A peek into the future

Glimpse into the future: Somehow I can just see teenage Casey and teenage Cami accidentally driving on the neighbor's lawn.

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It's 11 and a half years early for Eric and me to be saying, "A car is not a toy." "Don't drive on the neighbor's lawn. Or their sprinklers." And "If you don't keep both hands on the wheel, you can't drive the car anymore."

Yellow ribbon

I forgot to mention that a couple of weeks ago Casey got her yellow ribbon at swim class. It was very exciting. I think one more ribbon until she learns to start using her arms. Here are some photos we had taken a few months ago.

What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?

Happy half-birthday to Casey! We sang it all day. For weeks we discussed whether we would have half cupcakes (my vote) or full cupcakes (Casey's vote).

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I went to another parenting session at Casey's preschool a few weeks ago. It was pretty much useless except for a tip from another parent. When her child is starting to get worked up about something, she gets him (or her?) to take a deep breath by asking, "What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?" and then, "How are you going to blow out your candles?" Of course telling them to take a deep breath never works, but I tried this and it worked like a charm. I only asked once how she'd blow out her candles because bringing up birthday cake does the trick every time. Suddenly she is smiling with her head swimming in chocolate icing, cupcakes, sprinkles, pinatas, and trick-or-treating. Somehow she still hasn't given up the idea of trick-or-treating for her July birthday.

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I hear singing, so she must be up. Eric came home last night, thank goodness, and was able to join in the cupcakefest. We all went to bed at 8pm! One of us was jetlagged and tired from traveling, one of us is four and a half, and the other, I don't know, just tired!

Special visitors

Casey impressed everyone as she worked her way from one end of the rope to the other even though her feet could not touch the bottom rope. (3rd picture). She had a great time running, climbing, and jumping around the playground with two grandparents following close behind.

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It was so great having grandparents in town when Eric was out of town. For both Casey and me. She has such a hard time when Eric is gone, and it was so nice for her to have some special visitors at just the right time.

House arrest

Casey used to always play what we called "bus hostage" where some unsuspecting relative or friend has to sit on the chairs lined up across the room. For a lot of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we played my version, house arrest, where I kept the grandparents holed up with Casey while I ran around getting my hair done, going running, going to the laundromat, and doing errands. We did take them out to see the Rapunzel movie (Tangled). Everyone assured me it wasn't scary, but there were some scary parts. When it looked like the prince guy was going to die and Rapunzel had just lost the magic from her hair, Casey said to me, "I'm ready to go home and play with Grandma and Grandpa now." I managed to convince her that he would wake up soon and that it was almost over.

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Monday we took them out to Happy Hollow and everyone had a great time. You can see Casey isn't phased at all by getting lost in the maze at Gilroy Gardens. She still loves them. And you can see that Casey and Papa Larry had a great time on the roller coaster! Casey explained to him that it's ok to yell when you are on a roller coaster. We could hear them both!

Keeping busy

We took the grandparents to all of our favorite restaurants, Pompeii Italian, Main Street Cafe, Sumo Sushi, Whole Foods, and back to Pompeii for the last night. I almost forgot Baskin-Robbins! First we took them to Kung Fu, though, for an entertaining show. Man that class is hard! We got there about 15 minutes early, to make up for the 5 minutes we were late last time, and Casey played tag with one of the Kung Fu instructors. They gave her the smallest possible Kung Fu shoes but they are still at least a size too big, so she ran out of her shoes a few times. I ordered her some different shoes that will have to be good enough.

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Then Eric headed to the airport, so thank goodness I had two very popular distractions for Casey or it would have been even harder.

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Saturday I went to get a hair cut and was supposed to be back in time to receive the new washer, but the guy arrived just after I left. So I came home to a new washer that is much bigger and hopefully better than the old one. Casey loves the glass top, as you can see from the last picture. Now we just need to fix the dishwasher, the Tivo, and the DVD player. Everything seems to be falling apart!

The grandparents are here!

