Another Alice Playdate

Alice came over for an after-school play date again. It was a spectacularly warm and sunny day for March.

The girls started on the swings.

Then moved on to the climbing structures.
Alice is such a ham sometimes!

Ally was proud to show off how she could climb on the outside of the structure.

They had so much fun.

I usually ask Ally if she wants one more swing on the bar before we leave. Alice wanted one too. I thought it would be a great picture of them both hanging on the bar next to each other.

But neither one can reach the bar.

So I would lift one girl up, then the other, then get my camera and try and grab a shot before one of them dropped.

Oh they laughed and giggled and dropped before I could get a picture. Just so I would have to lift them again.

Finally though with the promise of popsicles on the way home they held on long enough:

walking into the store for popsicles

yummy

this is how they walked home from the park - so they could each hold the popsicles

it was a riot

As usual they had a blast together.

Weekend with Grandma Debbie

WOO WOO Grandma Debbie is finally here!!!!

Ally was super excited last Friday - Debbie came for the weekend, weekly swimming lessons started with two of her good friends, she has had lessons with Stella for almost a year now, and recently Willow joined in. to make the excitement even better, when we got to the Rec Center for lessons, there was a gymnastics meet in progress! So we sat and watched that while we waited for our friends to arrive.

Ally asked to have Grandma sleep in her room, so we made Ally a bed on the floor out of her old crib mattress and Debbie shared Ally's room all weekend. Ally loved it. The first morning they made snowflakes in their pajamas.


Debbie and Ally made cookie lollipops and had an afternoon of fun and Becky and I went to the mall and fabric store.
We all had lunch together after gymnastics and as soon as we were done eating Ally said to me "you and mama are going to leave now right?" with a HUGE smile on her face. She had really been excited about time just her and Debbie.


Ally and her lollipop cookie.

Sunday morning the 3 generations were doing some serious crafting. Above is paper flowers to decorate our house for Easter.

Below they are all gathered around the sewing machine looking at the Easter dress Becky is making Ally.

Becky sewed and Debbie, Ally and I went to Ally's school to play on the playground. The building was open so we showed Grandma Ally's classroom and the cafeteria. Here they are in front of a bulletin board of Art from Ally's class. There is a circle around Ally's project.

Outside Ally had a blast on the tire swing.

Debbie had fun too.

After lunch we went back out to the park down the street from our house. Ally rode her bike.

Beautiful warm sunny weather, a funny loving Grandma and a happy silly 5 year old made it a great weekend.

Guat Girls Early March Gathering

The weekend before last we got together with the Guat Girls and went to a program on Latin music and story telling.

Unless I held her this is how Ally looked most of the time. She was extremely clingy. No surprise, considering it was a concert and a crowd of people.

So I got up and drummed - Ally took this picture.

She did eventually join Rosa, Gabi and Roxie to try out the drums.

Here are all 5 of them (from left to right) Roxie, Rosa, Alice, Ally & Gabi



After the show we went to dinner together at a restaurant - big step for us to be out in public together - and we had 3 other Guat born siblings with us so it was quite a crowd!


Gabi, Ally and Rosa had so much fun sitting together and goofing around!

Writing

Becky and I were so amazed to watch Ally learn to draw and color and create. Its the same with writing. It is fascinating. I made Ally a book over the weekend and I drew the lines on the paper so she could write the words in herself and told her to work on the writing and sounding out the words.

This is the first page.

It says I was in the car.

I think she decided this book is going to be about Florida - and we had a grey rental car and it was sunny there. I can hardly wait to see the rest of the book.

In Florida she did this picture all by herself.

Ally, 2 kinds of swings and it says I am with the swings


She recently learned how to draw 5 point stars.
I came home one night and she left this piece of paper out for me to see.
Her babysitter told me it was for Mommy.
Above is one side and below is the other side of the page.


Stars stars stars

Ally drew a cat recently too.

Little Entrepreneur

Ally was selling Girl Scout cookies in our neighborhood this week. It was pick up cookies day and the adult volunteers set up a table outside for the girls to sell to people walking by.

