Happy Birthday to Bee

SHE'S SIX: Happy birthday to Annabelle! Hard to believe she's 6 already. For some reason, that sounds a lot older than 5 to me. ...

The photo of her in PJs is of her emerging from her bedroom on her first day as a 6-year-old. She usually takes one 'friend' to slumber with her, but last night she had a trio, and they migrated to the couch with her. Since she could only carry two, she got creative with the third. ...

Later this afternoon she was cleaned up a bit when it came time for ballet. :)

Really, we celebrated Annabelle's birthday all weekend long. Saturday, Grandma and Grandpa came up and we started decorating Annabelle's cake, and that night she and CJ got to make haunted gingerbread houses with Grandma (while the rest of us lost our minds but watched the Huskies win at Husky Stadium in double OT).

Sunday we played tourists around Seattle, taking the Gparents to the Seattle Pinball Museum, which was a blast (they have a new old Super Mario Pinball machine that is wicked awesome).

Afterward, it was on to the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park. It was a beautiful day and the views were stunning. Here's a pic of G&G below "Eagle" with the Needle in the background.

WALK WITH THE ANIMALS: Today was one of the Woodland Park Zoo's Homeschool Days. I'd signed us up months ahead of time for this 'special' day.

We got to the zoo a little after 9:30, and entered on the west side as opposed to the main gate to the south.

It was a ghost town, which is great (it makes it much easier to walk around and you don't have to jockey for position to see the animals).

Right off the bat, the kids were entranced by the penguins. A couple of the penguins seemed entranced by them, too - they jumped in the water and swam across, to the window, to check 'em out.Enjoying exhibits all along the way, we made our way toward the south/main entrance, where we were told the bulk of the special homeschool programs were going on. Once we got there, a friendly zoo worker directed us into a building where some educational stuff was going on. There, we found some more friendly workers sitting behind tables talking talking talking and a WHOLE lot of people milling about. Christian and I looked at each other and both decided that we would MUCH rather be out amongst the exotic (to us) animals than in with the masses, looking at laminated photos of zoo animals. So off we went - end of our official Homeschool Day experience.

We walked the whole zoo and had a couple of extra special encounters. One was in the leopard exhibit. There, we found a gorgeous creature enjoying breakfast RIGHT next to the glass.We also were treated to an up-close view of a Western Lowland Gorilla. While we were standing outside the gorilla exhibit, a zoo worker came by and said that particular gorilla (the alpha male of the group, also known as a silverback - lefthand photo below) never comes up to the glass like that. He's 32 years old and "in his prime," according to the zoo worker. The heir apparent male of the group is pictured to the right.


KIR-BEE: We'd been home from the zoo for a couple of minutes when I made a horrifying discovery. In our absence, our dog Kirby had jumped up onto the (low) table where I'd left Annabelle's birthday cake and, well, Kirby had eaten the face, one foot, and one flower petal off it.

Annabelle was mortified, of course, but as I talked her down, I assured her that we could fix it, and, in fact, that Kirby's escapades meant she got to work more with fondant, which she loves.

Mercifully, we were able to salvage it - it being a little model of Annabelle's beloved Pillow Pet bumblebee.

SAY CHEESE: For dinner, we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese. The "closest" one to our house is in Lynnwood (which is both a curse and a blessing).

The kids have been to a Chuck E. Cheese just once before, when CJ was 3 and Bee was 2, for one of CJ's preschool classmate's birthday. So really, this was pretty much like a first for both of them. They were thrilled when we pulled into the lot.

And so we enjoyed some barely mediocre pizza and the kids totally dug all the games, of course. There were a couple of unique ones, including the booth where you sit on a white bench and "Chuck E." sketches your face. It was pretty fascinating watching the drawing being made, and it was very accurate -right down to the spot of pizza sauce on Annabelle's nose.And there was a little Habitrail type maze for them to climb around in. When we got home we enjoyed reconstructed cake and called it a day.