Seven Layer Daisy

A birthday deserves its own post, especially since you only get one a year. Daisy is our summer birthday girl. (It goes well with her personality.) She woke up to 'Birthday Bear' who had a special message for her.

Daisy opted for a friend party, since she has never had one. (And before you go asking...yes, I was on the ball this year and had everything organized so I could contact friends in the middle of summer.) A friend party means no gifts from family, but Grandma Dargan had gotten Daisy a gift and sent it with me. Breakfast present opening is a must sometimes.

Good thing Grandma got her a shirt so she could get dressed first thing. She loved it. (She liked the pen too, mom.)

We still do stations in the morning, but Daisy was exempt being the birthday girl. She plunked herself down by the TV and was very content to watch Pokemon all morning. (Notice that she is sitting very close to the TV because she broke her glasses on Sunday. Don't even get me started on the insurance policy that they DIDN'T let us use to fix them. The good news is that it finally inspired me to shop online for glasses. I may never go back.)

She still got her birthday balloons. (All seven of them.)

Here is a close up for Sunny. He had an unfortunate run-in with a ceiling fan later that evening and didn't make it. (I think the same thing happened to her last big balloon. Daisy has a fan in her room. Balloons and fans...not a good combo.)

It was fieldtrip day and we let Daisy choose our location. She chose the Museum of Curiosity. That is always a fun trip. (You may notice a glaring lack of June in these photos. That is because she was at Girls' Camp this week.) The girls always go to the Rainforest first. I think that is their favorite gallery.

They tried out the sloth again. Daisy was a good little sloth, but she didn't get close to her time of 306 that she got last time. She got 109. (Better than I have ever done.)

Ivory felt she had something to prove as the gymnast of the family.

And did she ever.

That is close to seven minutes! She paid for her pride just a little with a rope burn on her arm. No pain, no gain, I guess.

But she drown her woes over at Water Works.

Love these two in the hurricane wind.

After some activity, we decided it was time for a lunch break. I wasn't sure where to go, but the gardens seemed a good spot. I checked some signs and it said no food in the galleries, but I didn't know if the gardens counted.

Turns out, the garden is indeed a gallery, and there are actually quite a few signs that say no food in the gardens. (All of which I didn't see.) A staff lady was kind enough to inform us (she was very nice about it) and we moved the party indoors. There is a nice place to eat in there too.

After full bellies, it was back out to the garden to play. Have you ever taken a picture not knowing that it would be very telling later? This picture was a moment. I took the picture of the glitch that caused some drama.

See, Robyn saw the three slides and thought that it would be fun to take a picture of the three girls at the top of the slide. Pearl didn't hear her until she started to slide down. She was so upset about not sliding with them that is caused a melt down. I tried to cheer her up. I told her that sometimes we plan something and it just doesn't work out. (I told her that I was going to take this cool picture of me and mom on Pirates of the Caribbean as we went under the glowing mist. But Tim raised his hands into the mist at the exact wrong moment and knocked the phone out of my hand. No picture, but at least my phone didn't go in the water.) She seemed to listen, but then she decided to go sit on a bench and cry anyway.

So I took pictures of Ivory climbing everything as usual.

I call this the meditative spin.

Robyn and Ivory had time to stand in line and go on the zipline thing....all while Pearl cried on a bench.

When we were ready to go, Pearl finally wanted to play at the park. Too late. There was an official tantrum with flopping on the ground and everything. (Real family. True story.) So Pearl and I took a break and went outside to sit in the shade and calm down. The other three played in Kidopolis.

When all tears were taken care of, we met up in what used to be Motion Matters, but is an exhibit about SEEING right now. It was really cool. I didn't even have a chance to see everything. I liked the negative space in these columns.

Here is Daisy experimenting with some 3D glasses. If you have a chance to go see that exhibit, it is in'sight'ful.

Back at home, Pearl took a mandatory quiet time and Curtis called us over to his backyard. What could be in his backyard?? Why a huge bubble that holds people of course. The girls had so much fun playing in it.

It is called a Zorb. You can rent it for the day. A friend had rented it for 24 hours and loaned it to Curtis for the last hour.

Curtis was so nice to share with us. It is amazing how many people can fit in there.

If you are on the outside, watch out...you can get run over, much like Indiana Jones.

I even took a turn inside. Whew, it gets hot quickly, but it was fun.

And don't worry. Pearl's quiet time was up in time for her to play too. Spoiled little monkey.

I would say Daisy had a great day. I was planning on making ice cream cupcakes for her party later that week, but I had rhubarb from Grandma Cazier, so I made a strawberry rhubarb pie. Blow out that candle.

Daisy didn't really dig the pie, but Pearl and Robyn loved it. I thought it was great. Yum!

