Sierra is 5!

I can't believe my little baby girl is 5 years old and entering Kindergarten in the fall!

Where does the time go?

Wanted to take some time to remember fun things about Sierra right now in her life.

We are so happy to have her in our family. She brightens our days and we couldn't do without her.
She is my little love and I am going to miss her so much when she's in school next year, whether I'm distracted by a new job or not!

This is classic Sierra-style. One day after watching Matilda with her big sister she started wearing the bow tied on a headband I made her for her Goldilocks costume, and tying bows on other headbands.

She started combing her own hair, wetting it down a little in the bathroom to get it all smooth and adding a headband. I love that she is independent in this, because her big sister still doesn't comb her own hair!

I especially love when she wears one with the big silky bows. Such a cutie ;)

Sierra is not much of a fan of holding still to have her photo taken. She loves to make faces and be silly and make people laugh. She has actually told me before: "I love to make people laugh!"

Sierra had a little ice cream on her nose, but thought it would be funny to add pink ice cream cheeks when I started taking her picture :)

Lily had to get in on this one.

 She loves to pick out her own outfits and often changes clothes in the middle of the day. She and Lily still love to match when they can sometimes.

 They are really good friends, though they can be competitive and fight often too. 

It's the typical sibling relationship.

I call this photo: Little sister

Sierra did not look too enthusiastic to have her sister put underwear on her head, but she let her do it. 

She even made the best of it...witness super underwear girl:

 

Such a good sport!

She really loves her big sister!

And her big sister adores her. 

It makes me laugh when Lily runs to jump in to get a photo with her when Sierra is doing something silly or cute.

Here they dressed her up to be "Little Mommy"

...in jumps Lily. I love when Lily catches my eye over something her little sister does to make us smile. We love this little character!

Little Daddy

Wearing Dad's childhood cowboy hat

These are some pictures Lily took of Sierra dancing and playing one day:

^ This one makes me think of Snoopy :)

Sierra loves to play dress up and pretend

She packed a big bag of stuff up one day and somehow managed to get it to stay behind her on the big wheel.

She loves to play with dolls, but especially loves when she has a friend of her own over to play with. She loves to pretend to be a baby, but wants her turn to be the Mommy too.

Sierra can be very into all things girly, but she's not afraid of getting a little dirty in the name of fun or art. Mike showed her how to scrape the chalk into powder with a tool and mix it with water to make chalk paint one day and she kept herself happily occupied for hours!

She is quite a good little artist and sometimes expresses how she's feeling with a drawing or a note:

 Birthday card for a friend

Picture I got one day when she was feeling sad.

She keeps busy and hasn't napped since she was a tiny baby. She wouldn't sleep though the night when she slept at all during the day, but we might have a hard time getting her up for school in the morning...

Occasionally she will roll out of her bed and just keep sleeping on the floor ;)

Sierra is learning to read and write to get her ready for Kindergarten next year.

We are using the same book we used to teach Lily and she is doing really well. 

It's a little bit of a struggle at times to keep her focused, but not nearly as much of one as it was with Lily. Not sure if it's me or Sierra that's the difference. I am a little more experienced the second time around!

I love to see her trying to write things on her own and being excited as she remembers her letters and sounds and makes the connections with everyday words around her. Here's a lemonade sign she made one day all one her own:

(she also sharpened all of those pencils to use at her stand)

Sierra is my little love. She is always picking me flowers and making me cards. I love her smiling face and her hugs and kisses!

She has a few chores around the house and folding washrags is one of them. One day I asked her to fold the washrags and came back and found her like this. ...She fell asleep, but not until all the washrags were folded. Turns out she had a fever, because she rarely falls asleep during the day. It touched my heart that even though she wasn't feeling well, she didn't complain but finished her chore for me! 

Sierra, we are so grateful that Heavenly Father sent you to our family. We are so proud of your good choices. We love you more than we could ever say!

