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| Celebratory dinner with Grandma, Nana, and Aunt Alison visiting. |
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| Her Kitty Cake. |
She is such a bundle of fun, and brings so much happiness to our family. She is learning new words everyday. She loves to dance along with any kind of music and is learning to sing with all her heart. Even if she doesn't know the right words or tune, she just makes it up as she goes.
Her favorite animals are definitely "kitties." She has a kitty shirt, kitty shoes, kitty pajamas, and a kitty necklace, all of which she would love to wear everyday. Also popular are bunnies, doggies, and owls. She also loves shoes!
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| Wearing her new shoes from Grandma. |
She loves to do whatever the big kids are doing. When we have school time, she does her "school" right along with them, looking at books, scribbling all over old scratch paper, and doing "crafts."
A few months ago, we had an FHE lesson about the different roles we each play in the family, and how we all work together to make our home run smoothly. Someone asked, What is Annie's role? We all agreed it was to by cute and make us laugh. --And she's certainly good at it.
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| One of her favorite birthday presents was a star projector.... The other kids have had lots of fun with it too! |
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| Annie, with friend Maddie. |
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| The Jenga blocks were a hit, just not for playing Jenga. |
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| The kids were enthralled by Nana's antique treadle sewing machine. They would pump the treadle by hand and then watch the wheel whirl! |
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| The absolute favorite activity was catching fireflies every evening. |
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| Ada learned the fun of photo bombing! |
One day, we drove into Springfield and visited the Bass Pro Shop. Wow! So enormous and so fun.
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| Yikes! |
We also stopped at a nature center and saw some HUGE bullfrog tadpoles.
Somehow I didn't get pictures, but another day, we visited the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Farm and Laura Ingalls Wilder's home in Mansfield, just up the road from Ava (a highlight for me!).
On the way home, we saw signs for a random place off the road advertised as a "natural bridge." Thinking it was a cave, like the Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio, we stopped for a look.
We had a pleasantly short hike up a hill to find a simple bridge rock formation.
Not what we were expecting, but an interesting and much-needed stop along the way.
I think Annie's favorite part of the trip was getting to sleep with Mommy in the big hotel beds.
Independence Day fun at our ward's Fourth of July Breakfast and Bike Parade:
Ada turned 7 in July!
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| She requested a castle cake, complete with ice cream cone towers. (Coming up with a cake and frosting that was gluten-free, paleo was hard work!) |
We celebrated with a pizza dinner over at Nana and Popie's house, along with Grandma, Aunt Sarah, Aunt Lisa, Uncle Sean, and Evan.
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| She got tons of wonderful presents! |
Other fun stuff:
Hug! Jojo and Annie really get along great, most of the time.
Since the end of our "regular" school year in June, I've been teaching Jojo how to read in preparation for him to start kindergarten in August. He is picking it up so fast I have been amazed! Since his birthday is just after the public school cut-off date, he would have had to wait another whole year to start school, but he is so ready now and so excited to be one of the "big kids" starting school in a few weeks.
Michael has turned into such a funny young man. Here he is sporting a bubble beard.
Michael is getting quite good. Here he is after getting two strikes!
Sadie has gotten really excited to learn to cook. She says that, with the new baby coming, she's going to do all the cooking the first four months while all I do is take naps.... Sounds good to me!
Sadie also loves taking pictures. Here are a few funny faces she caught from Annie:
