♫ Hot town, summer in the city ♫

It's another unseasonably warm day here. It was 91° for a high yesterday and it is 85° right now. It still feels like summer. No, you didn't accidentally click on weather.com but it is really hot here...still. The Princess and her daddy braved the heat, though, and had some fun outside.

"A Day In Our Life With The Princess"

**captions mine, except for the first picture**

"Mom, I'm NEVER going to be able to do this"

"Hmmm...maybe Dad will play with me.  Tag, you're it Dad!"

"You can't catch me Dad!"

"I need a break"

"How much do I love you?  This much!!"

Later.....we find Dr. Emma attending to a patient.

"Awwww...it will be ok baby."

"Dr. Emma saves the day!"

"Phewww...I'm exhausted.  All this helping people wears me out.  I think I'll watch some tv."

Family Picture

This is the one and only picture of our entire family, courtesy of Free Flash Toys.  We're so lucky they captured us perfectly, well except for my husband has less hair, and um, I'm a bit heavier, and J parts his hair on the other side, and Jake and Luke are labs, so quite a bit bigger.  Otherwise, perfect!

Wordless Wednesday

The Princess twirls her hair in her sleep/as she is falling asleep. These photos were taken right after she got up.

Gifts from Grandma

Another package arrived today from my mom. Inside were some goodies from my mom's friends, Ron & Diane (who always find great stuff at garage sales) and lots more from my mom.

Yes, it is still warm enough for E to wear to wear sleeveless shirts and shorts

Great cool weather shirt

A girl can never have too many Dora bags!

Jolly The Walrus and the twin of a frog my mom sent earlier.  My mom said this frog was missing his sister so he hopped into the box.  E thought that was hysterical!

What little girl doesn't like play masks and jewelry, bandaids for her|
dolls and more crayons to color with?

As usual, E was thrilled...and thankful...for the gifts her grandma and her grandma's friends send her.  She had to call my mom right away and thank her and then it was off to draw her grandma a pretty picture with her new crayons and play with all her goodies.

Thanks Mom!  You made E's day!!

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

The power company came to replace a pole by our house this afternoon and had to shut off the power to some of the houses on our block, including ours, so we headed outside to play for a bit. N got to come too since he works at home and with the power off, he couldn't use his computer. Any extra playtime with E is a bonus!

Happy Happy Joy Joy

I'm so excited, I could hug a tree!

I'm happy Mom.  Just put that camera away, please!

Really, Mom.  I AM happy to be outside.

Ok.  Believe me now?

But, all good things must come to an end.  Power came back on and it was time to go inside and have dinner and for E to get ready for bed and N to go back to work.  We are enjoying this cooler and less humid weather!

Random Photos

I thought I'd post a few recent pictures of E that I played with in PhotoImpact X3.

Using the Photo/Enhance/Vignette setting

Different Vignette settings

I always carried E in a sling.  She likes to carry her baby around in one too!

PhotoImpact is a fun program.  It can do just about anything you can do in PhotoShop but for a fraction of the cost.  It is pretty reasonably priced at I think around $65 US.  Unfortunately, Corel purchased the program from Ulead and now will not be making any more updated versions.

Sunday Morning Praise & Worship...........

in E's room today.  She loves Jesus and loves to sing songs to Him.  She is singing away to some of her VeggieTales CD's.

 Singing "This Is The Day The Lord Has Made" along with Bob and Larry and the rest oft he VT gang:

Singing part of "Here I Am To Worship" with Natalie Grant:

It's so awesome to see my daughter worship God! It is my fervent prayer that she would love Jesus as much when she is 12 and when she is 20 and when she is 80 as she does today!

Swiffer Saturday and Other Stuff

When I was growing up, Saturday mornings were reserved for "The Big Clean."  My mom did all the housework (except dishes) during the week, but on Saturdays, it fell on us slaves dutiful daughters to do "The Big Clean."  I have three sisters (and a brother who is the youngest and didn't have to partake in the Saturday cleaning ritual) and each Saturday my mom assigned us a room in the house.  Floors were washed, furniture moved and vacuumed behind, windows washed, toilets scrubbed (still not my favorite cleaning task), and stairs were swept. 

Unlike my mom, I don't have four slaves dutiful daughters to help.   Since it is just E and I on the weekends, and she is only four, the majority of the house work obviously falls on me.  But there are some things she loves to do:  folding towels and sweeping the floors with the Swiffer.  Oh how that child LOVES to Swiffer.  Give her the Swiffer and a cloth and you don't hear from her for an hour.

After Swiffering, and folding the bath hand towels and wash cloths for me, it was time for some fun.  The other day I gave E an easy Word Search to do and she was hooked.  We have a coloring book from Animal Planet that has all kinds of, well, animals (pretty smart, aren't I?) in it, but also Word Search puzzles in it.  So E and I spent some time doing two Word Search puzzles. 

All that hard work tired her out, so it was time to watch a little tv.

We just finished making these oh-so-delicious egg-free Oatmeal Cookies.  Yummmmmy!    We will make sure to eat all of them  save some for N when he gets home from work.

That's what we've been up to today.

