Last day of school

Today is Chloe's last day of school. . sniff, sniff. I now realize how it is to be sadder for your child about something than they are for themself, and how you have to hide that for their sake!

Chloe's class took one last field trip to the zoo, and her friend Jack's mom (my friend Trina) went with them. Here's a pic Trina sent to me from her Iphone. Those are pretty cool, but hopefully I don't think it is so cool that i need one. But it is nice to be able to take a picture and email it to someone on the spot!


Craig thinks Chloe looks bored here.. they are on the max on the way to the zoo. I'm sure she was happy once she got to see the Polar Bears. They are her favorite. There is also a new baby elephant at the zoo so I'm sure we'll make a few trips back to see him. . he may be ready to meet people this weekend.

What happened to Summer?

I can't believe it is almost Labor Day weekend. It seems like just yesterday it was the 4th of July! Obviously, our summer has flown by.

I did manage to go on a few field trips with Chloe's class. Here are some pics from the Zoo in early July.

This is me, Chloe, her friend Sophie and her teacher Joanna leaving the zoo.

We are almost done with Chloe's new room. They finished painting it yesterday, and there contractor has a few final touches (door handle and the like) and it will be done. We are going to move Chloe up there this weekend. The house project has taken a lot of work. Craig painted Chloe's room, her shelves and our new TV cabinet. Craig also painted a magnetic board on one side of her room so she can play with magnets and use it to hang art work and things when she is older.

We are in a bit of a rush to get things moved around since Ghislaine is coming to visit the Wednesday after Labor day. So we need to move our bed back upstairs, get the new bed (yeah!) for the downstairs bedroom all set up, reset up our newly fixed computer in the downstair and do something with all the junk in the upstairs bedroom that now needs a home. So Labor day weekend might mean a bit of labor in the Black household :-)

Budget Blinds just came to install the blinds today. Unfortunately, they measured for the blinds before they installed the new window, so the blind doesn't fit. HUGE waste of $$. Rats. So we'll find out what the damage is tommorrow. Not very budgety!

I'm trying to decide on a rug for her room as well .. so I think Chloe and I may do a little rug shopping on the way home from school today.

This is also Chloe's last week of school. We have loved her teachers this year, Rebecca and Joanna, and her sweet little Moon room. There were only 7 children a day and often 4 teachers at a time. You can't beat that kind of attention at a day care. She has 3 1/2 weeks off before she goes back to school. When she returns, she'll be in a new classroom with 12 children this time. Fortunately, she'll know most of the children and one of her teachers, Rebecca, is also moving up with her.

So while Chloe is out of school, one of the student teachers from her classroom will be watching her 3 days a week and I will be taking Mondays & Fridays off to spend time with her too.

We have fun plans for the Labor day weekend .. we'll go to the Oregon State Fair one day and perhaps to the Coast another day. And hopefully I'll get a chance to post some pictures and maybe even a little video after that.

Have you been watching the Democratic convention? We missed most of the Olympics due to not having a TV set up while we are in the midst of the construction, and I suspect we'll miss most of the Convention as well. However, Craig has taught Chloe the "Obama Bump" and Chloe is supporting "Obmama" as she call him.

Laurelwood

We went to dinner tonight at Laurelwood Pizza with Maya, Rich and Bea. Chloe and Bea were so cute together and at one point, we got this picture of Chloe putting her arm around Bea. . so cute!

Camping!

We finally went camping last weekend. . to Nehalem Bay State Park. We only went for one night, to test the waters so to speak. We had a great time. We went with our friends Liz and Brian and their 3 year old triplets. Chloe loved Eleanor, and she had fun playing at the beach. Chloe even slept well in the tent, in her pack and play. I'm excited to go again next year. . maybe we'll even brave 2 nights!

This weekend was pretty low key. It was Franny's 2nd birthday party and Chloe really enjoyed the Chocolate Cupcakes :-) Today I took Chloe to the zoo, as she has beeen talking about it for weeks. Then this afternoon Craig took Chloe to the mall to go to the pet store and pet puppies and bunnies.

Chloe's new room is coming along. . Craig got it all painted and now we are just waiting for the contractor to put in the molding, the new window and the new door. Hopefully that will happen some time next week. I started shopping for furniture today. I think I will just get some unfinished furniture here. Since her room is pretty narrow, I'm going to look for furniture with a small footprint. So we'll probably get a tall-ish dresser and then a small bookcase and then I'm thinking a bean bag or two for the floor will be fun!

Sunday Sunday

This kid continues to surprise us hourly with her new words. It is so much fun!

Every morning when Chloe wakes up she calls Mama, in increasing tones of urgency, sometimes with a little fake crying thrown in for emphasis. This morning when I went to get her she was in her room and said "Mama, open the door".

Yesterday Craig took Chloe to buy new shoes and then they went into the toy store next store to kill time while I was getting a pedicure. Chloe filled a whole toy shopping cart up with balls (another one of her favorite things). Craig bought her two yellow balls, but on the way out of the store she grabbed a few more balls and told Craig "Buy more".

Ghislaine sent a nice present after her trip to visit -- since she saw how much Chloe really loves yellow. She sent a yellow dress. Chloe of course loved it. It even had a little extra room for her cute little baby belly :-)

Can it really already be August

This month has just flown by. I kep wanting to get more pictures off the camera before updating the blog but realized I would capture many more moments by blogging and adding photos later, so here we go.

We had a very nice suprise treat 2 weekends ago -- Craigs Mom and her husband came to visit. It was a very quick trip and we only got to see John briefly, but Craig's mom Ghislaine was able to spend the entire weekend with us. They hadn't seen Chloe in over a year, so I was wondering how long it would take her to warm up to them. Chloe must have remembered them, because she was very excited to see them both and so interested in them from the start. We told her to call them "Nonna" and "Poppa". Much easier for her to pronounce than "Grandma" and "Grandpa".




On the way to school Monday morning after John & Ghislaine had left, Chloe kept saying "more Nonna, more Poppa". It was really sweet.

Chloe had another nice surprise, which arrived in the mail on a very good day. Chloe and I had come home from school and she was having a tough time. . when I looked outside and found a package had come in the mail. When I opened it and gave the contents to Chloe, it was a window into what we might see from her on Christmas this year. . her eyes widened in disbelief. Could it be true? Could there really be something so wonderful? It was yellow crocs, or as Chloe says "yellyow shoes". She is in heaven!


And Chloe continues to enjoy playing with Zack. Not sure how he feels about the whole thing. .

Sunday Blues

We had a great fourth of July weekend. . . and it was nice to have 3 whole days off to take advantage of. Last night we had a really fun night out with our friends to celebrate Craig's birthday. . and Craig got to sleep in today, which is the ultimate gift these days. Chloe and I hung out this morning, and walked over to Starbucks while I read the paper and she enjoyed some yogurt. When we got home Chloe played in the truck with Craig for what seemed like an hour, most of it spent with Zack in the back seat as well while Chloe fed him treats. Then Craig and Chloe went to the mall. Chloe likes going there with Craig because he will take her to Scamps to see the puppies. I can't walk into that place, it makes me too sad!

After Chloe's nap we took a family bike ride to the park and hung out for a while. Craig got this pic of Chloe in the bath tonight. I think she was feeling that same as we were about this wonderful weekend coming to a close.


We are however, looking very much forward to next weekend when Chloe's grandmother comes for a visit!