Mermaids!

Sofia woke up at 8am ready to swim but waited for Olivia to wake up so she would have a fellow mermaid in the pool with her. After Olivia got up, the girls got into their new swimsuits and got into their mermaid tails by the pool. They both fit perfectly and Sofia could get into her's without help while Olivia needed help getting her feet into the tail. She could pull the tail up from there, but then needed to be put into the pool, so I slowly lowered her into the shallow end. I was interested to see how they would swim with their mermaid tails, thinking it would take them a bit to get used to. However, they both took to it like fish! It was amazing! They immediately started swimming like real mermaids! They both swam and made up stories about being mermaid sisters and where they lived, what they ate, etc. It was really sweet! They swam and had fun for awhile before we got them out for blueberry pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes and berries. Of course both girls chose chocolate chip. After finishing, they both put their mermaid tails back on and got back into the pool for more swimming. They ended up taking off their mermaid tails after a while, probably since it looks like hard work to swim with your feet together.

After lunch, Connie and I ran errands to prepare for the party the next day while the girls stayed home with their Grandpa and watched a show on our computer. CK made it home around 5:30pm and we enjoyed Sofia's requested birthday dinner of grilled salmon, filet mignon (for the adults who don't like salmon), roasted cauliflower, salad and tangerines. It was delicious and fun to celebrate her birthday still. After dinner and cleaning up, we ate another piece of birthday cake and then watched the movie "Miracles of Heaven" with Grandma. We'd actually seen the movie a few weeks before, but the girls liked it so much they wanted Grandma to see it too. OF course, it was good and the girls loved cuddling up with Grandma while watching it. After the movie, the girls went to bed after enjoying a very mermaid-filled day!

Our little mermaids...

Sofia's Birthday Celebration!

We had a big day planned to celebrate Sofia's 9th birthday! About a week before her birthday I asked what she'd most like to do and she said she wanted to visit the Perot Museum and spend as much time as she wanted at each exhibit. On her birthday morning, we had donuts, scrambled eggs and bacon to get the day started off right. CK headed to the office, so Sofia, Olivia, CK Sr., Connie and I loaded up and headed to the Perot Museum. We arrived around 10:30am and bought our tickets to see the Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure 3D to see it just after lunch. Sofia wanted to see the Eye of the Collector exhibit downstairs first and we enjoyed the different things that people collect, including Pez dispensers, Star Wars memorabilia, semiprecious stones and metals, dolls, Cowboys memorabilia and Beatles collectibles. It was really cool and Sofia and Olivia especially loved the Star Wars memorabilia, which is part of the largest Star Wars collection in the world! After seeing all the collections, we headed into the hall and Sofia asked if they could play in the children's museum play area. Since it was Sofia's birthday, I told her to go ahead and the girls ran ahead into the fun kid area. Sofia set off into the cityscape of Dallas where she sorted bricks and put them down the brick shoots. Meanwhile, Olivia played in the grocery store area and picked out vegetables and returned them to the truck to be sorted. The girls played there for about 45 minutes and then it was time for us to meet CK over at Mesomaya, which we'd agreed to meet at noon. It was particularly hot and humid, so the short walk was exhausting! Once we arrived, it felt great to get inside to the air conditioning! We ended up waiting a while but were eventually sat and enjoy a delicious lunch! I always love Mesomaya!

After saying goodbye to CK, who walked back to his office, we returned to the Perot Museum and Sofia wanted to go up into gems and mineral section which is always her very favorite place to visit. She walked around and enjoyed all the exhibits and then we went into a frack drilling 'ride' which was actually really fascinating to learn how they frack and all the infrastructure that goes into establishing a well. After that we returned to the 1st floor and went to the theater where we watched our 3D movie about sea monsters, which was about pterosaurs. Of course, Sofia loved it! Once the movie was over, we decided to head home so we could be ready for meeting at our house. Once outside we realized that a storm was on its way and the temperature had dropped at least 15 degrees - it felt great. Of course, the girls were dying to splashing in the little river outside the museum. When we arrived, I'd promised that they would be able to get their feet wet before we headed home. Within a few minutes both girls had their shoes off and were rolling around in the river completely soaked! The girls played a bit longer and then we headed to the car. We dropped CK Sr. off at CK's building so they could ride back together while the very wet girls, Connie and I drove home.

