Little Miss Ballerina

Lily has always loved dancing & lately she's been saying she wants to be a ballerina. I found her a dance class & her first lesson was this morning. She loved it!! I was a little nervous that she would not want to go into the class by herself, because she is a little shy & usually she will not leave my side unless her best friend Paige is with her, but the only problem I had was trying to get her to leave when class was over! She ran right into the class & participated in everything. She did everything the teacher asked her to do & loved every second of it. She couldn't wait to wear her new dancing shoes (ballet & tap) & of course her new princess leotard. The class is 1/2 hour of ballet & 1/2 hour of tap. She thought the way her tap shoes clicked on the floor was so funny. Here's some pics of the pretty ballerina on her first day of class.

Ballerina Diva
Waiting patiently...

Tapping Queen!

I guess all the dancing & excitement wore her out - she came home & crashed!

Halloween House on the BOOlevard

Grammy found this neat kit to make a Halloween gingerbread house. Lily & Grammy were supposed to build it together on Halloween, but they ran out of time & then because of Lily's sickness, it had to be put off until she was feeling better. Today was a good day to have a project like this inside since we are setting record low temperatures for today in Virginia! Lily & Grammy made a good team building this house - Grammy put on the "goo" (frosting) & Lily stuck her decorations to the "goo". Lily liked saying the word "goo" & I must have heard "More goo Grammy!" a hundred times today.

Grammy "gooing" the house

Best decorated house on the "Boolevard" (or should we say GOOlevard?)

Sickey McSick

Poor Lily was SOOOOO sick yesterday. She woke up in the morning with a headache so bad she was screaming crying. I immediately gave her Tylenol, but it wasn't working fast enough for her. She asked for some ice (her fix-all for anything that hurts), but that wasn't helping either. I tried everything I could think of to help her - drinking water, fresh air - even chocolate (I know sometimes the caffeine helps) - to no avail. Finally the medicine started to kick in & she started feeling a little better - only to have it start hurting again an hour later. 'Dora the Explorer' seemed to take her mind off the pain for a little while until the second dose of medicine could kick in, but then the vomiting started. I thought the chocolate had been a good idea until it was thrown up all over me. (I can tell you there will be NO more chocolate in this house for a long time...) It seemed like every time we thought she was starting to feel better, she would get sick again. I was contemplating taking her to the emergency room (by this time it was too late for the doctor) when she finally fell asleep & slept through the night. I'm still not exactly sure what was wrong, but it seems it was a 24hour bug because when she woke up today, she was a completely different kid - back to her happy giggly self. Thank goodness!

Dear God

Dear God,

This prayer that I say tonight

Is for my Daddy who must fight

For you see, he is away from me

Keeping his country safe & free

This is the one that I love

And so I ask you Lord above

Please keep him safe while under way

and bring him home to me someday

While he is gone, please hear my prayer

And let him know I will be there

Waiting for him upon the pier

Hoping & praying with some fear

But for all military far from home

I ask you to keep them safe and sound

On their way to where there bound

We love these mommies and daddies that are

asked to fight

So, keep them safe for us tonight.

3 months down, 3 more left

until Daddy can come home

where he's loved best

The Boo Crew

Lily decided she wanted to be Ariel for Halloween this year (big surprise...).

Lily was so excited to go trick-or-treating with Paige & Lexi. The girls had lots of fun running from house to house. There were a few houses that had scary Halloween music that they were afraid to go up to, but other than that they were trick-or-treating pros!

"The Boo Crew"

Pumpkin Carving 2006

Pumpkin carving has become a big thing in our house. This year I thought Lily would want to help us clean out the pumpkins - boy, was I wrong. She wouldn't even reach in to get a few seeds out! That job was left up to Mommy & Grammy. But she did do a GREAT job helping us trace out the designs by poking little tiny holes in the pumpkins along the lines of the stencil. Here's a few of our "masterpieces".

Princess Ariel with her Ariel & princess castle pumpkins.
The finished products!

Boo at the Barn

Maymont had an event this year called 'Boo at the Barn'. They had games, Halloween music, bounce castles, face painting, a 'spooktacular' maze (that Lily finished in record time) and a petting zoo, where Lily made quite a few new friends.

Pumpkin Ring Toss
Lily LOVED this bunny - she kept saying how soft he was & asked if we could take him home.
Say hello to the sheep!
This goat followed Lily around everywhere - even after she ran out of goat food! Maybe he thought she was a long lost relative since they have the same hair do... She thought it was hilarious that the goats & sheep were licking her to eat their food. She thought they were giving her kisses (because that's how Vader gives kisses) and she tried to hug them too.

Lily & her new best goat friend.

Cotton Candy Queen!

It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

Lily & I went to Cox Farms over the weekend, which is a huge Halloween playland. They have giant slides, farm animals, hayrides & lots of other fun stuff. When she saw this huge pumpkin she said "Hey! That's Charlie Brown's pumpkin!". Lily loved feeding the goats (which I didn't get pictures of because my camera battery died!), and sliding down the many giant slides. They had a show about milking cows & they let the kids try it after the show, but Lily said that was "Gross!" & did not want to try. When we went on the hayride, there was a part that went through a barn - the inside of the barn was set up like a witches house & they had a party going on in there with disco balls & everything! Lily was tapping her foot to the music. When we got out of the barn she said "Mommy, my foot was dancing in the witches house - it was so excited!" :o)

Lily on "the big pony".
(There were smaller ones, but Lily was very brave & wanted to ride the big pony.)

Lily loved that this cow had a flower on her ear & pet her for a long time!Smile & say "HEE HAW!"

On the rope swing "like Tarzan"

Spooky Cookies

We made Halloween cookies today to send to Daddy. Lily used the cookie cutters to cut out the spooky shapes she wanted & then we decorated them. What a mess! You can see the flour Lily got all over her face & by the time she had finished decorating the cookies, her fingers - and her tongue - were black from the colored sugar we used to decorate with! Hopefully Daddy will enjoy them as much as we enjoyed the "samples" we tested for him.

On another note, I have still not been able to get Lily out of her Ariel ballerina dress. Every single morning when she wakes up, the first thing she does is take off her pajamas & put on her ballerina dress!

The Princess & her castle

Lily playing in her room with her "Little People" princess castle.