Happy Birthday Lila!

Today is Lila's 4th birthday. We celebrated by having a mommy-daughter day. We took a trip to the zoo - just the two of us - and then went and got supplies for her birthday party on Saturday. We also had an ice cream stop, and then took Lila to get her ears pearced!

About to have her ears pierced - a little nervous/excited...

Here we go...
Not quite sure about that...

That really hurt, but she's such a brave, big girl!

A present after we're at home with the family:


Deep focus on her new DS... I love the look of concentration and how this picture shows off her new earrings & her freckles!

Brain Game

We have a Junior Boggle game that we don't play with too often, but we got it out last night and Lila actually did very well with it! Out of 12 three-letter words, Lila sounded out and spelled 9 correctly! The amazing part about it is that we've never really sat down with her to help her learn to read - much less spell.


Lila's Correct words:
bat
top
pig
map
dog
fan
cat
bag
hat

Words she missed:
pie (she spelled it "pi")
can (she spelled it "cen")
owl (she spelled it "aol")

And she's not even four! :)

To whomever was in the line in front of me at Starbucks yesterday...

THANKS for the coffee!

As I rolled up to the window at the Starbucks Drive Thru yesterday morning I was informed that my coffee had already been paid for by the gentleman in the car ahead of me. This was a pay-it-forward random act of kindness much appreciated on a Monday morning!

It's amazing how much something so little can brighten your day. After getting to the office, I didn't even so much care that my kids had obviously played with the refridgerator settings and two cans of diet dr pepper exploded all over the inside of the fridge. =)

So again, thanks, whoever you are! You made my day.

Our Litte Rock Star

The videography may not be as fancy schmancy as the recent Jacob production, but I do believe Clara could give him a run for his money when it comes to playing the drums. Here's our little future drum corps member.

Mallory the public speaker

Mallory was chosen as the only first grader to read a poem at "Donuts for Dad" - a program they have at her school. She was so excited... she asked if she could memorize it! (Which she did - but she still read it).