Will there be cake?

Mom had to attend a graduation party for one of her former students. When she asked Emily Grace if she would like to come; the one and only question? Will there be cake? Yes? Let's go. If every decision was that easy.

Love,
Dad

Pink Baby Returns

Emily Grace has had a doll since she was a year old.  Its name? Pink Baby, of course.  Named by Emily because of the doll's outfit. Well, after more than 4 years of constant loving and extensive travels across the United States with Emily, Pink Baby was looking a little worse for wear. More specifically, she was about to lose a leg; so we had to find a doll hospital to fix her. We found TLC Doll Hospital in Edgewater, CO...which we highly recommend. Pink Baby was mailed away in a box that Emily decorated inside with stickers so Pink Baby would have something to look at while she traveled. When we mailed Pink Baby, Emily was already figuring out when Pink Baby would arrive in Colorado, how long it should take to repair her, and when Pink Baby should be back home. It was very endearing to listen to Emily try and figure out where Pink Baby might be, what might be happening to her and most importantly, when would she get home. It's the last one that was the killer. We didn't just hear about it everyday, we heard about it multiple times a day. The only thing that saved us was that Emily wasn't worried about herself, she was concerned about Pink Baby and how was she handling being away from Emily. The whole thing took about two weeks and you have never seen a happier little girl than when the mailman handed her the box from Colorado.

Love,
Dad

It's just a fish...

Emily Grace has a goldfish, Goldie is her name; just like Emily Grace has a baby doll with a pink outfit with the name Pink Baby, not too original but eerily accurate. Goldie eats everything that we put in her bowl, food, plants, occasionally fingers. So we went to Petsmart today to once again buy new plants for Goldie. Emily Grace wanted to know if they sold poisonous plants to put in the bowl. No, not to hurt Goldie, but Emily knows that animals don't eat things that are poisonous to them so she thought maybe Goldie would leave the poisonous plant alone. I didn't explain that last part to the sales clerk at Petsmart and you should have seen the look on his face when he found out that a five year old wanted a poisonous plant for her fish. Sometimes it is what you don't say that makes all of the difference....

Love,
Dad

p.s. We went with plastic plants. What could be more poisonous than that?

just a matter of time.....

Well it has been quite a summer already. Mountains, tide pools, hiking, climbing, roller skating it wasn't until Emily went to gym class that she got hurt, a broken arm; the gym is a giant padded room for God's sake. Oh, well. I told her that I was going to write about it in her blog and she told me that breaking her arm wasn't very interesting. Emily wasn't following directions at the gym and jumping off of some large cube and ended up jumping on top of her cousin. The cousin started screaming so loud that the staff thought that she was the one who was injured until they saw Emily's arm. No tears, no complaining just one brave little girl. She was "fine" of course, until Mom and I walked in and then the waterworks started. Off we went to the doctor's office where they confirmed it was broken and then to see the Orthopedist. We had two hours to kill between doctors so we went to lunch, Emily's favorite, Red Robin. I will have to say that the staff at the restaurant were fantastic. They came to see how she was doing, a "get well" message on her balloon, the manager even stopped by and comped Emily's lunch. By the end of the meal, tasty as always, Emily was in much better spirits. The Orthopedist's office was a mess, we had a forty-five minute wait, even with an appointment and they had some horrible movie showing on the TV that we couldn't escape. Torture. The doctor was great. He spoke directly to Emily Grace and asked her what happened, quickly establishing a bond with her and she was willing to go along with all of his directions. One bright pink cast later, Emily is home and asleep for the night, we hope. Emily Grace is a very active little girl and mom and I often joked that it would only be a matter of time until Emily...

Love,
Dad

Emily Loves Mommy and Daddy

Emily Grace loves to write. If we have one note that says "Emily Loves Mommy And Daddy" we must have a hundred. We also have a bunch that say "Emily Love Mommy and Daddy" four year old's just aren't writing like they used to in my day. That would be my dad talking.............

Love,
Dad

George time

Emily Grace is learning how to tell time using Curious George. Emily doesn't get to watch much TV but one show she enjoys is Curious George on PBS. Emily has figured out that each story/episode (2 per show) is approximately 15 minutes in length. So, now when she wants to know how long something is going to be she'll ask and if the response is "not too long" she'll ask "Is that like one George or two?" And on it goes, a long time might be five or six Georges; this system is actually helping us keep track of our monkey business....

Love,
Dad 

They're just a bunch of sticks

We decided to plant a rose garden in the front yard and Emily Grace was a big part of the process. She helped mark the area for the new bed. She watched as I sprayed Round-Up to eliminate the grass. She helped dig up the old lawn. And, she helped to order the roses from Jackson Perkins Nursery. Of course, Emily wanted to do all of these things on the same day. Once the roses finally arrived Emily was disappointed that it was a box filled with a bunch of sticks (bare root roses).
     A quick side note on Jackson Perkins. They're slipping. You used to get a little metal tag on each rose identifying the variety, only three out of seven plants had tags. And the bigger issue is that the most expensive rose arrived the size of a miniature rose. It's so out of place it's funny, except for the fact that I paid the most for it.
       I explained about shipping live plants and that they were "sleeping"/dormant. She was away when it came time to actually plant so I did it by myself. when she got home her first question was to ask why I had planted a stick garden. So much for the lesson on dormant roses. It's good to be four.

Love,
Dad