At the circus

Climbing up the ladder to the slide - she's a pro at these inflatable "rides" now!

Sliding down all by herself, and it was pretty steep!

Best friends - Erin and Caroline

Elephant rides at the circus; they give the elephant a quick "bath" with a leaf blower to get all the random grass/hay/dirt/etc off. The elephant really enjoyed it!

At the bounce house

This is so fun, Mom!

Sliding down the obstacle course slide, after some encouragement.

Up the climbing wall of the obstacle course.

If I can do the other slide, I can CERTAINLY do this one!

We consider the bounce house the best $6 admission we've spent in a long time. For an hour and a half, kids can come in and climb, slide and bounce themselves silly. Caroline already says she wants to have her birthday party here!

Singing at the end-of-year assembly; Caroline at the far right waving.

Caroline receiving her end-of-year Montessori badge from Ms. Yost

A bunch of friends at the school picnic - Sarah, Stephanie, Caroline, Emma and Anna.

Caroline with her pal Spencer, and Johanna also from their class.

Caroline-isms

Caroline has been playing "waitress at the Cafe" with her little kitchen set (swear to Heaven, the smartest $75 we ever spent when she was 18 months old - she still plays with it nearly daily!) So we spent one whole afternoon with her taking our orders and making us plastic food. When James and I had run out of ideas, we said "what do you recommend?" Caroline asked what that means, and we told her that it meant we wanted to know what she thought would be good to eat. So after cleaning up the "kitchen", it became her new favorite word - "Mommy, I recommend that we have peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. Daddy, I recommend we watch Charlie and Lola". In other words, here's what I want - get to it! hahaha

Another evening, after a very busy day, Caroline was worn out. She was fading fast all through dinner, and when I put her to bed she barely paid attention to the stories we read. Like always, I knelt down next to her bed to give her a kiss goodnight and either talk about something we did that day or something that will happen tomorrow, etc. But for the first time ever, as I was talking, Caroline said "Mom, I'm so tired I can hardly hold my eyes up. Can we finish this tomorrow?"

Ice Cream Truck

The ice cream truck came this afternoon...

and Mommy's letting me eat it before dinner, even!

Ahhh, bliss!

Relaxing in the backyard shade.

All the cars lined up to go to McDonald's (no, why would we play with just a few cars? hahaha)

Barbies go shopping (yes, Mom, we did still keep all the Barbie stuff!)

Looking for bird's nests in the backyard trees