Happy Memorial Day!

We stayed pretty low-key this Memorial Day and cooked out over at Mim and Papa's house. Donald and I were watching Food TV this week (always a dangerous prospect) and saw a show with a Memorial Day menu that sounded fantastic. So, we loaded up on supplies and caravaned over to the Farr House to cook fried chicken, grilled corn, macaroni salad, and peach cobbler. Yum! The girls had a great time playing with the "rats" while Donald and Papa cooked outside. Later, they enjoyed dancing around with their sparklers in the back yard. Supper was a big success that we hope to repeat soon. The corn was just too good to only have once! Hope your Memorial Day was happy - and full of delicious cooking!

Breakfast Time!

Donald and Emily usually make breakfast on Saturday mornings (letting me sleep in, which is always SO nice!). They've turned up with some really interesting items - remember the post with the dry ice cocktails? When I woke up last weekend, I was presented with a platter of pink frosted cinnamon rolls. Yum! Food coloring makes anything taste better. Emily was really proud, as you can tell in the pictures. I hope no one in Food Service looks at these pictures. They would definitely recommend that she wear a hairnet in the future. Her morning head is incredible!

Wacky Day

Another discovery from Auntie Yam's camera - During the week of Dr. Seuss's birthday, Emily's school had all kinds of neat activities. They also had a wacky dress day, which Em was very excited about. We stayed up all night picking out the perfect clothes to wear - colorful tutu, leopard skirt, polka dot shirt, mismatched shoes and socks, crazy hair bow, you name it. Mom and Dad dressed her up the next morning and took her to school. When they picked her up in the afternoon, Emily was in a VERY sour mood. Em's teacher informed Mimi and Papa as they buckled Emily into the carseat that wacky dress day would actually be held the NEXT Friday. So, I'm the Mom who sent her child to school dressed like this on the wrong day. I promised her that in the future I would read the calendar more carefully.

Fabulosity

While looking through the pictures saved on Auntie Yam's camera - always a treasure trove! - I came across this picture of Emily's little foot. This is what fabulosity looks like....plastic high heels, tall socks, flannel pajamas rolled up high. All worn while performing at her little pink piano. Liberace would have wanted to score this look!

Graduation Party

Tonight we celebrated a friend's high school graduation with a party at her house. Emily had a fantastic time. They served all of her favorite food - hot dogs and barbecue potato chips! - and a really killer chocolate cake. Best of all, one of her teachers was there and allowed Emily to talk her ear off for most of the evening. We snapped some cute pictures of her which I've uploaded below. Enjoy this nice weather before it gets all hot and sticky!

Super Supper

Emily and I discovered a super new delicacy at Publix this week - purple potatoes! She was helping me pick out some red potatoes to go with the pot roast (that's right - you read correct. I cook a mean pot roast. Add one more recipe to my meager collection of specialties.) when we ran across a display of gourmet potatoes. Tiny red potatoes, golden fingerling potatoes, and Klondike Petite Purple potatoes. She was in love. They're sort of dusty black on the outside but are a deep rich purple like a plum when you cut them open. The pictures don't really do them justice. She had a special supper of purple potatoes and green beans tonight on her new frog plate. I wonder if I can container garden potatoes on the patio....

Preschool Graduation

Can you believe it? Emily has finished her first year of preschool! Her graduation ceremony was held this week and church and everyone came out to cheer her on during her program. She has been so excited that she could hardly go to sleep at night. She even raised up just before dozing off on the night before her program to remind me that her hair needed "to look beautiful for Miss Virginia for the program." She also woke us up last weekend singing "The Ants Go Marching One by One" into the monitor at top volume...and continued singing after climbing into bed with us. So much for sleeping in! I made her a special headband to match her school shirt so that she would be well-coiffed for the event and make Miss Virginia proud. She did a fantastic job, even if we are a bit biased. She loves to sing and dance and performed all of her songs without a hitch - she even had a special part during the "Down by the Bay" performance. I loved looking around the room and seeing friends from high school with the same goofy lovestruck looks on their faces as the two of us as we all watched our children perform on the stage. Can't believe she'll be in the four year old class next year. Now if we can just get the matter of the fish and fish bowl settled before school starts back up...

