Here Comes A New Shelmet

For her roller derby practice today, from Cheryl's excellent suggestion, I brought along our good camera to try and snap some pictures of Zoe. I have to point out that the lens I used for these shots was one that I purchased so that I could take pictures of roller derby when Cheryl was skating, so it seemed very appropriate to use it here. When she started out, she had her pineapple sweatshirt on because the track was still a bit brisk. She really gets moving on those skates now! Eventually Constance Sweat Jr. started to overheat and the sweatshirt had to come off. It is great to watch her building her skills and gaining confidence on the track. I took quite a few pictures throughout practice, which you can see in the Flickr album , but by far this was my favorite one. Here's to hoping that she always keeps it this sassy.

Zoe's birthday fell on a Friday this year, so our original plan was to take her out to dinner with one of her friends; however, that changed into hosting a few friends at our house. This was great, because they all got to play. On top of that, I think there was an entire cake for each child, which meant plenty of leftovers for me. Plus there is nothing quite like trick candles. We then had her actual birthday party at The Palace, which is where she celebrated her fifth birthday. Now that she is skating with junior roller derby, she was fully decked out with her own pads and skates when she went out on the rink before everyone else showed up. Of course once everyone got there, everyone was having a good time, even though not everyone was skating. After a couple hours of skating and video games and ticket machines and climbing around in the padded play area, everyone was ready for some food. Once that was consumed, it was time for some singing and yet another...

The other night the Rays hosted their annual Mari Gras party, complete with beads, treats, and fancy masks. It is always great to spend some time with friends. While there are a few different pictures to choose from, I feel that this one of Zoe best sums up the evening. Moving on. Monday was the first day that the weather was warm enough to even try to enjoy the outdoors. Since Zoe noted that it seemed like we never went down to the creek last year, we decided to trek across the bridge and down to the water. She brought one of her mother's unicorn drink holders to play with in the water. It almost seemed like she was really missing the boats from Paris. As the sun began to set the temperature dropped so we made our way back to the house. After getting home from school today, Zoe, again, wanted to go down to the creek. This time she found a giant vine that stretched across the creek and decided that it would be a great place to sit/swing/climb. She was hanging on it...

There was more derby practice again today, and everyone was working on pack drills. Cheryl took Zoe, so I didn't get to see this first hand, but apparently it was one of the most adorable packs in all of derby-dom. She gets better every week and, so far, she hasn't asked to skip practice. We'll see how long that lasts. When they got home, the last remnants of snow were on the ground. Zoe loves snow so much that she wanted to pose for a few pictures with it. Of course she also loves chewing on ice, so she couldn't help herself but to eat a little bit of the snowball she'd made. She really does love snow, so you have to keep your eyes on her when that stuff is around because she will eat it from any surface. The Flickr album has a few more pictures of her antics.