5 Years Old

Last week Ann celebrated her 5th birthday!  I can hardly believe it has been 5 years already and that she will be starting kindergarten this coming fall.

We had a little birthday party for Ann the weekend before her birthday.  She invited the two girls in her preschool class (I asked if she wanted to invite anyone else and she said no).  We were going to go to a park to play and have cupcakes, but it ended up rainy and chilly that morning.  So we ended up having her friends come over to the house to play instead.  They played Candyland and Twister, ran around a bit and had cupcakes.  Everyone seemed to have a great time and it turned out well.

For her actual birthday, Tom's mom took Ann and Ian to a park with a splash pad that morning (it had significantly warmed up by then) while I was at work.  After I came home, Ann helped me bake her cake and then we played a few games of Candyland.  We decorated her cake (she helped with the sprinkles!), video chatted with my parents, and that evening we had In'N'Out for dinner (she at first said she wanted peanut butter sandwiches until we reminded her that she could choose to pick something up for dinner).  After opening presents, blowing out candles and eating cake, Ann's last requested activity of the day was roasting marshmallows (something she'd been wanting to do for a really long time).  So we made a fire in the fire pit and had s'mores.

My big girl!  I still frequently get comments about her height.  She just had her 5 year checkup this week and was measured at 46.25 inches.  Yep, she's a tall one.

I sometimes make goofy noises to make her laugh and get a more genuine smile (and we also get silly faces like this too :)

She is very excited to be 5

Opening presents after dinner

Tom's mom got Ann some clothes (shirts, a skort) and some exercise shorts and a set of 2 lb hand weights.  Ann likes to workout with Grandma while she does an exercise video and now she has weights of her own to use!

She was pretty excited and got to use them for the first time the next morning

Looking at the new Bernstein Bear books that we got her

And her other gift from Tom and me

A new princess dress!

Ian taking a chance at playing with Ann's gifts while she ran off to try on her new dress

It was an unofficial "Anna" dress from Frozen (it was technically called a "Scandinavian Princess" dress :)

I love that this girl loves reading books.  When I go check on her at night, she frequently has books on her bed that she had been looking at before falling asleep.

Lighting the candles!  And keeping Ian from blowing them out :)

Ready, set, blow!

Ann absolutely loves having her cakes in the shape of her age.  She loves numbers, that's for sure

Making goofy faces with Grandpa

Tom helped get the fire going in the fire pit for marshmallow roasting

Ian checking out the fire

I had Ann take a picture of Tom and me.  Her birthday is also our wedding anniversary (7 years!).  We'll go on a date sometime later to celebrate.

The marshmallow thief

Grandma helping Ann roast her marshmallow

I'm not sure why she's giving me this worried look

It was starting to get dark.  And then we all had to go inside and shower afterwards because we smelled like smoke.

It was a great day celebrating a wonderful little girl!

Calico Basin

Back at the end of April we had been having a lot of rain, so the weather was a lot cooler than usual.  One day was just absolutely beautiful - cool, mostly sunny (with an occasional drizzle).  I decided to take Ann and Ian up to Red Rock Canyon again, this time to Calico Basin.  There is a boardwalk around a meadow area, along with trails away from the meadow area.  It was great to get outside and do something a little different.

The first part of the boardwalk includes going up a hill.

Once you're up the hill, there aren't many more sides to the boardwalk, as you are just a foot or so off the ground.  There are little plaques all along the boardwalk stating to please stay on the boardwalk so as to not damage the meadow area.  Ann and Ian both did a good job of staying on the boardwalk.  We did see a few photographers around that were hopping off to take pictures, and I got to have the "just because others are doing it doesn't make it okay" talk with Ann when she noticed what was happening and wanted to hop off too.

She liked to run ahead of me and Ian

It was cloudy out, which was just gorgeous

And it was quite green thanks to all of the rain

Chasing after big sister

More green

I was occasionally able to get Ann to stop for a bit to take some pictures of her

She doesn't always look straight at the camera, so we're always telling her to look at the words on the camera.  So here I was asking her where the words were on the camera and she was pointing to them

"Cheese!"

I love the flowers here

I also enjoy the fact that Ann can take pictures of me (and that she enjoys doing it...win-win!)

This is the closest Ian ever got to trying to get off the boardwalk (he wasn't really even trying that hard, he just sat down and put his legs over the edge).

Rocks!  This was on the trail outside of the meadow/boardwalk area.

"Do I have to pose for pictures?"

She is becoming much more adventurous which is really fun to see

I saw this flower blooming on this cactus plant and I just had to take a picture of it.  It was just off the trail to I told Ann to stay there with Ian and not go anywhere for a minute while I take a few pictures.  While I'm snapping pictures, I hear Ian fussing.  When I turn around I see Ian sitting on the ground with Ann crouched down next to him holding his leg saying "Ian was trying to move!".  I told her she could let go of him now :)

Taking a look at the beautiful desert landscape

Time to head back to the car and head home

More beautiful flowers

Meep, meep!  Just after we got in the car and started to leave, I saw a roadrunner and stopped to snap a picture really quick.  Ann asked me why they were called roadrunners and I told her that it was because they were birds that ran...in the road (such a lame joke, I know!)

Happy Birthday Tom!

Back in April Tom celebrated his 30th birthday!  I told Tom that it was nice that our ages are finally in the same decade again :)  It was a relatively low key day.  I had work that morning, and then made Tom's requested meal for dinner and made brownies (instead of cake).

Tom's mom made chocolate covered strawberries (and a few chocolate covered marshmallows too - mostly for Ann).

Birthday brownies! We wrote the "happy birthday" in frosting per Ann's request

Ian thinks this birthday thing is pretty cool - I'm sure he'll enjoy it even more when it's finally his turn later in July.

My sweet husband!

All sorts of faces in this picture :)

Helping dad open his present from his parents

Smoked salmon

This little guy was just being super adorable holding on to these package of chocolates