON, kid!"

This one just wanted to cuddle. Aw...

Sleepy babies!

Of course after all that lion adorableness, when we got to the carousel we had to hop on the lion.

This weekend, we went to Ganyard Hill Farm for pumpkin picking. We'd never done the pumpkin patch thing before so we were in for a happy surprise! There was lots to do: hay rides, a corn maze, a hay mountain with a slide, and Isa's favorites, the corn crib and cotton field.

We brought home handfuls of cotton and I'm sure it will come in handy for something crafty.

After all that fun, we went out and picked our three pumpkins. It was neat getting to pluck them right out of the fields!

Here's our pumpkin trio, all cleaned up and ready to decorate:

Happy Fall!

And you thought walking a mile uphill both ways in the snow was bad...

My business trip came and went, and I really enjoyed New Hampsire and Maine, but I hated to have to leave Isa while she was sick! She had a cold this week and missed both days of preschool. I left her presents for every day I was gone, so she enjoyed those.

I also brought her this game, Feed the Kitty, from a toy store I went to in Portsmouth. Portsmouth has some great shopping and eating. Isa figured out how to play the game two turns in, and she loves it. We've played it about five times already and I'm sure Dan has played it with her quite a few too.

Another fun present I brought Isa was a book about the Nubble Lighthouse in York, Maine. I just grabbed the book because it was cute and it was about a boy and his pet seagull. The boy is the lighthouse keeper's son, and they have to find a way to get him to the mainland for school. So the lighthouse keeper rigs up a cable with a pulley and a box hanging from the cable, and reels his son to and from school across the channel between the lighthouse island and the mainland. When we got to the end of the book it had a note saying it was based on a true story. Crazy, eh? It's included in this page of facts about the lighthouse. When the story got out, the Coast Guard made the guy stop sending his son across in the box. Sheesh, it's not even that far...

We have got to go back here on vacation soon!

We had Isa's parent-teacher conference this week too. Dan went and I stayed home with Isa since she was still feeling sickly. She got great reviews from both teachers. Miss M. said she was very, very advanced. They both said she listens well, follows directions, plays well with the other kids, and there's nothing we need to work on as far as preschool goes. We're very proud of her. We also got commissioned to collect acorns to bring in next week for the preschool kids because they're learning about fall. :)

Tomorrow we're off to Lowe's Build and Grow to make a firetruck. But before that Isa and I are going to make scones. We use a basic recipe that has heavy cream, flour, a little sugar and whatever goodies we have handy. Right now we have pomegranates so if I get up in time I'm going to seed one and make pomegranate chocolate scones. Another combo we like is chopped apples and walnuts. Here's our recipe:

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
milk for glazing
 various tasty stuffs: fruit, nuts, chocolate chips, etc

Preheat oven to 400 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or grease it. I'm lazy, I use parchment paper). In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, fillings, and salt. Add cream and vanilla, and stir until moistened.

Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Knead a couple times, then pat into a disc about an inch thick. Cut into 12 triangles. Place each scone on the baking sheet and brush with milk.

Bake 15 min. or until golden.

New school, and counting down the days until Halloween

Our September is going great so far. Isa started school on the 3rd. It's a half-day program three times a week, and she really enjoys it. She loves making art and singing songs the best. When we go to pick her up, we can hear all the kids singing the "Pollywog song" through the door.

Here's her smiley first day of school photo:

Her favorite lunch is peanut butter and jelly, but she also likes monkey sandwiches (Justin's hazelnut spread and bananas). This week I made her some pepperoni rolls cheese rolls since she decided she doesn't like pepperoni. Hopefully she'll eat those for lunch as a pb&j alternative. Dan and I sure loved them. The recipe is here. But since Dan is allergic to eggs I used a blob of vegan mayonnaise, and it worked fine. I also stuffed the cheese-only ones with ricotta. We'll be making these again soon.

We were going to go to the museum today, but it rained, so we mostly stayed inside except for a quick trip out to collect acorns and draw on the deck with chalk. We painted some butterfly magnets and then we got the Halloween bin out of the attic.

Ohhh, the Halloween bin. Isa loves Halloween as much as we do. Halloween may be my favorite holiday. I don't have to shop, I don't have to cook, and the sole purpose is to dress up and eat candy. We had a great time going through the decorations, putting them out, and playing with all the Halloween toys. Isa came up with a great costume:

She also made up a Halloween song. It went something like this:

Spooky spooky spooky spooky halloween!
Tall trees that have lights on them
You better run away
Or you'll get a surprise
Spooky spooky spooky everything
Spooky spooky spooky spiders

That's all I remember but I got a recording of the part where she switched to singing "Monster monster monster." I'll post that later. I'm being summoned to play Sims 2 before bedtime.

I've been meaning to come back to this!

Time flies when you're having fun. It was before Easter when I started this blog, and I kept meaning to come back to it. I hadn't yet invited anyone to it since I only had one post! Maybe I'll invite some people now that I have two.

Our Easter trip to the beach was rainy and cold, but we got to see a lovely wedding, and Isa enjoyed her basket. Here she is at the wedding. It was her first wedding; she was fascinated with the bride's beautiful dress and very glad to be there:

We filled her eggs with about half candy and half rocks. The kid loves rocks. She says she is going to be a geologist when she grows up.

Since Easter we've had a busy spring and summer. We went to the Festival for the Eno, where we had a blast listening to music and wading with the minnows. We went to a birthday party at Pullen Park. It was our first time there but it won't be our last since there are so many fun things to do.

Isa had her first day of preschool summer camp in July. She had a great time, and is excited about starting back for good this Wednesday.

We had visits from four out of six grandparents this spring and summer, and just got back from a trip to WV where we we saw all six grandparents and almost all of Isa's cousins.

I'll try to update more often with what we're up to! We just joined the YMCA, so there's lots of swimming in our future.