On this day when the high temperature was something crazy like 45 I felt compelled to post this scrapbook page I did of Emma this week. I chose this photo because this was her #1 favorite thing to do EVERY SINGLE DAY this Summer.
In one of the 300 magazines I read I came across an article about cheap Summer entertainment for kids. You take a bucket, fill it with water and give the kid a cheap paint brush. Voila! It’s hours of water fun. Both my water babies went through a couple of bags of cheap paint brushes. Gwen drew lines and ‘parking spaces’ on the driveway for a bike obstacle course. Emma practices writing her name, and many other words she is learning to spell and write. And on those days when the temperature hovers around 100, the water evaporates quickly.
Today Les and I had lunch at the elementary school with Gwen. This was the annual Thanksgiving lunch. Each student can invite whomever he or she wants to have lunch with for a small fee of $4 per person.
A slice of turkey, a scoop of dressing, a ladle of gravy, a spoon of cranberry sauce and what amounted to sweet potato soup AND a cup of sweet ice tea - all for $4. And it’s actually very good. They even throw in a piece of cake. This is a treat for the students since the lunch isn’t nearly this plentiful or sugary.
The turn out is always very healthy and this year the seating was more comfortable since students who did not have guests dining with them were taken back to their classrooms to dine, thereby freeing up seats for the extra guests.
We didn’t take Emma. She was at her preschool playing with the boyfriend du jour.
Emma is almost 5
After picking Emma up from Mother’s Day Out today I stopped at the entrance of the neighborhood to take a few pictures of her under the changing leaves. She’s been photographed enough that she already knows how to stand. She’s so smart and so observant. She’s got a great memory and she’ll correct you in a heartbeat. She has a voice, an opinion and she wants both heard. She’s almost 5.
In the midst of dumping and burning photos off my laptop tonight I came across this picture of Gwen performing her ‘bike ballet’ this past June. She has several other moves she’s perfected but this is the only one that I managed to capture on this day. So I spent a few minutes crafting this makeshift magazine cover using my Adobe Photoshop CS2 - I love that program.
This is Gwen’s first day wearing her new braces. No, she doesn’t have brackets on all her teeth. It looks like she is missing a tooth on the top but in actuality, the tooth is there, just too far back to see. So the braces will eventually pull this tooth into it’s desired position - and the Orthodontist believes it will take 10 months to do that.
Gwen was a ball of nerves this morning, despite my reassurance that it was a cake walk. There are no shots involved, no anesthesia. I think the most difficult decision she had to make was what color bands to choose for her brackets. And as you can see, she went with the pink and turquoise combo this month.
Day 1 with braces