We'd originally planned to make Sofia's favorite meal of salmon, homemade baked sweet potato fries and cauliflower, but by the time we got home we decided to order pizza instead and ordered it from Jet's which is delicious! After eating pizza, Sofia opened up her presents. I always buy Sofia's school clothes on-line in July since everything goes on sale. So, part of her gift includes new shirts and skirts, which isn't super exciting as a gift but very well used. Sian and her family gave Sofia a Lego Elves set that included a small dragon, which she loves! They also gave her the Labyrinth game, which looks like a lot of fun. Aunt Cynthia and her family gave Sofia a "Mark My Time" reading timer, a Calvin and Hobbes collection which is a new favorite, and a fairy tale fairy garden set. My sister Becky sent her a Aquarellum painting set which is perfect since Sofia loves painting and any arts and crafts. Sofia's Grandma and Grandpa gave her a really cozy pink and white striped shirt, a pink journal, The Never Girls books, magnet science, & $20 cash. We waited to the end to give her our "big" gift.

Both girls had fallen in love with "mermaid tails" that some girls they know wore to the gym pool months before. They continued to talk about them and wondered how fun they would be to swim in. So, we'd decided to buy both girls the mermaid tails and give them both at Sofia's birthday. I'd wrapped Sofia's in a big box and put Olivia's in a gift bag so they wouldn't know that they got the same thing. We had Sofia open her's first and then let Olivia start opening after Sofia saw exactly what she got! They were SO excited and of course, they both wanted to swim right then! They were able to put their tails on and test them out and they both fit perfectly. They both looked so cute and couldn't wait to try them in the pool.

We put their tails into our bedroom and had Meeting. Of course, after they told everyone about their mermaid tails and showed them off. While they did this, we brought out Sofia's cake which was decorated with dragons, her very favorite thing! We all enjoyed cake and ice cream and celebrated our girl turning 9 years old, which is hard to believe! After, we put both girls to bed with promises of using their new mermaid tails in the pool.

Flowers from Grandma and Grandpa - they smelled so sweet!

The girls with Grandpa and Grandma

The gems collection

Star Wars Memorabilia

Olivia checking her grocery list

She picked out flowers for Grandma

The birthday girl!

The girls and me with CK's building in the background

Our family photo - love this!

The BIG birthday girl

With Grandpa and Grandma

Ready for the movie to begin

Two girls who are ready to get wet!

Girls getting really wet!

Playing on the frogs

Sofia and all of her gifts!

With Olivia

Opening presents!

Opening her "big" present from us!

One happy birthday girl with her brand new mermaid tail!

Testing out her mermaid tail - so cute!

Sofia's birthday cake

Birthday girl and birthday cake!

The four of us!

The girls with Grandpa and Grandma

Sofia at 9 years old!

Our big girl is 9 years old and time seems to be zooming by! She's grown up so much in the past year and is now 55 1/4 inches tall and weighs 78.5 lbs. She is very tall for her age so she wears a size 10-12 clothes so her skirts are long enough. She loves wearing skirts with shorts in them and shirts with a design on them (a horse, birds, sequined star, etc). She pairs that all with her purple sparkle Crocs and glasses. She's pretty good at wearing her glasses, although she tends to take them off when she's reading. She also is so used to not wearing them that it doesn't seem to bother her when she forgets them at home, but she is wearing them more often than not lately. She also loves wearing her hair long down her back and she really does have beautiful hair with a slight wave to it and a lot of blonde streaks due to swimming and playing outside. Even with the heat of summer, she still prefers to wear her hair down.

