Here Comes A New Shelmet

At the end of March Zoe had the chance to go bowling with all of her cousins. They all did really well, but Lilly and Zoe were especially goofy. The only pictures I grabbed were on them climbing all over Gail, laughing their heads off. Here's a sample of what it looked like. On Saturday it was Olivia's turn to celebrate her 7th birthday, which was held at Bounce U. Like most places where kids are jumping around, it's not ideal for snapping pictures, but I did get a nice series of Zoe trying to place a flag as high up on the wall as possible. After that, Zoe got to spend some quality time with Harlie, who spent the night. The two had a great time playing around all weekend. Before we took her home, we decided to bring Harlie to Menchies, our favorite frozen yogurt location. Of course, when we go for fro yo, we pack a bunch of games. Once the dessert was consumed, the playing commenced. There was more than a little cheering and laughing at my poor dice roll...

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...