Happy Birthday!

We went to a birthday party for a friend at a local jumping center this weekend and Emily had a blast! I'm always scared of these places - too much can go wrong! However, all the kids were roughly the same size and they all played together really well. She had loads of fun climbing up the slide and romping through the inflatable mazes. I got to go along for several trips down the slide. Donald was healing up from a soccer injury and was sidelined with the camera, but that means we got lots of great pictures. She was exhausted by the time we got back to the White House, which meant a long roll-up for both of us. I love weekend naps!

Night time visitors

We have a new friend who comes out to play at night - Rocky the Raccoon! Sometimes, if we're lucky, he comes over to visit before Emily heads upstairs to sleep and we all get to peek out the windows at him for a while. We had a little photo shoot the other night, which is no small feat with a wiggly raccoon in the dark. Who needs to visit the Wild Animal Safari when we have friends like this in the back yard?

Braids!

I came home from school this week and didn't even recognize Emily. Mimi had french braided her hair into two of the sweetest little braids I've ever seen! I had to shoot some pictures. I can't understand how her crazy curly hair managed to stay slicked down like that. If you look closely in the pictures, you'll notice that there aren't even any pony tail holders on the ends of her braids. Her curls are so tight that the braids stayed in without any help! She even slept on it that way and it looked the same when she woke up.

Fun with T.C.

Emily has gotten the notion lately that she can "train" T.C. to sit and perform various other tricks. He has (so far, anyway) not responded to her instructions, but I have enjoyed catching her in the act and photographing their little lessons. Seeing her press on his behind and say "Sit! Sit!" in such a stern voice while T.C. attempts to slither out from under her little hands is loads of fun for me. Thank goodness that T.C., despite his really loud and annoying voice, has been very patient with her!

Relay for Life

Our school's Relay for Life team participated in a volleyball tournament against another school in the district this year and Emily was totally excited to go and cheer on the Pink Panthers. We all wore our pink (even Donald pulled out the pink polo - Emily wanted him to wear pink pants but he just couldn't find any in his closet) and Emily brought along her pom poms so that she could cheer with the cheerleaders. Although the Pink Panthes were not victorious, we had a great time - especially Emily. She got over the noise of the crowd pretty quickly and wanted to stay on the floor with the cheerleaders for the entire game! Throw in one blue lollipop at the end of the game, a pair of flashing glasses, and pizza at Partners and she was one happy girl.

Mary, Bertha, and the Little Lamb

This weekend we committed ourselves to working in the yard - which is not something we normally do and, unfortunately, it's starting to show. We got up early, threw on clothes and pinned up Emily's morning fro, and headed off to Panera for breakfast - one of our favorites this side of Joseph's in Charleston. After a delicious bagel and several scorching cups of coffee, we cruised to Lowe's to pick up some gardening essentials like Dora work gloves and knee pads, Dora trowels and cultivators, Dora purple plastic buckets, and any number of pink and purple bedding plants. Emily is so interested in working in the yard that we're hopeful she will take over this task for us as she gets bigger. After we got home, Donald headed out to pull up some unfortunately placed azaleas while Emily and I stayed inside to pot some new houseplants. We pulled the old plant out of my favorite white elephant planter (which I discovered later was a gift to my Mom from my Dad on the day I was born - how do I not know these things?) and then we replanted it with a beautiful pink plant that Emily picked out. We also planted some cuttings of the old plant in two smaller pots. Emily did a great job shoveling in the potting soil and made sure that the plants were well watered when we finished. Then she decided that the plants needed names. She named the smaller ones Mary and the Little Lamb and I chose Bertha for the elephant. We also scrapbooked some little name tags for the plants so that any visitors would also know their names - her idea, seriously. She is such a funny thing! After that it was time for a good, long rollup. We did outside gardening in the evening after waking up. She helped me trim back the marauding border grass that's threatening to take over our yard. You can tell that yard work is not our priority by the tools we used to do the job - I couldn't locate my little grass snippers, so Emily and I attacked the grass with her little kid scissors. Don't laugh - it worked and it looks much better! Don't you just love springtime?