Five Years Old!

Rachel turned five years old this week!  My baby is now five!  We started celebrating last weekend.  To begin with she got a new bed for her birthday.  She and Jackson both like it!   

 (Sorry this is sideways!  Blogger is now ridiculous and won't let me do half of what I want to do now.)

 

Then we had a luau Saturday afternoon to celebrate with family.  It was a lot of fun!

 

  

Jackson's surprised face - whoa!

Love watching him read books to himself!

 

Here is Rachel's birthday ice cream cake from Bruster's.  

Jackson is so ready to have some of that cake!

 You can almost see his mouth watering...

 

He finally got his cake!

We tried to make her actual birthday very special for her as well... We made special breakfast pancakes that morning before school.  And at school, her class had their last field trip of the year to a nearby park/playground - which of course she loved.  

Then I spent a good part of the morning making ice cream cone cupcakes to take to her class for the afternoon.  I thought they turned out great!  Getting them to school without them falling over was the hard part though!

I know this picture is fuzzy but this is the best one I got of Rachel and her best friend at school.  Then I brought Rachel home and she and I made some jewelry from her new jewelry/bead kit.  You can see her necklace, bracelet and earrings below.

And she got to choose where to go for dinner that night...so we ended up at IHop.  I didn't think to get any pictures while we were there.    They sang happy birthday to her and she enjoyed it.  She really did have a great birthday!

Easter Fun

Happy Easter everyone! We have enjoyed our last weekend of spring break, which ended with Easter Sunday.

Yesterday we colored Easter eggs - Jackson watched mainly, but at least he was smiling!


And relaxing with his feet on the table...



Last night we had family over for dinner and an Easter egg hunt...this is just the start of the not-so-great-pictures of Jackson...

"I know I had some eggs, where did they all go??"

And Easter morning, looking at what the Easter bunny brought. (Side note: At least we didn't have to deal with her seeing the Easter bunny this year at school...she always freaks about that...)



And we decided to wait until we got home from church today to take their Easter pictures...so we wouldn't be as rushed and the grass would be drier. Rachel was okay for a while, but once again, Jackson would not look at the camera or smile...

"Mom, the sun is in my eyes..."

"Mom, I'm really tired of taking pictures..."

"Last one, I promise!"

Kindergarten Registration and Spring Break Fun!

The time has come...my baby is old enough to register for kindergarten! We went last week and registered her at her new school that she will start in August. How crazy is that?!? We go back in a few weeks for a tour of the school and again a week later for her assessment, but so far she is very excited!



Rachel's friend that lives across the street from us (who happens to share birthdays with Rachel) was there at the same time so we got a picture of the two of them together. We hope that they grow up to be close friends...


This is spring break week for Michael and the kids and I took yesterday and today off to spend with them. We went and had spring pictures taken of the kids yesterday, got up and went to the courthouse early this morning to get their passports processed (we were done by 8:30!) and then we went downtown and played at Centennial Olympic Park for a while. They had a good time but the fountains were Rachel's favorite. We thought Jackson would like them more than he did, but he was over it pretty quickly and just wanted to walk around.

Here she looks like she's too cool... *laugh*

This was a big monument/statue-like-thing with Olympic athletes in it - so Rachel looks like she's running along with them...

Playing on the big fields...

And finally playing in the fountains!

Class Pictures

Here are Rachel's and Jackson's class pictures for this year. Rachel (above) looks like she was in the middle of a sentence - facial expressions and all! Ha!!

Jackson looks pretty normal and is his usual cute self. *smile*

Let's Go Skating

Last night was one of Rachel's friend's birthday parties - at a nearby skating rink. Rachel was very excited to go because this would be her first time ever trying to skate. Can you say nightmare??? It all started off okay and she was excited to see her friends there...

Here she is before she actually tried to skate - right after I got the skates on her.

We made it about two steps into the rink and she fell after already freaking out walking over to it. She hated it. They were able to use the little skate-mates to help them keep their balance and even still she didn't like it. We tried on and off to stay on the floor instead of the carpet and she liked it when she was close to one of her friends - but we only made it around the rink one time. And most of it was spent on the carpet... It was rough! Michael showed up right as we were finishing the first lap (we had left the diaper bag at home and he had to run and get it) and he tried to help her go back out - but she was having none of that! It really was bad...

Here is Rachel and her friend Sarah Grace looking brave...

After the big meltdown, we took her skates off and let her just run around the carpeted area - she was more than fine with that!

Jackson wanted to run everywhere and didn't want to be contained at all...

Afterwards she didn't even remember getting upset...here she is outside waiting on Michael to come back and get us.


And we played a little outside when we got home...here's little man!