Piper Vida is Four! It feels so great to love this little girl. To watch her experiencing life and growing up before my eyes is such a gift she gives me as a parent. I know the best place to be is here and now. But I have to remind myself of that because it is a day like yesterday when Piper turned another year older, that I can't help feel a little anxious about time passing too quickly. This is such a fun age where we can see how independent and capable Piper is, yet she still likes to be held and carried and snuggled. One of Pipers favorite ways to end the
evening is with "back tickles all over my body." It is interesting to hear the thoughts she shares with us. She has so many thoughtful questions, it is beautiful to see the innocence and wonder in this little girl. I love that when she counts, she says "one, two, three...." and when she gets to about twenty one or twenty two, she jumps to "ONE HUNDRED!" She says it with such amazement as if it is the biggest number in the world she can imagine. On that same note, Hawaii is the furthest away she has ever been, and to her it is as far as she can imagine. So I love it when she says "Mommy, I love you all the way to HAWAII!"
Piper recently learned how to ride a pedal bike with no training wheels. It happened so fast I think it even surprised her. It was only a month ago that she started to ride her strider balance bike. She was so good at her scooter that she never showed much interest in the bike. But now several of her friends are riding pedal bikes and that seemed to motivate her. We found a little red bike on craigslist that we put training wheels on and she had another pink bike that didn't take training wheels. She had been riding her red bike with training wheels in the back ally all afternoon a few weeks ago and just before we were headed inside she decided to give her pink bike a try. I was holding her shoulders off and on just helping her stay balanced, then all of a sudden I was running behind her not holding her anymore. She was like "I'm doing it, I'm doing it!" It was so cute to see how proud she was of herself. Later we were in the garage working on her bike and I asked her how she felt about learning to ride her bike. She just stood up and said, "I think I'm going to take a bow." And she really did bow, to no one in particular, I think it was a bow to herself.
Piper had school on her birthday, she was excited for the circle time celebration where the birthday kid gets to walk around the circle holding the earth ball representing the journey around the sun to equal one full year. Piper walked around the circle 4 times and we got to share something special about Piper for each year of her life.
It was a super special day for Piper, she got to have strawberry ice cream with her pancakes in the morning. We went to bouncing off the walls with
with gma and gpa after school. Then open presents before eating her special request of homemade mac and cheese for dinner. Then of course was the grand finale of a pink cake with marshmallows and four candles.
Her favorite present was a photo album I put together with pictures of her over the last few years.
I love you monkey moo!
Back ally bike riding is a favorite activity these days.
While Grandma Linda has been in town, she had several spend overs with Piper. They had special time playing imaginary games, going to the parks and even went to a real movie at the theater. So that left Dave and I with special outings with just the boys. One of the days we did a nice hike at Dillon Falls, the aspen leaves are changing and the colors are amazing this time of year. We had fun following them around exploring the pine needles, cat tails, grassy trails and watching Mango have his puppy crazies.
Dillon Falls was such a hit, we decided to go back again with Piper and Gma, this time we brought the net and caught craw fish. Piper was feeling brave and even picked one up by herself.
October just wouldn't be the same without a visit to the Central Oregon Pumpkin Patch! We went mid week in the late afternoon and pretty much had the place to ourselves. The best part was riding in the wagons for the kids. I liked running through the corn stalks. Check out this beautiful picture of my mom in the corn! I love it.
Thank you Grandma Linda for coming for an extended stay. It was great to have all your help and fun to see you and the kids enjoying each other too. We had a great time and really appreciated all the extra paddle board outings we got to sneak in! It was a jam packed last couple of weeks, so I bet you will need to sleep for the next few days to recover, thanks for everything...you are great!
Special shout out to Pat Shaw for handing down these cute sweaters that Dan and Mike Shaw wore thirty some years ago. I can only imagine the mischief these sweaters have been through. =-)
And on that note, check out the adorable down coats that our friend Eric brought back for the kids from Mt. Everest this past Spring. I think these monkeys will be cozy in the cold this winter.
Here is a fun shot of Grandpa Skip reading to the boys. He loved seeing how much the kids had grown and watching the personality differences especially of Calvin and Jett.