I picked Casey up from preschool yesterday, the last day of her reign as Special Person of the Week, so we could go pick up her grandparents. She had already made it clear that she wanted to go straight to the airport and she would not need to waste time eating lunch, even though their plane was supposed to arrive at 12:50 and she gets out of school at 11:30. So I brought her a sandwich and we went to the store to pick up some snacks and drinks and then when we went home to unload the groceries she wouldn't even get out of the carseat. I unloaded the groceries and checked their flight and they were 20 minutes early! I ran to the car and started driving fast to the airport. I was impressed that after a couple of minutes she was being so quiet and thought that she must have sensed that I was trying to get there fast without getting lost and that I had to concentrate (driving on 880) and then I looked in my mirror and she was asleep! Our little girl who stopped napping in December. I parked at the curb and let her sleep until I saw them coming (I knew she had big plans to run to them) so I woke her up and set her on the sidewalk and pointed her in the right direction. All the bystanders were cracking up and saying how cute it was. Here you can see her running back to tell me she found them.

Then they all played at the house while I was ignored. Ah well. I took my chance to run to the laundromat, for what I hope is the last time, since we're getting a new washer today!

Sporty Spice

Saturday we started off at Kung Fu (Casey's third class, that's one more than basketball). She still likes it and still yells the loudest in the class. "HA!" She finally got her uniform and next week she'll even have the proper shoes. They go back and forth across the room either running, jumping, or kicking. One of the times they had to race to the other side and back. Of course Casey can not run without squealing and her arms flailing, so Eric and I get our money's worth in entertainment. It's definitely better entertainment than a movie.

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Then we went to Jack's sixth birthday party for some ice skating. Casey was unsteady at first and I had to hold her up, but soon she was shuffling around, shooing me away. But since she can't get up by herself, I was welcome back as soon as she hit the ground. She was very excited that there was a book exchange even though she had to part with a book, "Too Many Toys" (we read it a few times before giving it away). She was so thrilled with her new book, "When Dinosaurs Came with Everything" that she said she wanted a book exchange for her birthday, until she quickly retracted after realizing that it means no presents.

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Then we went up to the city to meet Tim, who was in town from Atlanta. We feasted at our favorite restaurant in Chinatown (Oriental Pearl) and then shopped around a bit. We came home with sticker books, nightlights, and a paper star-shaped lantern for my office. We all had a great time.

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Sunday was a little lower key. Casey had her friend Lily come over and Eric went back and forth to the laundromat. Our washer has been broken since the Tahoe trip and our extra bedroom is the new home of laundry mountain. Mountains. Ugh. It takes over a week to get someone to come check it out. Hopefully they can fix it on the first try.

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The big excitement at our house right now is that on Friday, Casey was picked to be "Special Person of the Week" in her class for this week. She has been waiting and waiting. She got to bring three things to share today and she gets to do the calendar and weather every day, and decide on kindergarten lines or preschool lines (single file or partners) and if it's partners, she gets to pick first. And she gets to wear a special nametag all week. I'm sure there are other benefits that I'm forgetting. I'll take a picture later and let you know how it went.

Thank goodness

Thank goodness for Heather, Aaron, and Hayley. We stopped by their house in Davis to borrow some ski clothes for me and then stopped on the way back to play and hang out for a night. It usually takes 2.5 hours to get there from Tahoe but it took us 4 hours to get there because of all of the traffic, so we were glad to have a rest stop. The girls had a great time together. Casey and Hayley colored for so long that Eric and I couldn't believe it. Casey made several pictures and they made signs for their lemonade stand. Casey's dream is to sell lemonade this summer, so when Aaron offered to help them make a stand (in the house) Casey was beyond thrilled and could hardly believe it, since she was pretty sure it's not summer yet. He went out and picked some lemons and came in and they all made lemonade. Then the grownups had to feed the pink cash register to get a drink. It was a big success.

Happy New Year!

There was cookie decorating, noise making, hat and tiara wearing (I was surprised how much they liked the hats), streamer throwing, and silly string spraying. It was a wild and crazy new year. I bought a box called "Elegant Party for 10" and it had almost everything we needed. The kids had nonstop fun while the grownups stood around laughing and then stooped around cleaning up silly string.