Road Trip

We just returned back from a weekend road trip to Portland where we watched Daddy play 6 games of soccer.  To be honest, Carmen and I only attended 4 of the 6 games and I probably watched a total of 10 minutes of those 4 games combined.  I was busy chasing Miss Carmen up and down the field as she enthusiastically introduced herself to anyone who would pay attention to her.  She would wave, walk up and say 'hi' and blow kisses.  She quickly made friends with all of the dogs and enjoyed giving them all 'gentle touches', especially a bull dog named Gordo.  Carmen also enjoyed picking lots and lots of flowers (dandelions) and saving them for Daddy when she would proudly present them to him at the end of each game. 

Carmen was thoroughly spoiled--she loved eating out and getting crayons and ordering off the kids menu and was able to stay up way past her bed time each night and watch TV in bed.  She got to sleep with us in the big king-sized bed; she certainly got much better rest than we did as she was sleeping horizontally or sometimes upside down.  One night Daddy even slept with his head almost on the nightstand as Carmen had him squished and hanging off the side of the bed.

All and all it was a great weekend away. We had one hiccup where we encountered a dead battery that was so bad we couldn't even get the car jumped.  Hooray for AAA!  We waited only 30 minutes for help to arrive and were presented with a brand new battery and we were off.  It was fun spending the holiday weekend as a family and Carmen was quite the car trooper.  She slept most of the way there and back and happily munched on way too many snacks, which kept her occupied, when she was awake. But, with Lamby as her travel companion, she was a happy camper and so were we!

Art Work

Carmen is turning a bit crafty.  She is into stickers and likes putting them on paper and then removing them from the page and sticking them to furniture, the wall and on us (usually our feet).  She also likes crayons, not necessarily coloring with them but rather dumping them all out of the box and picking up each one and trying to put them back in the box.  She also comes home with a new art project each week from daycare. Last week it was a car and this week a daisy.  Her art is somewhat abstract and up for interpretation but it always finds it's way onto the fridge and is proudly displayed.

This is a daisy, Carmen style.

This is a car.  Notice the nice touches--the butterfly,
the propeller and my favorite, a wallaby sticker.

Crayons, lots and lots of crayons.

Weekend Adventure

This weekend we enjoyed the sunny weather by taking the ferry to Bainbridge Island for an 'adventure.'  Everything to Carmen is an adventure these days.  She liked looking at the boats, watching the birds and getting her hair blown by the wind.  But, most of all she liked running around the ferry boat with Daddy chasing after her.  We had a nice breakfast together where Carmen was well behaved and enthusiastically ate her pancake.  She then was rewarded with a piece of fudge from the candy store right after breakfast (great parenting...).  Mommy and Daddy then got a coffee treat and we all took a stroll along the waterfront.  It was a great morning and I look forward to next year's adventure to Bainbridge.

Shoes, just a tad too big, but room to grow

Carmen has found a new love...shoes!  A girl after my own heart. It's so funny to see her trying on our shoes.  She usually puts them on the wrong feet and then promptly steps out of them when she tries to walk, its more of a shuffle really.  However, she doesn't seem to like to wear her own shoes, just ours.  Just last week we almost had a shoe casualty in the grocery store when she unvelcroed them and kicked one off.  Luckily a nice customer saw the missing shoe and we quickly claimed it.