Ally with her Daisy pinafore on over her coat - it was a FREEZING cold night. That is Stella next to her - Stella is holding her uniform - it was not ready to be worn yet - she just got hers.

Ally giving this nice woman her cookies.

It was really fun. I have such strong memories of selling cookies as a brownie and a girl scout.

Ally and the other girls got really into it calling out "want to buy some cookies" and we sold quite a few boxes. Frankly its hard to resist 5 year old girls on a cold night all giggly and shy-smiley selling yummy cookies.

Here is Ally in her pinafore at home - this was taken just before we left.

Love

Ally now likes to make us cards or notes. Sometimes she does that at school and brings them home. This was for MAMA

It says i LV WO (I love you)

Kiss for mama

kiss for Ally

And silly scary Ally pose for mommy's camera!

Fabulous Day

Today was the "Mini Olympics" at gymnastics. Ally was a bit nervous about it since she has missed the last 2 weeks of classes while we were in Florida. But wow did she rally and she was AMAZING. Her teacher was thrilled - and told us we need to have an audience for Ally every week!

Here she is with 2 other girls from her class waiting for their turn to perform. The way the program works is the younger (or more inexperienced) go first and then they work their way up. Ally's class is the highest level for this time slot, which meant they were last. I imagine she had no nails left to bite by the time it was her turn to perform.

Here she is on the bar. She did the hip circle and forward roll ALL BY HERSELF. This is so huge. Her teacher could not contain her excited and said to the girl after Ally "she just did all by herself". Jenn - her coach spotted her a bit on the first circuit and the the second time it was all just spotting and Ally did the entire thing with her own body and momentum. We've watched the video a bunch of times already and Ally is so proud of herself - she gets a huge smile and she told me the first time we watched "I like this one best (the 2nd time)...I did it all by myself." Such a big grown up girl.

I did take a video of the whole thing on our better camera and Becky took these on Ally's camera so we would have some pictures for the blog. I can't seem to get video up loaded well on the blog. If I did not send you the link to the video and you want to see it leave a comment or email and I'll share the video.

On the beam.

jumping to a handstand position

This is Ally's class - one girl was missing - but yes this is who she practices with every week. And the two girls on the right are 9 years old. I think the blonde girl is 6.

Another great thing is that Ally's friend River from our neighborhood group has his class at the same time as Ally and her performed today as well. Ally thought that was neat since they also did the year end show together last June. Friends are such a good thing.

After the program ended they had a short practice. Here she is waiting for her turn on the tumble track where at the end her coach helps her do a front handspring.

the handspring Ally was so thrilled she skipped all the way back to do it again

Then it was on to the big beam. Look at our big girl all by herself on the tall beam.

Ally reminds me its not the really tall beam - the regulation one is about 6" higher.

It was really great - we got to stay in the gym the whole time and could really see what she does.

After class - with her ribbon for taking part in the Mini Olympics

Ally took our picture

Then it was on to celebration time. We asked Ally this week what she wanted to do after gymnastics to celebrate her Olympics. She thought about it a lot a couple times and finally said "cupcakes". Because of course celebration requires cupcakes.

Becky and I thought too and came up with a few more ideas. Here is our day:

We went to the movies - we saw S.ecret World of Arietty - I highly recommend it. Ally is sitting with her "Booey Bear" Grandma Barbie gave her this red bear for Valentine's Day and Ally named it "Booey". He joined us for the post gymnastics celebration.

After the movie it was off to Ally's pick of restaurant for lunch - Panera of course.

We stopped at the toy store and then it was to a local cupcake bakery for cupcakes.

At the toy store Ally got a new book - its an I Can Read book and it turns out Ally can read a lot of it!

She was so tired she fell asleep in the car on the way home.

But when she woke up it was time to eat our cupcakes. We each picked out own flavor. Ally's was vanilla with white butter cream frosting. Mine was chocolate with chocolate frosting.

Ally loved hers

She ate every bite.

Becky's was a mocha-cino cupcake - and she ate every bite as well.

This afternoon at home we did some crafts, played with the dollhouse, and enjoyed quite time together as a family.

What a great day.