tawbubby

Amelia and I attached the Stomp Rocket to the front of her bike basket today.  She can press the air pillow with her knee to launch the rocket while riding.  Awesome!

Ethan was about to take a picture of Amelia in her charming dress up outfit.  As he snapped the photo, she saw a Daddy Long Leg.  There is fear in that face!

A quick post of some accumulated pictures.  Here’s some water slide action, for those who like videos.  Last week, Daphne and I went with Amelia for her weekly Cobblestones Water Park visit.  She went on one bigger slide twice, too.

Daphne went to a birthday party at the YMCA climbing wall, and Ethan took this great shot.

A babysitter taught Amelia to shuffle…she’s proud of her new skill.

Daphne got to host her class guinea pig, Chewy, for a weekend.  It was lot of fun.  He is very social and cute, and boy does he love parsley.

Amelia got a new hand-me-down bike from a friend’s daughter.  She’s so tall.  She’s going into 1st grade and got the bike from a girl going into 5th grade.  Her first question on her first ride with this bike was “When is the last day of summer, mama?” because she knows I hope she’s off training wheels this summer.  She has some muscles in those legs.  She rode all the way to our pool, around the pond, back past her friend’s house to say hi, and home (maybe 1.5 miles).

She also learned to play Solitaire this weekend while we were at The Cabin.  She had it easy because we set up 6 pile games, instead of 7, since the little table she played on was 6 boards wide.  Now that she’s home, she’ll have to try the harder 7 pile version.

Girls, reading on Daddy’s cot.  I hope we’re raising a family of readers. (D&P that’s Lemony Snicket #11…).

Daphne loves pretending with her playmobile toys.  And she has The Best hair.

And we made a pool in the river for them to play.  She enjoyed sending leaf boats across the pool, from the entrance to the exit in the flow of water.

Watch out for this girl when she plays Cowboys with the neighbor boys!

Daphne got to play glow-in-the-dark golf with her Daddy one night when Amelia had a sleepover.  Super cool.

She is getting to be such a big girl.

On the boat to Monhegan Island.

During our first hike.  She can rock a dress and keens for a cool outdoorsy style.

This is for Aunt Mel.  I got her a fashion design plate kit like we used to have- she loved it!

Coloring with watercolor crayons on the rocks.

Her inspiration is in the background.

The follow up painting after getting back to the house, accompanied by Blueberry Soda.  Amelia never liked soda before trying this one- delish!

Here she is with the giant lupines, for perspective on how tall they are.  They’re no Texas bluebonnet (not everything is bigger in Texas!).

Swinging on a swing on the way up to the lighthouse, next to a great lemonade and brownie stand.

My favorite- “Mama!, I like skeletons,  I’m really interested in these!” (pointing to a preserved jelly fish).

The girls used our old iPhone3s for cameras during our trip to Monhegan Island.  Here are Daphne’s pics of:
A Duck.

And Amelia.

Here are Amelia’s pictures of:

A Duck.

And Daphne.

She wasn’t cracking too many smiles until she found me in the audience at the end.

Daphne is actually 43 inches tall now, a new ride category at Busch Gardens.  Clearly in the purple.  She’s been talking about it all winter.  We finally made it down there, after she’s been asking all spring “When are we going to Busch Gardens?”

Daphne is our brave girl.  She rode this once with each of us, and in general is game to go on most rides.

Still smiling, second time on the ride.  (Thanks for the glasses, Mel!)

And on the swings with Ethan (which Amelia likes, too, but only in a double seat).

Amelia isn’t as brave.  Daphne gives Amelia a good push, sometimes.

This is a roller coaster that makes a water spray after a loop, and they are waiting for the approaching spray.  Amelia’s ducked behind Ethan for protection.  Daphne says “Bring it on!”

This is more Amelia’s pace:

This is a giant tube slide to get down from a tree house & net climbing structure.  I love the slide.

The big event was the Roman Rapids- a water tube-get soaked ride.  This is the ride Daphne talked about all winter.  We all went, we all got soaked.  They didn’t want to go again.  Until about 10 minutes into the car ride home, when they said maybe they’d go twice next time.

Amelia drew this at the VMFA Picasso exhibit during an outing with Bebe a few weeks ago.

She was inspired by  “The Tree”:

During her second drawing, in another room, a guard said she wasn’t allowed to draw.  It’s apparently a rule of the exhibit, even for a 6 year old.

2372 days old.

We got outside a couple evenings this week in nice weather.  Tuesday night our neighbors had a osprey in their tree.  The osprey was sitting on a branch, eating a fish!  Well, a half fish.  We didn’t see it eat the first half.  The fish cross section was clearly visible under the bird’s talons.  It was really neat.  Daphne was able to find the bird a couple times in the binoculars.

Since last year, Ethan’s been promising Amelia a clip on flower for her bike, if she can ride it to our neighbor Sahana’s house.  Folks, this is not far.  But it is all up hill.  She got there tonight with two or three one finger pushes from me. But she made it.

Apparently the important thing was that she knew she could do it.  After dinner, she decided she could go all the way to the top sign.  There’s no stopping her now!

She is pretty funny riding down hill.  She won’t let loose.  She glides for 10 feet, then brakes, glides, then breaks, glides, then breaks.  She is  very careful.  Though some how she ended up with a scratch on her shin.  She proclaimed she had a great ride, as evidenced by the boo-boo.