bedtime? uhmmm... no thanks

going to bed last night, sweet cheeks comes up with her normal 100 reasons she absolutely can not go to bed.

reason 1-6:
"but mom....i'm really really really really really REALLY hungry!"

reason 6-10:
"i'm so so so so NOT tired mom"

i can't believe we are already at the age of the "really" and the "so." seriously, what will she do next?

in the park

we had a great weekend! the weather was absolutely perfect, cloudy and in the low 70's. it was nice to do lots of great activities with sweet cheeks outside. we met her cousins at the park yesterday for a little bike riding & playtime. it was a lot of fun. sweet cheek's cousin even impressed us all by riding her bike without any stabilizers on them. she was a bit wobbly but did a great job of staying up. sweet cheeks had a lot of fun just riding around at the park. she is really doing a great job of riding her bike as well. after the bike riding, the kids got to play for a while. sweet cheeks desperately tries to keep up with her cousins, but they are so fast! it is as much fun for me to watch as it is for her to play.



what you don't see here is sweet cheeks cousin sweetly asking her to look for him in her rear view mirror. she obliged, then slowly rode her bike into the brick wall. she caught herself and didn't even fall. oh how i stress to her to look forward constantly because her young mind quickly wanders.



of course phoebes was there to ride with sweet cheeks-



i absolutely love this shot of all 3 of the kids together. they even smiled for me!



sweet cheeks with her cousin, the one riding the bike like a big girl now. she is missing just a few teeth and has such a sweet smile



my active monkey-



coming down the slide together. even though sweet cheeks cousin is 6 years older than her, he is always so sweet and patient with her. i love that about him so much.




needless to say, she had a wonderful trip to the park. can't wait for the cooler temps to remain and we will definitely do it more often.

***

i don't have any pictures of it, but sweet cheek's nana and pop took her to a museum on saturday morning. it was a dinosaur birthday bash. she told me all about the trip, the puppet show, and the cupcake, so i know she had a fun time. i know she also enjoyed the quality time she spent with nana and pop.
i, on the other hand, was able to stay home and get a lot of my much needed house cleaning done!

***

new shoes! new shoes!
sweet cheek's foot doesn't seem to stop growing. she is now wearing a size 9! we bought her two new pairs of shoes over the weekend-


you have probably seen these ones in most of sweet cheeks pics from over the summer. she had a pink/white pair and wore them every...single..day! so we figured why stray from what we know she loves. we just updated the color to a fall shade.



i think she picked these based on the sparkle factor-

all the leaves are brown...

well the leaves aren't brown... they aren't even close to brown but i look forward to when the leaves begin to change. the reason being is that i absolutely love fall. crisp morning/evening temperatures are one of my favorite things. i love shopping for fall clothes. i am more than ready for jeans, boots, and sweaters. i am ready yet i find myself buying sweet cheeks fall clothes, not myself! she probably isn't ready. i am sure she will appreciate the cool temps outside and the mosquitoes finally going away. i did a little on-line shopping at one of my favorite websites the other day, miniboden.

here are two shirts that i ordered for her- you will definitely see a theme here





***

UGHH. i finally just saw a preview for "private practice." i had been wondering when the new season was going to start. i recall a time when the average tv show new season would start in early september. seems it doesn't start till october 1st. when did october become the norm?

and she shows them pearly white

sweet cheeks had her very first trip to the dentist monday. let me say, the girl did great. the parent does not go to the back with them. i understand this as sweet cheeks does behave differently with others when i am not around, so i was ok with this. i was just hoping she would be too! the dental assistant came out to us in the waiting room, explained everything that would take place, then walked off with my little girl. about 20 minutes they returned, ariel tattoo and lip gloss in hand. sweet cheeks did fabulous. they were even able to clean her teeth.

even though i wasn't able to go back with them, a super nice assistant offered to take a picture for me. i was then happy to find about 5 pictures total on my camera. i thought that was great of them to do, so i was able to see just what sweet cheeks experienced when i wasn't with her.





i am such a sap. i love these pics of my girl but it is also yet again a sad reminder of just what a big girl she is now. where did my baby go?

summer, summer, summertime part II

we took sweet cheeks to her first water park while on vacation. i wasn't sure what to expect from the park or sweet cheeks, but it turned out to be a great experience all around, despite the horrible germy feeling that remained with you from water park to shower! there were two water slides for the toddlers, a wave pool, and a lazy river. we did everything we could that was size/age appropriate. a few of the adults did go on some of the bigger slides and briefly felt like kids again.

unfortunately, all of my pictures of sweet cheeks on the water slides were in fact just pictures of water slides. i guess she was a lot faster than the camera was.

walking out of the water from one of the slides-



fresh off the bigger girl slide, sunglasses & all-


the family shot at lunch time-

summer, summer, summertime

there is nothing better than a beach vacation to remind you that it is actually summertime. when you work full time and your daughter is in daycare all day, you loose perspective of just what the summer is supposed to mean. sure we still deal with the heat, the storms, and the mosquitos but that is just a sad reminder of what we are not getting to do. we got to experience our summer in just one short week. we felt the heat and the sweat from the near 100 degree temps. it was worth it. sweet cheeks had an absolute blast on her beach trip and i am so excited to share pics of my beach babe with you. i was impressed with my little fish in the water. we do not have a pool, nor are we part of club, so we do not swim much at all. that did not stop sweet cheeks from wanting to swim on her own (with the help of swimmies) in the pool and the ocean. i am thankful she has no fear just yet of what is lurking below her feet in those dark ocean waters. it is that same fear that kept my feet planted in the sand. sweet cheeks actually feared the sand more once she saw all the sand crabs continually popping in and out.

building a sand castle-



snacking-






more snacking-

keep smilin' keep shinin'

i was lucky enough to meet up with a few friends and my sister the other night for dinner at pf chang(kid free!). it was such a great evening, just sitting, eating and talking. these girls are my friends from middle school & high school, which i find to be such an amazing thing. i am really blessed when it comes to my friends and family. i just wish i could see them more often.


my girlfriend and my sister-



my other girlfriend who drove 2 hours just to come to dinner, then drove home. love her new haircut-



yup, we made the waiter take our picture. it doesn't happen that often, believe me, that we can get our picture taken together so we had to keep record of it-

i want to ride my bicycle, i want to ride my bike

sweet cheeks got a set of her own big girl wheels! yes, she is off the trike and is now riding a 12" purple, princess bicycle. the bike of course had to offer room for phoebe as well. it is amazing. i actually think she does so much better on this bike than she did on the 3 wheeled kind. this one does have the training wheels, or stabilizers as "charlie and lola" call them. i am so impressed with just how great she does riding her bike though. we took her on saturday to a nearby park so she could ride freely on flat ground. our driveway is quite steep and we don't have sidewalks. i absolutely love watching her go.

sweet cheeks is a safety girl. she seriously wouldn't dare thinking about riding at all without her helmet.



and she is off-



so cute, she and her doll cruising together.




after the bike ride was over, we walked the park a little. sweet cheeks attitude quickly soured when mommy wouldn't carry her. sorry but it was way too hot and i know she knows how to walk!




***

yippy for vacation. we will return next week. i will have lots of great stories and pictures to share then.

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