Tumbling Classes

Amelia loves her summer tumbling class!  The class consists of a few different kinds of obstacle courses, where the kids practice somersaults and other things.  Although Amelia has just informed me that they are called FORWARD ROLLS, not somersaults.  Here she is waiting patiently for her turn:

And here she is getting ready to do a somersault, with her cute little gymnast pose:

The teacher is helping her do a backwards roll down a ramp:

 
Amelia really likes to walk on the balance beam.  She can walk on the lower two balance beams without any help, but a teacher helps all the kids on the highest one.   On this lower one, she is jumping over the frogs on the balance beam.  She was able to land back on the beam after jumping.

And here she is balancing on a bar and then doing a flip:

She loves to balance upside down:

And swing on the parallel bars:

She really likes her colorful gymnastics outfit, too, even though I make her wear her hair in pigtails.  :)

We finally get to try out our umbrellas!

When we woke up Tuesday morning, it was RAINING!  There had been a huge thunderstorm with rain last Wednesday night while the girls and I were eating dinner, but otherwise there had been no real rain since May.  We also had a thunderstorm this morning, and the grass is starting to look a little green again.  I hope it was enough to save the corn crop!  Anyway, on Tuesday morning, there was a little thunder, but that passed quickly, so we put on all our raingear and headed outside.   The girls were giddy with excitement!  (It is nearly impossible to get a photo of Megan looking giddy; she prefers an understated look, I guess.)

Amelia's froggy raincoat and rainboots are the same ones she's been wearing the last two years, and they're really getting too small.  I'll have to find her some new rainboots soon.  Megan was so excited to get to wear her new raincoat and rainboots from Grandma and Grandpa Dueber:

The girls were both thrilled to have their own umbrellas!

 We went looking for puddles to splash in, and found one over on our walking path by the river.  Amelia loves to jump and splash in puddles, but Megan was content to just slosh through them.

Where's Amelia?  There she is!

I tried to get a photo of the two girls together, but it's so hard to get them both smiling and looking at the camera.  And the last shot is Megan continuing down the path - isn't her raincoat so cute from the back?

After we finished our walk, Amelia had to change her dress because it was completely soaked from splashing and rain.  Then we went to Olbrich Botanic Gardens to see the free-flying butterfly exhibit.  Unfortunately, when it is a gray and rainy day, the butterflies like to hide, so it was a big disappointment to me.  We only saw one butterfly flying around, but we did spot a few hanging underneath leaves and a few more sitting on the windows.  Amelia had a good eye for spotting the butterflies; I think she was happier to see them sitting still rather than flying around near her.  She also really liked identifying them.   This one is a spicebush swallowtail, I believe:

And the next one is a zebra sitting on the flower.  Even Megan could identify the zebra butterflies, she would say "zeebee" when she saw one.

We walked around the garden a little to answer questions about butterflies and earn our free Michael's custard coupon.  But it was pretty wet and a little drizzly, so we didn't stay too long.  I really want to go back, though, because the flowers were beautiful.  Then we went to Michael's with our friend Amelia and her family and the girls both got a plain vanilla custard.  I had a spoonful, it was really good custard, the best vanilla custard I've ever had.

Night-Night, Megan

Megan has become very particular about how her crib is arranged at night.  She has to have her water bottle and her teething ring (not even cold) in the top right corner of her bed.  Her gray kitty "meow" comes next, then her "mingo" (flamingo).  On the left side of her bed, she has her music box giraffe "jaff" from Amelia, which plays Rock-a-Bye Baby.  She sleeps on two pillows, Amelia's old crib pillow and then "baby pillow", the pillow that my Grandma Sylvester embroidered for my mom.  Then she has to have exactly three blankets "tuck in" around her.  First comes her purple quilt from Grandma Jane, then "Silly Monkey" (her new birthday quilt from Grandma Jane), then "purple" (her purple afghan from Aunt Anna).

She's all set - good night, Megan!

Happy Birthday to Megan!

When we were at Jeff and Jane's house, we celebrated Megan's birthday with a family party on July 8th.  I asked Megan what she wanted to eat for her birthday dinner, and all she would say was "MM" (M&Ms).  So, Jeff made pancakes and put M&Ms in especially for Megan.  We also had sausage and fruit, but the M&M pancakes were the girls' favorite things.  Megan wasn't super hungry, since she'd had a nice big snack at Aunt Anna's baby shower, but she did eat some M&Ms.  :)

I let her pick what kind of cake she wanted, and she said "ssssssss" which is her way of saying snake.  Then Amelia asked what color snake cake she wanted, and she said "yewwow" which of course is yellow.  So, here is Megan's yellow snake cake:

Snake cakes are so easy to make, just split a bundt cake in half and taper the ends; I highly recommend them.  I made the frosting with butter flavored shortening instead of butter, because it was so hot outside.  It frosted okay, except the frosting didn't always want to stick to the cake.  I thought it didn't taste quite as good as true buttercream, but nobody else noticed.  She loved her cake, and was happy to blow out the candles herself:

When it came time to eat the cake, cousin Katie tried to sneak pieces from Megan's plate, and Megan thought that was so funny!

Megan got a lot of nice presents, including light up leopard shoes from Aunt B (which she decided to play with at 3am that night) and a three wheeled scooter from me.  She likes to ride the scooter, but it's hard to steer, and she hasn't figured out how to push herself off very well.  Plus she took a pretty good tumble this week trying to go down our slopey driveway.  It's much safer to ride the scooter inside the house:

But I'm sure it won't be long before she figures out how to ride it herself.  She loves to have a scooter just like all the big kids on our block!

Anna's Baby Shower

Jane and Anna, let me know if you want me to send you any of these photos.

Jane and I made jars of cowgirl cookie mix for party favors.  Amelia helped us put the chocolate chips in the jars :

When the party started, Amelia decided that she was going to be the official photographer.

She took pictures of the decor:

She took pictures of the presents:

And she took pictures of almost all the guests as they came in the door.  Unfortunately, a lot of her pictures were blurry.  I'll have to teach her how to hold still when she takes pictures, but maybe that's hard for a 4 year old.  But she did get some good pictures of some of the people closest to Anna!

I managed to get a few photos of Anna opening presents.  Jane made the quilt in the second photo, isn't it beautiful?

Then I had to take Amelia out because she wanted to help Anna open the presents: