Life as a princess

Hi Everyone...sorry it's been so long.

I keep meaning to update the blog but it means I must download pictures which means getting away from Katherine for a bit and that seems to be happening less and less these days. She still takes a nap but she usually waits until I hit the car so time at home to get things done like this blog are pretty non-existent.

I thought I would put pictures of our dogs so that you see what these poor dogs go through on a daily basis but lucky for us, both of them are extremely tolerant of Katherine. Picture # 1 is of Marli dressed as a princess and holding princess Dora. Picture #2 is of Blue and Katherine laying on top of her to give her a big hug - as you can tell, Blue is just thrilled (just kidding)...the dog still doesn't know why anyone but her and Steve have to live in this house. She was my birthday present but she's a 100% in love with Steve. We actually got to watch a chocolate lab for about 2 weeks in November so we had a yellow, black, and chocolate lab for a little bit.

Picture # 3 is of Katherine dressed up as Ariel for Halloween - it took her a while to warm up from her nap but later in the evening she was having a blast. Obviously, she was still cranky in this picture...but it shows you the wig. The girl won't let me put her hair in a ponytail but spent 5 hours in the wig saying "look at my hair, isn't it beautiful?"

Picture # 4 is dad's favorite. Anyone who is getting the link to this blog knows that Steve lives for hunting...this year has been fun for him. Katherine couldn't wait to go hunting with him. She's still too young to really go hunting but she dresses up just like dad and they go out to the club and look for deer from the truck. The scary part is that we saw 3 deer in a field the other night driving home and as we drove away, she got very sad. When I asked her what was wrong, she said we didn't get the head. Steve has a couple of big buck heads mounted and she apparently wants some like dad...we laughed so hard.

Picture # 5 is of her dressed up...she has a couple of princess dress up costumes and this was her showing off her look.

Well, guess that's it for now - we are all doing well and just trying to get ready for the holidays...which is what I should be doing right now...so if your holiday cards are late, you know why :)

Enjoy.

The world according to Katherine

Katherine just recently turned 3...yes it's true - it's already been 3 years.

Anyway, one of her presents was a kids digital camera. She has been a little photographer (taken about 200 pictures in less than a month) so I thought I would share some of her early works. The pictures aren't in order because for the life of me, I can figure out how to have them show on this page in the order I want...but anyway,

Picture # 1- it's all about tea parties right now. We attend several a day. Marli (the black lab) attended one yesterday but she was served milk instead of tea.

Picture # 2 and 3 - She took pictures using the graphics on the camera and centering the pictures as you will see with her collection of Disney princess dolls. She couldn't fit them all in one frame, so she took multiple pictures. Now she's getting good at this.

Picture # 4 - She stood at our front door and took this picture of our pumpkins that still need to be carved...might be our Friday night project.

Picture # 5 - her foot...one of the earliest shots

Picture # 6 - a picture of me...with no forehead...again one of the early pictures taken...she was still trying to figure it all out.

Otherwise, we have kept busy since Disney. We've made a scapbook of her and her Disney friends and she often asks me if I remember meeting a character or taking the plane. It was really the perfect time to take her. We have a great Halloween costume and we've gone trick or treating at one of the assisted living homes in the area but I won't spoil it yet for those of you who will actually see her in person. I'll post pictures after the spooky day is over :)

Disney Trip

Hi Everyone -

As most of you know, we just took Katherine to Disney for 9 days. We had a great time with her and she really enjoyed it. We went to the park everyday but probably only spent 6-7 hours at a park and that was her limit. We were lucky enough to reserve some meals with characters - She actually really enjoyed the Little Einsteins meal and the princesses. She was on the edge of her seat (bottom picture) - Her reaction was worth the whole trip. She now has become a princess fan since we arrived home asking us if we remember the princesses. Our hotel room was also fabulous...we stayed at the animal kingdom lodge with the animals and saw zebras, giraffes, an ostrich, wilderbeasts, and an elan from our balcony. Anyway, here are some of my favorite pictures.

From Top

#1 with Cinderella

#2 with Chip who spent a lot of time playing with katherine and tickling her. It was so much fun to watch

#3 with ariel

#4 with princess Jasmine from Aladdin

#5 view from our balcony...that's how close we were to the animals

#6 Mickey and Minnie

#7 Donald

#8 Sleeping beauty

#9 her excitedly waiting for the princess to come and see her

Katherine Ice Skating

I always get asked if I've put Katherine on the ice yet...the answer is YES. I put her on the ice for the first time around 18 months. She really enjoyed it for a couple of times and then wasn't interested for a long period. Lately she has started to ask to go on the ice while I'm at the rink teaching so we put her on again last week and took a little video of her skating. She's such a clam...she always says "mom, teach me" and I respond that she knows how to skate. She answers "but your the teacher"... Enjoy!

An August weekend filled with adventures

Hi Everyone....

We had a weekend filled with some serious fun and some great pictures and videos that I thought I would share with you.

Saturday we started the day with a trip to Dutch Wonderland which is a park in Lancaster PA geared towards little kids. For my friends from home...brough back memories of good old Whalom Park and my days working the game booths. Anyway, got some great pictures of Katherine and Steve. As you can tell in the last picture...the got a little crazy on the Merry Go Round at the end of the day.!

The videos are of her having fun...(one isn't working but I can't delete it..sorry)

Sunday we went out to the Hungarian Club and Katherine learned how to jump off the diving board with someone catching her in the water. She had a blast...and it actually provided us with some good exercise because we had to tread water in the deep end. You will also notice that Katherine is classic for saying "one more"...we stopped the video but she probably went another 10 times.

Well enjoy the pictures !

Summer Fun

So it's been about two weeks since my last update so I decided I would put some pictures up for your entertainment.

The first few are of Katherine on her 4 wheeler, a picture of her and dad on dad's 4 wheeler and a video of her driving...ignore the fact that I loose focus on her as she hits the curb...it was her first ride. Friends of ours gave the bike to us and Steve had to rewire it to work with a different battery. It originally had double the power and we didn't want to run that fast after her! After about 10 minutes on the bike, she was cruising down the driveway and turning around without hitting the curb.

The last one is of some friends that came over yesterday to enjoy some home made waffle cones sundaes.

A week of activity - (June 16th-23rd)

We've had a fun week.

Started the week with some friends over, we didn't hear the girls in Katherine's room and thought they were probably getting into trouble. We peak in and see them on the bed reading stories. We went to a couple of parks - one where there was a small (5ft) rock climbing wall that Katherine loved going up. and then started this week (Monday June 23rd) with Katherine getting two blow up pools as a present from some friends as kind of a joke to Steve. We never set up blow up pools assuming the dogs would jump in and destroy it within minutes but it survived it's first afternoon and I think the dogs like their new outdoor water supply. As you can see in the video, Katherine is trying to get a drink of water from the spray... it's kind of cute to watch.

Enjoy.

Pool Opening Dance

Saturday night we went to the Tanya (the Hungarian Club) for the Pool Opening Dance. We started the night off with Katherine playing in the pool and then we went into the hall for some dinner and dancing. The attached picture is Katherine in the pool having a blast and then hopefully you will see a little video of her dancing with one of our friend's son. As you can see, everyone is sitting and finishing their food but they decided that the music was playing and it was time to start the dancing so they kicked off the night. Enjoy and Happy Fathers Day everyone.

Strawberry Picking - June 11, 2008

I just saw another mom start a really impressive blog so I thought I would give it a shot. I'm hoping that it will be an easy way to keep family and friends in the loop with Katherine's activities and developments.

Anyway, we went Strawberry picking today with some friends. She was great at finding strawberries, not so good at pulling them off the plant since she would squeeze the strawberry itself as she was pulling it, but she found her talents at eating them in the field. Once she started eating them, she was no longer interested in doing the manual work of picking them, she just went to the bucket and got another strawberry to eat.