Jenga

I pulled out the old Jenga set here at my parents' house and played with Eliana today. It turns out, she's pretty good at it!

Happiest with a froufrou dress and a big pile of mud

When I was out doing yard a while back, the daughter decided to play on the leftover topsoil from the excavation for our foundation. I pulled out my phone and grabbed the following.

Overheard just now...

Eliana: "Here you go, Mommom!"

Mommom: "Thank you, Madame!"

Eliana: "You're welcome, Eve! Get it? Eve, like Adam and Eve?"

Anatomy of a 5-year-old's birthday...

Start by waking up and eating breakfast...

Then look at baby pictures with Mommom...

Go shopping with Mommy and Mommom and come home exhausted. Take a nap and wake up just in time to have a birthday party!

Open some presents...

Eat some cake...

And call it a good day!!

Where did the time go?

data, originally uploaded by elizabethwickland.

Where did the last 5 years go? It's hard to believe that tomorrow Eliana will be 5 years old and that in about a month and a half this will be her daily attire as she goes off to school! She is VERY excited about going to kindergarten at Petra Academy, and is excited to see the new Petra building going up just a couple blocks from our house! She can see the new building out her bedroom window. In fact, she thinks they are building it just for her!

While this may be life in a month or so, right now we are enjoying time in Texas - the last bit of summer before school starts!

Finally Summer

Summer decided to show up in Bozeman about a week ago. The days have been warm and the evenings have been perfect and long. Tonight we ate dinner with some of our exceptionally lovely neighbors, whose band of merry children our young'un disappears among. When the sun had set over the pond, the mountains had graduated from amber to purple, and our conversation had finally wound down enough to think about cleaning up, I realized it was well after 9. Oh, wondrous Montana summers.

Of course, the kiddo has trouble getting to sleep at a decent hour under these conditions. She really only gets serious about having second dinner around 10. She's sitting a the table now having her second course. Just now, she asked me, "Dad, when is there going to be enough snow to sled?"

Ug, I thought. Summer just started. The mountains still have too much snow to get up high. Dar. I'm still hoping for the pack to melt, eagerly checking the Snotel map daily. "Well, in about five months," I said somewhat reluctantly.

The daughter emitted an eloquent sigh and languidly and morosely replied, "It's taking forever."