Last Day of School

On the last day of school this year I brought my camera to take a picture of Lily's ecstatic face as she came out the gate at school ready for summer... Instead she was looking pretty miserable. On the verge of tears miserable. (Put my camera away...) Turns out a little boy in her class had been holding out a permanent marker with the cap off as kids were walking by and drew a line across the back of her favorite new shirt. And to add insult to injury he was supposed to stay after to talk to the teacher, but took off the moment the bell rang scott free! (I was able to get some of it out, and we found another of the same shirt in the next size up for her to grow into. I might not normally do that, but this shirt is perfect for her. She has this crazy thing about not liking words on her clothing - especially the word 'love' (embarrassing? I don't know..?) But apparently adding the word Summer makes it OK, and she does LOVE Summer, and was born in the month we celebrate our country's independence so this red white and blue shirt was just made to suit her.)

She cheered up once we got to her favorite restaurant for a celebratory lunch! Summer, we have been waiting for you!! (Now if it will just warm up and if my sore throat will go away!) 

 Last day of 3rd grade!

Incoming 4th grader and Kindergartener!

Slow down, time...at least for the summer ;)

Unfortunately...

...what I'm going to remember this Memorial Day weekend is terrible allergies. Finally we get some sunshine that's going to last more than a day or a couple hours and some good warmer temperatures, and all I want is for it to rain! Rain hard, and wash away all this pollen the trees are putting out. Seriously, big yellow clouds of pollen dust are blowing around this place settling on everything and making my allergies go into hyperdrive. My throat is on fire and congestion is coming and going clogging up my ear. I've been sleeping on the couch so I can be upright enough to breathe, but I'm not sleeping for long because I'm taking sudafed to help me breathe and can't sleep until it wears off and then after a few hours I wake up needing to clear my head so I can breathe again. So not fun. Being sick when it's so nice out is the worst. Especially when the nice weather is few and far between and it's a 3-day weekend. Boo!

I'm so thankful for Mike for being the best Dad ever to our girls and pumping up 2 big blow up pools and all their floaty things, and getting ice-cream and dinner for us so at least their weekend has been fun, and I didn't have to cook. Always something to be thankful for. Hope these allergies don't become a regular thing or we may have to move from this place.

It seems like lately the only time I blog is when I'm not feeling so great so I don't feel like doing much else. I guess I am a holiday or sick day blogger. Blogging has been near the bottom of my to do list, but I definitely want to record our family memories. We enjoy going back and seeing the pictures and videos, and it helps us to remember things that have happened when I've written something down. Been meaning to blog about my baby girl turning 5 and about our tulips finally blooming, and now they are fading and I still haven't yet. Since flowers are an easy topic I'll start with that. Look I even took some pictures of stages of growth - I was so excited to see these sprouting up! I'd been waiting all winter for them :)

Our first bloomers

 Cute girl riding her bike

 replacing some dead plants that didn't survive the hard winter

 cute girls painting her toenails

 the new plants on the other side of the driveway

 cute girl playing in the hose rain on a warmer spring day

 little artist at work

 Lily and the girl next door trying out the tool we borrowed from a neighbor to get dead grass and moss out of the yard. It was back breaking work, but our yard needed it. It's crazy how much stuff we were able to pull out - our grass looked like it could breathe again.

 When I was going through my photos and came to this one I thought: Whoa, it's a little me!

 Mini teenager here.

We found a barrel for flowers and Mike rigged up a little sprinkler inside to water them. Nice to have something a little higher in that spot by the stairs, we couldn't plant a tree because of pipes. Wish they made bigger barrels! I love all the beautiful flowers.

 Sierra posing with the flowers, for a second...

It was hard to get a nice picture of the tulips & spring blossoms because they weren't very thick across and so didn't stand out so well against the fence going straight across. They look so beautiful in person, but you can hardly even see them in this picture with Sierra.

 Tried to get some on my phone with the girls per my mom's request and this is what I got ;)

 Figured out we had to go from the side to get the best effect.

 Mike's camera takes such vibrant pictures. I love these he took.

 The girls playing by our one little apple tree. Lily made a swing for Sierra's little doll.

 I love these two best of all the flowers in our garden ;)

These smiles cheer me right up even when I'm feeling pretty miserable :)