Our little singer

Below are some pictures of Kate this week. At the bottom of the blog is videos of Kate showing off her singing.
Our cat, Annie, is a very good sport with Kate's play ideas.

Kate has discovered that her pink stool is the perfect height to climb up on and turn on/off lights all over the house.

Kate has gotten really good at singing songs...well, for a 22-month old. Her favorite to sing are "ABC", "Happy Birthday", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", and "Row Row Row Your Boat". I guess she might take after her Gramma and become an amazing singer and performer!

What a cutie!

Below are a few pictures from the other night. Kate decided to play dress-up and chose to wear a bikini top with a long skirt...she looked like a hula dancer. She is just too cute for words!

Water fun

One of Kate's favorite backyard activities is to play with her new sand/water toys. I found a big (and cheap) set of sand/water toys at Costco the other week. Since we don't have sand, we fill up Kate's buckets with water and she proceeds to splash and dunk in the water, soaking herself thoroughly. I wanted to get some good pictures of her getting really soaked, but she was getting a little too cold last night so most of the water stayed in the buckets.

Kate has realized that her playhouse is not just for playing in, but also for climbing on! She looks so grown up!

Singing Cutie

Recently Kate has been trying to sing along with some of her favorite songs. She does a great job belting out the words she knows, even before they are sung. She loves singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, ABC, and several Psalty songs (a kid's Christian group that I grew up with). Tonight I was able to catch some of her singing/dancing on video as she listened to one of her favorite Sesame Street songs on YouTube.

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom

This year we decided to get some season passes to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo. On Friday we went for the first time and had a blast. Will had the day off from work so all three of us got to enjoy a wonderful day at the park. The entire day we stayed in the "little kid" section and let Kate decide which rides she wanted to go on. (We figure we can see all of the animals another time.) Kate LOVED all of the rides and decided she wanted to go on them all again and again. We did every ride at least 4 times. Her favorites were the helicopter, carousel and train.

Backyard Bliss!

It's official! We have a new and very improved backyard!!! After living in our house for almost 5 years, we figured it was a good time to make some much needed improvements to our landscaping. Our old yard was considered to be "low maintenance" when we first purchased our house. We quickly found out that "low maintenance" meant a lot of weed pulling, pruning and sweeping. Over the years, our desire to care for our ugly landscaping quickly dwindled and our maintenance became a once-every-six-months affair in which we would spend an entire day pulling weeds. As Kate has gotten older and more active, we realized that we were going to need something a lot more functional for kids so in January we started working with Andy Gagnon Landscaping to come up with a solution. Several months later we are happy to announce that our beautiful new backyard is complete. We are SO thrilled and VERY pleased with the final outcome. See pictures below:

BEFORE: Ugly weeds and stepping stones

CONSTRUCTION: One of the biggest parts of the project was removing a portion of our existing concrete patio to make room for grass. It took them almost and entire day to remove the concrete since it was 6-inches thick!

Mapping out our new lawn FINAL PRODUCT: Isn't it beautiful!

We still need to add some plants to our new red pots but that should come in the next week or so.

Kate LOVES playing in her new playhouse. She actually received this as a Christmas gift from Dedushka and Grammalene, but we couldn't build it until our yard was complete.

Kate learned all about the excitement of sidewalk chalk. Who new that playing in a backyard could be so much fun?

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter this year. We started our morning off with church and then a trip to Starbucks with Gramma and Papa. Kate had her very first Starbucks drink...chocolate milk with whipped cream. She greatly enjoyed her drink, but her favorite part was climbing up and down the bench.

Later in the day, we headed over to my sister's house for Easter dinner and an egg hunt. We had a wonderful time hanging out with our family. Everyone was there including Gramma, Papa, Uncle Daniel, Auntie Jessica (Daniel's fiance), Auntie Sarah, Uncle Ben, and cousins Josh, James, Andrew and Chloe.

When we first arrived, Gramma let Kate open up her first Easter basket full of goodies. Inside was a little chick that "peeps", a chocolate bunny and jelly beans. Yum!

All the kids waited in Chloe's room while the grown-ups hid all the Easter eggs. Andrew, Josh and Chloe were having fun wrestling on the bed.
Time for Kate's first Easter egg hunt! She had so much fun looking for her eggs. She was really good at finding them...I think next year we will have to hide twice as many.

The highlight of Kate's evening was jumping on her cousins' trampoline. She could have spent the entire day jumping if we would have let her. My mom is convinced we need to buy her one, but thankfully we don't have any place to put it. :-)

After dinner, Chloe brought Kate this blue costume to dress-up in. Kate happily agreed.

Such cute girls!

Fairyland

Yesterday, Kate and I traveled to Oakland with Auntie Sarah and Cousin Chloe for a girls' day out. We first stopped for a nice visit with Grandma Agee (a.k.a. Gigi). We had a wonderful time catching up with Grandma and the girls stayed busy by looking at old photo albums and playing with the Connect Four game pieces. After our visit, we walked over to Fairyland. Sarah and I have many fond memories of going to Fairyland as little girls. A lot of things brought back memories, but I was also very surprised at how small the whole park felt. I remember it being HUGE when I was little. Kate and Chloe had a lot of fun time exploring the park. I think Kate was still a little too young to get the whole experience, but she still had a wonderful day.

Three Little Pigs Brick House
The Crooked Man's House

A little Chapel

Pinocchio's House...Kate spent a lot of time inside yelling "tunnel!" It had a nice echo to it.

Kate loved crawling through this tunnel.

Chloe enjoyed pulling the little clothes line around and around.

Waiting in line for the train

Pony ride!