BATHTIME FLASHBACK

Stella loves watching old videos of herself. She finds her baby self very entertaining. I am so thankful to have videos of Stella as a toddler. You think you remember how your kids were when they were babies, but you just don't. Hunting for a totally different set of pictures, I came across these pics that never made the blog. I thought that was a shame. We've got some awesome videos of bath toddler Stella, and bath toddler Stella in picture form is also pretty cute. These photos were taken in November of 2009 while my dad was in the hospital, which is probably why I never posted them at the time. Here she was making me laugh and smile while I was so sad.

KINDERGARTEN & THE HUGE BACKPACK

She didn't seem nervous all morning, but as soon as we got in the car to go, my little Stella started getting very worried about her first day of Kindergarten. As I hugged her goodbye, I could feel her shaking and it made me never want to leave her side, but I did it. Brent gave her a wonderful blessing last night and I know she is going to have a good year. I miss her...

MY LITTLE RAINBOW

My angel starts Kindergarten tomorrow. I'm nervous, but don't feel nearly as freaked out as I did the night before her surgery. Tonight we were enjoying the amazing light outside and the light rain (it was raining on one side of our driveway, but not the other) when the most amazing double rainbow I have ever seen popped up behind our house. I couldn't get the whole thing in my shot, but it went completely across our house. It was stunning. After it disappeared I took these amazing shots of my kid in the grass. She is prettier than any rainbow.

THE KIDS AND OLD LADIES

Last week we had our much anticipated Douglas visit. Stella was so excited to see her friends. The three musketeers just play and play and play. They are always coming up with stories, games, and plans. They make me feel a little bit better about all the toys that I buy Stella because they all play with all of them for hours. 

Another huge bonus of a Douglas visit is having a man around the house. Geoff found a way to fix our basement stair light, replaced the lights upstairs in our vaulted rooms, and replaced our outdated thermostats. (Too bad he left before my garbage disposal broke today :).)

Here are pics of the kids playing with Stella's new Play-doh Disney Princess castle. They are the only pictures I took the whole time they were here.

But don't worry, my camera queen Christy also took some pics on her phone. Even pictures at Seven Peaks. I never take any pictures there because I never want to bring a camera. We try to go there a lot in the summer. I wish we could have gone more often, but we still got good use out of our passes. We went twice with the Douglas clan and Stella loved having friends just her size to play with.

One of my favorite stories from this visit happened at the water park. The first time we went, Christy and I went down a slide together and completely flipped over. It was painful, I hit my head hard, and Christy got really banged up. It freaked her out and she didn't want to try again. So when we went a second time, I told her she needed to "get back on the horse," and that we would ride single this time so as to avoid flippage.

Christy is scared enough of the rickety stairs, so when we got up there she wasn't ready. I went down and thought she was right behind me. After about ten other people had come down, I finally asked this kid: "Hey, did you see a girl up there who was scared to come down?" He replied: "You mean a LADY?" "Um, yeah, I guess a lady, like a mom..." I don't know, I just giggled to myself how I see Christy and myself as girls, but of course the real youngsters would not.

Christy did finally made it down...but it took a while. I was proud of her for getting over her fear--she is an old lady and all...

L'EGGO MY LEGOS

Post title brought to you by the man paying for the LEGOS.

The obsession began when I finally bought Stella a LEGO Friends set from Wal-Mart for her to play with while she was recovering from her surgery. She has wanted one for ages. Stella and I had so much fun putting our first set together (the pet saloon) that I had to have more sets. Two more sets later and I couldn't take it anymore--I HAD to have the Heartlake High School. The best deal was on LEGO.com so we had to wait for it to ship. When the package appeared on our porch late Saturday I screamed for joy and then Stella screamed for joy when we opened it. 

The High School is by far the biggest and cutest set we have done. So of course I had to take tons of pictures of the expereince. Overall, LEGO Friends is something Stella and I both love equally--we have a ton of fun putting them together and seeing the clever, tiny things that we create. It is the best.

See if you can spot Stella's mini drama in the pictures. We both wanted this set because it is one of the few that comes with a boy. So Stella has the boy and girl kissing in front of the school and then the teacher comes by and tells them to break it up while she rams into them and knocks them both down. We did it a few times. It was funny all of the times.