Since school ended in June, she doesn't ride her scooter as often with Antonio and Brandon as she used to, but it's also pretty hot to be outside scootering around. She does meet up with them and play out front about once or twice a week and also has gotten into riding her bike. About a week ago, she suggested we ride our bikes to the park, which we did and then she wanted to ride bikes everywhere - lunch, the gym, the library, ice cream. Olivia hangs out in the bike trailer while Sofia and I pedal away. Sofia has become quite comfortable riding her bike now and has gotten pretty fast up hills. Her new bike is just what she needed and she's great at shifting gears. She isn't as interested in swimming as she was last summer, but has enjoyed going to the gym's pool and playing dragons with Olivia in the swim shelf area. Both girls have enjoyed watching How to Train Your Dragon episodes on Netflix and then pretend to be different kinds of dragons. Sofia has also created a bunch of different kinds of dragons that aren't in the series and they pretend being those too. She's drawn them out to "create cards" of each dragon and explains what they eat and different characteristics of them. When she does want to swim, she loves being invited over to Antonio's house, since they have a diving board. Of course, Antonio prefers coming over to use our slide so we've tried to switch back and forth when they've gotten together to swim.

Sofia still loves to read, although she keeps reading the Percy Jackson series over and over. This summer she has enjoyed The Secret Zoo, The Sisters Grimm, and the Emily Windsnap series, although she keeps coming back to read Percy Jackson. In the past month, she's also gotten into reading CK and my old Calvin and Hobbes books, which she loves to read out loud to me during her bedtime. I love it since they are so funny! She enjoys checking out books from the library to read to Olivia, which is great for both of them.

If asked, she says she wants to be a "dragon rider" when she grows up. Of course, when I point out that that may not be a profession in the future, she says she wants to be an author and a scientist although she isn't sure what kind yet. She also says she doesn't have a favorite color, but likes them all. Her favorite animals are horses, frogs and dragons and she still loves to cuddle and sleep with her lovey, Green Beup Beup. Her favorite foods continue to be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, oranges, watermelon, apples or apple sauce, and has specifically asked to have salmon, cauliflower and canned clementines for her birthday dinner. She also likes chicken and steak, sweet potatoes and broccoli, but still isn't a fan of salad. For breakfast she loves pancakes made into a "volcano" with "smoke" (whipped cream) and "lava" (syrup). She eats scrambled eggs, toast and cheese omelets as well as biscuits and loves bacon. Recently she has started to love root beer, which we let the girls have on occasion when we go out to dinner. Otherwise, she likes Ovaltine chocolate milk occasionally and water to drink. Her favorite shows include "How to Train Your Dragon" episodes as well as anything to do with dragons. She really loves dragons, unicorns, mermaids, and fantasy characters in the books she reads and shows that she watches.

She keeps saying she isn't excited for school to start, but I know she'll be happy to be back learning new things, being with her friends and getting back into the groove. As much as she loves just relaxing in the summer, sleeping in, swimming, playing and reading I know she also loves to learn and grow and school is a great opportunity to explore new ground. I intended to have her work on math and language arts during the summer, but I finally decided that she needed time just to be a kid and play. I hope she gets back into school and loves it and continues to learn new things as much as she's enjoyed the summer.

Sofia's perfect day would include her staying in her pajamas all day, playing with Olivia, painting, reading, eating pancakes for breakfast and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and maybe an ice cream or something for a sweet. She enjoys playing with friends, especially Brandon or Emma, but she's equally happy to stay home and play with her sister. Oftentimes she plays with Olivia even when she has friends over and sort of ignores her friends a little. I do love how much they get along, although I also want them to know that they need to play with friends if they have someone over. The girls do argue at times and fight, but not often really. Also, both girls really need to have time to themselves and like to play without the other nearly every day. We're lucky that they get along so well and love to be with each other and I hope their relationship just continues to grow us they get older.

Such a big girl!

Flashback to Sofia at a 4 week old - seems like a lifetime ago!

As a 1 year old - also a lifetime ago!

Filling up her chair as a 9 year old!

With her lovey, Green Beup Beup.

With Grandpa and Grandma

Three generations

The four of us!

Sweet girl with her glasses

Pensive

LOVE this picture of Sofia and Olivia together!

Sisters and best buddies

She sure loves her books!