Ummm, still here

It really is appalling how rarely I am posting lately. I have been quite busy trying to get used to Alexa's school schedule and getting the house painted a bit, and my usual knitting and spinning and horseback riding and exercising. We took a trip at the beginning of the month up to Seattle for Jamie's 9th birthday. The cousins enjoyed playing together.

And swimming in the hotel pool. Sophia knows how to swim now!

Alexa loves the water so much. I took her for some rides on my back using my snorkel.

The first day of school!

Alexa went to the first day of kindergarden today. She was too excited to eat much breakfast, and she had to get up at 6:20 am, but she and Daddy were waiting on the front step at 7:15 for the bus. She gets to ride a big bus to school, and the bus driver who lives two doors down will bring her home.

She has been going to school on the bus for a couple of years now, so this is routine for her, but she was still very excited, although you can't tell from the photo so much.

So now that David doesn't have a job we are at home without Alexa for 5 hours every morning..kind of strange. (She only goes to school for 3 hours, but the bus ride to and from is kind of long.)

A whirlwind of a month

I don't really know how it happened, but a month went by without me updating the blog. I also have this character weakness that goes like this: things start piling up, and then I don't want to tackle them, because they have become so overwhelming that I don't know where to start, so I put it off, and they pile up further, and so on and so forth. I need to get back to the Flylady website and start reading about 15 minutes at a time again! Anyway, I will try to get a little bit caught up here. We ordered a trundle bed for Alexa from ebay, and various problems were encountered, and it didn't actually get here in an undamaged condition until two months after her birthday.

Then, we went to Hawaii. Alexa loves riding buses of all sort, so the shuttle bus to the airport from the parking lot was quite fun for her.

After more than five hours of flight time, we arrived in Kona, HI. Penny bought leis for us all. They smell so wonderful. I remember that smell from the last time I came to Hawaii about 15 years ago.

Hawaii in August was very hot and humid. The house we stayed in was beautiful, but not air-conditioned. Fortunately there was a pool, and Alexa figured out how to swim with her floaty. She never wanted to get out of the pool.

I thought this picture of Penny was so fun, I hope she doesn't mind me sharing.

We went to the volcano, and stopped at this restaurant on the way. It advertises itself as the southermost restaurant in the USA. They had wonderful food!

Alexa's cousin Christopher is 5 years old too, and a chatterbox, so they got on spectacularly.

Our last meal together, breakfast before flying out.

A fun day "camping"

About a week ago we had a fun day with Deniece's family out on their property where they sort of camp out during the end of the summer. They call it Camp Rita. (Deniece's grandma.)
They have a neat creek where they swim.
And we went out to see Rita's horses. Here is Rita's sister and her year old horse Charlie, who is amazingly obedient for his age, and so soft, and beautiful. Alexa got to sit on him for a bit. He isn't old enough for an adult to ride him yet, but he can handle a child.

Alexa is so comfortable around the horses. They were pretty much nibbling at her hair, and she just stood there, completely unconcerned. The other kids got pretty nervous when the horses got too close. I do have keep her close and make sure they don't knock her over or step on her, but I loved these friendly horses!

Beading, playing in the park with friends

Alexa was so thrilled with her beading skills. She has had a set of large beads and tygon tubing that she has been using for a long time now. I thought this would be a good small motor skill activity, so I got a little beading kit from Michael's for $1.00, and she sat and put beads on this string for at least 45 minutes without pausing!Alexa got a haircut again. She had begun pulling her rubber bands out and chewing on her hair all the time, and I couldn't stand the food and spit in her hair all the time.

We had a playdate at the park with Reese and Tayler and Carleen last week. We had a lot of fun.

Avery Park is one of our really cool parks, it has a full size train locomotive (is that redundant). The kids love it.

A really cool big tree.

daVinci Days

We had a fun annual event in Corvallis last weekend called daVinci Days. It is a really cool three day fair type things, but the focus seems to be on renewable and alternative energy. They have a cool parade and mud bog races. I participated in a children's activity where you could make your own crown. Theoretically this is Alexa's crown, but she did not really love the whole thing as much as I did.

Here are Daddy and Alexa waiting for the Kinetic Parade to start.

One of the pedaled vehicles. (I think the human powered vehicles are the ones that do the mud race thing..but if someone knows the details, please explain to me.)

Alexa loved this parade so much, she clapped a "talked" about it for 10 minutes after it was over.

In other fun news, we paid a plumber 115$ to get a plastic bath toy out of the toilet yesterday. And later in the day she got the refrigerator open to get some milk..which she is not allowed to do by herself, and knocked my half gallon pitcher full of hand squeezed lemonade out and spilled it all. I had not yet had a single drink of it. A half gallon of lemonade takes a long time to mop up, and then several moppings to get the residual stickiness off the floor.

Today she is just being wierd. She went to bed at her usual time yesterday evening (9:00) and slept in until I woke her up at 10:00 am this morning for therapy. She usually wakes up between 7:00 and 8:00. Now it is 5:00 and she is starting to show signs of waking up from a 2.5 hour nap. She doesn't have a fever, and she ate both breakfast and lunch and drank some water today, so I don't think there is anything wrong warranting a doctor visit.. but if this keeps up I may call them tomorrow, it is a little odd!

More Little Gym Pictures

This is what we do every Friday at 11:00 am. Mommy and Alexa get lots of exercise together. She loves this stuff and learns so much from it.

She is really good at forward rolls, and does them spontaneously at home all time. She doesn't always carefully consider where she will end up, but fortunately hasn't hurt herself yet.

It is hard to get pictures of this side of the gym because of the bright window behind us, but we try anyway.

She isn't sure about some of this stuff, so I have to be a major cheerleader.

If you have a little gym in your area you should try it, they always offer a free class to try it.