Warm Fuzzy Alert

As I've been blogging about, E is loving preschool...so much so, that when I tell her we are done for the day, she wants to do more!  This morning as we were sitting at the table, reviewing the short sound the letter E makes, she stops, folds her hands and says "God, thank you for my mom. Thank you that she gets to teach me things at preschool. Amen."

Definitely a Warm Fuzzy moment. ☺☺☺

Excited - A Photo Challenge

There's a cool blog called I ♥ Faces that runs weekly photography contests.  This weeks theme is "Excited" and I definitely have a few pics of E where she looks excited...but you can only enter one. It will be a touch choice.

This is my entry.  We were at the beach earlier this summer and E was so happy to be there.  Can you tell?

Lazy Day

Just a quiet Sunday for us.  Dogs are sleeping on the floor, E and I spent a good 90 minutes in the pool this afternoon and are now just hanging out.  E alternates between playing mommy to her dolly (who is suffering from a bleeding canker sore...the dolly, not E...who has quite the imagination) and reading books.  Gotta love Lazy Days.

You Can't Eat Just One!

We made it to the store today to get what we needed for the brownies so E and I baked some this afternoon.

She has this thing about not wanting slimy stuff on her hands. This from the same kid that will play in the mud/sand/dirt outside, but inside, forgidaboutit. When we baked cookies the other day, she got butter on her hands and was not happy. I calmly told her to just wipe her hands on the towel. Today, she didn't want to put the butter in the bowl because "What if I get butter on my hands?" I told her "E, just" and before I could say anymore, she said "I know, I know. Just wipe my hands on the towel." LOL

So, here she is making her long-awaited brownies.

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The rest of the week...........

We've been busy, enjoying the continued beautiful weather we are having.  Hard to believe that it is already mid-October and in less than three months, The Princess will be five years old!

Here's what else we have been up to:

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The Pool Is Cool.....

but that didn't stop The Princess from going swimming again today. I'm not sure how many more days we will have to go in the pool. Even though it was near 90° today, the sun is lower in the sky and doesn't clear the trees that now shade most of the pool, so the water doesn't warm up as much as it does during the summer.

We are moving onto letter D in preschool. Some of the letters we are going to be moving through quickly as she does already know the sounds for most of the letters. The vowels, and other letters that have more than one sound we are spending a few extra days on. I am making some adjustments to what we actually cover, and how we cover it, so it is a learning process for both of us. E is still enjoying it, and we are spending lots of quality time together, so overall this is a great thing.

I think the turtle park will be in the plans for tomorrow. Oh, that reminds me of something cute. E told me one day after coming home from the turtle park with her dad that they play tic-tac-toe at the park and she would show me how to do it if I went with them. Well, I told her that I could play it with her right now and she couldn't believe it. I got out some paper and drew a tic-tac-toe board and we played several games and now that is ALL she wants to play these days. It is so fun to see her little mind trying to figure things out. I wish she could stay this age forever!

Same Ole, Same Ole

Not much happening here. We're still working on preschool stuff in the morning. E is really enjoying it, and so far, so am I. It's been warm enough to go in the pool still...well, the air is warm enough (it was around 90° today), but the water is a bit cool for me. The Princess, however, gets all in! I have a friend here who said her kids swam in December! Now, that is a too cold for me. We did start swimming here in April, and then the water temp was in the mid-70's...can't imagine how cold it would be in December. We had a quiet weekend, and today was much of the same, as I expect the rest of the week to be as well. Pretty boring..I know.

Christmas in October?

The Princess received another package today from my mom.  What a treasure trove.  I think E now has her fall wardrobe (it stays fairly warm until December where we are so short sleeve shirts will still be wearable).  Plus, my mom's friends again sent a few garage sale gifts as well.   E was so thrilled and said "Wow, that's a lot of gifts.  I'm so lucky."

Showing off Dora's Puppy (Perrito) and one of her new shirts

Lots of shirts

A furry jacket and a knit tank top

Some long pants

These items are all gently used and we are thankful for my mom and her friends for thinking of Emma and looking out for items they know she would like.  Thanks again Mom!!

What have we been up to this week?

Preschool is going very well.   E picked up easily on  the letter B this week, so I decided to split the week into two parts (M-W  for Letter B) and started the letter C today (Th - S).  Since C has two sounds, I'll work on the hard sound /k/ this week and next week do the soft sound /s/ on M-W, then move onto the letter D for Th - S.

We are having a few days of cooler weather which is very welcome.  We have been over 80° pretty much every day since May and most of the summer was near or over 90°.  Don't get me wrong, this is why we moved down here, but it is nice to have a few days break.  It will be back up near 90° for this weekend, so still plenty warm enough to go in the pool in the afternoon (which we did today).

My husband took E to the "turtle" park today.  She has really been looking forward to it and enjoyed the one-on-one time with her daddy.  The park is usually "their" thing to do together.  They don't go often in the summer due to the temps but soon they will be heading their most every day.

We are making chocolate chip cookies in honor of our letter C today.  E loves to help me out in the kitchen. 

Getting ready to make Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Putting the butter in the bowl

Adding the sugar

Mixing it all up

Ready for the oven

Enjoying the fruits of her labor!

And that is what we've been up to this week!