Happy Birthday my sweet Daisy cakes. Seven years has gone so quickly. You have gone from a sweet baby to a sweet girl.

Settimana Di Sei

It is actually almost the end of week seven. (Man, time is flying) But we need to go back and see what happened during week six.

I know I was sick. The entire week. In fact, I still have a bit of a cough and don't quite sound like myself. This cold has sure hung on. But I was determined to try and do our schedule like normal. I was already absent a week in CA, so I didn't want to miss anymore.

Monday dawned and we were off as usual. Shopping, piano...all that good stuff. After lunch, our craft was stained glass, taught to us by June. She learned it when she did the Medieval Faire for school. It was a tricky craft and very time consuming, depending on the detail of your project. I wasn't about to hand over an exacto knife to the littles, so that meant some extra help from older sisters or mom.

June took over helping with Daisy, and I are worked with Pearl. I know I have said this before, but I enjoy watching what the kids create. Everyone is so unique in their ideas.

Robyn got the hang of it right away.

June was a pro already. She added a lot of detail to Daisy's.

The only problem with stained glass is the mess it makes. We ended up with cellophane all over the house. Pieces of tape were stuck to the table. Even after sweeping several times, I'm still finding stuff a week and a half later. Darn yellow cellophane. It blends into the wood floor.

Robyn made a simple pattern and was finished long before anyone else. Good job!

I helped Pearl. She cut out some of her shapes and supervised color choice.

June had so much to do, she didn't have a chance to finish either her project or Daisy's. But I'm guessing she will finish them when she can. They still look splendid half finished. Here is Daisy's flower.

And June's wave. Love it.

Ivory did her own cutting (awesome) and made a fun design. She was a little overwhelmed by the project and the time involved. She will probably finish eventually too.

I wanted to try too. My design was inspired by my mom's villainous character. I took a picture of my finished product and then sent it to WA. I think she will be happy there.

I was feeling more than a little guilty about crashing on the kids for the Fourth of July. No parades, no hot air balloons, no fireworks. To make it up to them, we took them to a really fun fireworks show on Monday night.

A friend of ours (Jason Turner) puts on a show for all his real estate clientele. He also invites neighbors and friends. We were very happy to go. It was an awesome show!! and not too crowded. We brought along our FHE treat. Yum...warm brownies before a show.

I'm there too. Guess I'm still in selfie mode from last week.

On Tuesday, we got some more coupons, but used the ones from the week before to get ice cream. You can't tell from this picture, but it was only about half an hour before dinner. (I am a good mom.)

Wednesday, I still wasn't feeling great and Robyn had a rough night, so we decided to chill and skip our field trip to the Bean Museum. Instead, we borrowed Cars from a friend and watched that. I really wanted to see it again after going on the ride. I'm really impressed with how realistic they made Radiator Springs.  

Thursday, we made our treat, Nutella Rice Krispy Treats. There is a recipe here.

I would say these are definitely harder to make than normal rice krispies. First of all, Nutella is a little messy. (But worth it.)

After you melt your marshmallow and butter, you add the Nutella and it becomes very thick. When you mix fudge, it just gets all creamy, but the Nutella didn't seem to get as smooth. Then you have to coat your rice krispies and it is like stirring glue into cereal. It was so thick. I really had to use all those muscles I've been building up in boot camp.

I finally finished and pressed the mix down into the pan. (Less sticky than normal rice krispy treats at least.) The next part was easy. Get some chocolate chips.

Melt them with some shortening and Nutella and smooth it over the top.

The best part was that they were delicious. They really were very yummy. I guess it was worth the extra stirring.

This last week (well technically week before last week) we had some really cool summer storms. I love lightning and one evening there was almost constant lightning. It was amazing. I stayed up and watched for a while, but Curtis got a picture and sent it to me. He was watching from his porch.

Crackling huh? Summer storms lead to summer rainbows. Saw this beauty on Thursday night.

It was even a double rainbow. Can you see it?

Friday, we watched Fantastic Mr. Fox. You can skip it. It was really weird. The book is much better.

Saturday took Tyler back up to Idaho. Still no kiss goodbye since the cold was hanging on. (Blasted cold.) The girls and I usually have quiet weekends. We do chores, we play games. Sometimes the kids dress up as fire and ice. You know, the usual.

Ivory was super excited to have her date this month, so we stayed up late on Sat. and watched Sabrina and ate ice cream. (I haven't watched that movie in ages and I was surprised how much I remembered.)

Another week of summer down. Over half the summer gone. There is only about a month until school starts. I already feel we have had a great summer, but I'm certainly not ready for the kids to be back in school. I want a little more time to play with them.