New Bike!

Thanks Uncle Mike for my new princess bike. I love to ride it and I am getting very good at turning corners and braking. I like to take my Cinderella doll along for the ride. I can't wait for the weather to get warmer so I can ride it more often.

The Nutcracker

As many of you know Josie and I went to The Nutcracker ballet a few weeks back. She is now a huge Nutcracker fan. She loves the music, the ballet, the mouse king. Actually she is obsessed with the mouse king. She listens to the battle music and is so sad when the other mice come to collect his body. She has shared the book and the music at school and she dances to the music all the time. I took a great video of it but well, I have not yet been able to get it to load to this blog or to an email attachment. I do however have pictures of her and her friend Maura, she and her mom went with us, eating their "special desert" after the ballet. She chose raspberry cheesecake.
A HUGE slice of raspberry cheesecake.

Open wide!

Merry Christmas!

Well, Christmas is over and as expected it took Josie quite a while to get through her gifts. When she opens something she stops to play with it right then and will then remember there is more to open. She worked on several projects with her art supplies from Uncle Mike, played cheerleader with her pom poms from Mousels, dressed and undressed the Cinderella doll from John and Sherry, played "Dr. Leonard"(our vet) with her new costume from OD and Tuppin, and played Candy Land. Since Christmas we have also watched her new movie, danced with her new rainbow tutu, and ridden her new bike. According to her it is "So cool!"She asked Santa for only two things - a candy cane and a big lion. She was very specific about where he could find the lion. Well, Santa came through and she got a candy cane and a big lion. The lion is as big as Ernie and has been on her bed or next to it while she sleeps since Christmas.

Telling Santa very specifically that he could find the big lion at the store by where we got her princess tennis shoes. She told him to have his reindeer fly him there.

Dr. Leonard aka Josie

Cuddling up with her lion and princess blanket on the couch.

The big lion.

Thanksgiving Cupcakes

Josie's class had a Thanksgiving potluck and she decided that she wanted to take cupcakes. I had the week off so I decided I would try to do more than 1. buy them at the store or 2. make plain old cupcakes. We found a picture of cupcakes on the internet I thought we could handle. Josie was excited to make the cupcakes, watch them bake, and frost them. She was also excited about putting on the faces and the feathers until we were done with about 8 of them. At that point she said she was tired of it and wanted to stop. I told her there were a lot more to go so she would have to hang in there. In the end they turned out great. Score one for mom!

Touchdown Michigan

Josie is very into watching Michigan and Detroit Lions football with Jay this year. Well it helps that both teams are doing well. Anyway, one recent Saturday she put on her Michigan shirt to enjoy the game with Jay. After a Michigan touchdown she decided that she needed a helmet (she remembered she had a bike helmet she could use) and a football (a dog toy) so she could run and make a touchdown too.

Off to the Races!

Gramma Tup and Grampa OD were just here and we were looking for something different to do so we decided to go to the harness races here is Sacramento. We took Josie and she was sooo excited. We probably should have been more clear ahead of time because she thought that she was going to get to ride a horse and race it. After all the confusion was cleared up she had a good time. We bet on a few horses that she picked out - basically she picked the name that she liked best. She did not win but dad won $1.20. Anyway, we were outside watching one of the races and after the race she saw a man riding on a horse and wondered why he was riding it that way. I told her I did not know so she pulled an OD on me - she turned around and yelled, "Why are you riding that horse?" He told her that he followed the racers in case there was an accident. Then he asked her if she wanted to ride in the pace car during the race. She was game until we were in the car driving around the track and then she was scared. We were right close to the horsed though and she did like that part. All told the evening was fun and if she has a problem betting on the ponies when she is older we will know why.
The best part is that when we got home she got together her horse, a horse blanket, a harness, reigns, a hat, and goggles. Uncle Kurt you would be proud of her get up. She rode like a champ and believe it or not her horse won every race this time.

Halloween

This year Josie better understood the idea of dressing up and going around to get candy. I did not make a costume this year - she had a turtle from Joan and the Minnie Mouse costume Gretchen made years ago for Kathrine and that has been passed down to all the cousins. She was not interested in either. She wanted to be Ariel. I could not bring myself to buy a Disney Princess costume so Jay and I tried every angle to get her to change her mind. We prevailed when we found a princess ballerina costume at Costco. She LOVED the tutu and since we bought her ballerina slippers she was sold. We went to her friend Evie's house like we did last year for a party. The friends all went trick or treating together. What a riot to watch and listen to a group of 3 year olds on Halloween.

As you can see however, in the end she stripped down and found Evie's Ariel costume so in the end she prevailed. Additionally, now she says she wants Santa to bring her a Princess dress like her friend Evie has. UGH!