D.A.R.E. Graduation

Brooklyn graduated from the DARE program! She has loved learning all about safety and was excited to graduate. Good job Brooke!

Ball Pit

My neighbor gave us this little swimming pool they never used. So naturally we had to get out all our balls and make a ball pit out of it. The little ones haven't stopped playing in it...even with their iPads I found them camped out in the balls.

Town Day!

Brooklyn was SO excited to go on her town day with grandma! They went to lunch, shopping, and ice skating...all the things Brooklyn loves to do!

Ummm...

This girl. She was standing in the kitchen and said she was just feeling like she wanted to do an arch on the counter. What?! At least she asked first so I agreed, but told her she had to try and wipe the counter while she was up there. I handed her a rag and she made a great attempt.

Celebrating Sammie

We had a wonderful evening celebrating Samantha. Her birthday was a few days ago but it was hard for all of us to get together on a week night, so we all got together on Sunday instead. We first wrote notes to Samantha and hooked them to all the balloons. Rachelle read a few of the memories that were written down at her funeral. Then we got to send our notes to Sammie. We do this every year on her birthday and it was neat to share our tradition with everyone. It was special for everyone to release the balloons and watch them float to heaven. Very symbolic and touched a lot of us. Then we got out the watermelon and Rachelle released the butterflies. We spent quite a bit of time chasing the butterflies and catching them. Afterwards we headed to our house for dinner and cupcakes. A very special evening for a very special girl.

 

Brooklyn's Birthday

Happy birthday Brooklyn! She's been SO excited to hit the double digits! She had hip hop tryouts  all morning on her birthday, so I came at the end with 150 twinkies for her to share with her studio. She had requested a pedicure with mom so I took her in the afternoon for that. For the evening we headed out to FatCats to take advantage of their dollar days. The Ericsons joined us and we played mini-golf, bowled, and ate pizza. Then we made it back home to open presents! She loved all the attention and all her gifts!