Since it's almost Father's Day...

Here are the lovelies that Helaina made at school for Mother's Day.  She was so excited to give them to me - almost as excited as I was to get them.  She asked "Do you love them?"

Funny, the right handprint shows 3 of the large callouses she has on her palms from doing monkeybars.

I'm special because I take her to "gmnssix".  Hee hee - gymnastics.  She drew some of the equipment but it's in yellow so you can't make it out too well.  The 3 "girls" in the picture are me, Helaina and her instructor.  Is my head really that big?

Every mother needs a popsicle stick flower for Mother's Day.

Daddy came through with a gift card to PF Chang's.  I've only been once so we'll either take a road trip to Rochester some day or wait for the new Chang's to open in the mall in a few months.  Jim also got me the most comfortable things I've ever put on my feet - Clark's sandles.  OMG, they are like having cushy clouds on my feet.  We also went out to dinner.

One recent afternoon it was raining out so we were stuck in the house.  We had played games, read all our library books, watched some TV, tortured Zoey, and Helaina was still bouncing off the walls.  "Do you want to make cupcakes?"  Her excited response:  "For real?"  Yup.  We went all out and got out the fancy cupcake stand, every sprinkle jar we had in the house, purple frosting spray, fancy flower cupcake cups.  We even piped the frosting through a star tip (some directly into Helaina's mouth).  Helaina's piping skills were a little squirmy but she got the hang of it after a while.  She's watched Cupcake Wars with us on the Food Network and thinks that cupcakes are just divine.

Beautiful sweetness.  In a weak moment at the grocery store I grabbed the new summer flavor of pink lemonade frosting and cake mix, not knowing how it would be, but also knowing that Helaina would love it.  Not too bad.  The batter smelled very lemony and the cakes weren't too sweet.  The frosting, however, was very sweet but had a tartness to it.  Wouldn't buy it again, but it was nice to try something different.

Funny Helaina:
Helaina's dentist gave her an electric toothbrush when she had the palate expander put in her mouth.  She prefers the manual toothbrush but we usually use the electric one at least once daily because it effectively cleans the expander.  Recently after lunch she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and said "I'm going to use my electrocute toothbrush now."  Electrocute, ha!

Our little clown fish...

Finally some pics from last month's children's theater production of the Little Mermaid.  Helaina made the cutest little clownfish.  She had a blast on stage and her family had a blast watching her perform.  She brought Mommy to tears many times during the show.  I keep thinking back to when we brought her home from China and she didn't say a word for 3 months, now you can't shut her up and she's singing on stage in a packed theater in front of an audience.  Amazing little clown fish, she is.

Our little actress posing at home before we left for the play.  It was wonderful not to have to make the costume.  Making the bluebird costume from Snow White aged me 10 years.  White t-shirt and white pants - works for me.

The first time I saw the clownfish head on Helaina I burst into laughter.

How funny is this?  When the kids were on stage if they turned sideways or turned around they would hit each other in the face with the giant tails.  Too funny.

Curtain's up. The audience is chuckling at how adorable the school of clown fish is and the opening number gets underway.  Helaina's initial stage fright  (or shock!) kicks in.

She soon finds us in the audience because we scored 2nd row seats for the performance and she knew exactly where to look for us.  Her stage fright disappears and she begins to "swim", sing all the songs and dance the routines that she practiced for so many months.

After the show the school of clown fish take their bow.  Helaina's on the end and I have no idea why she bowed while bending down!

My absolute favorite picture.  After taking their bows the rest of the cast was introduced and took their bows.  Helaina stood on stage and smiled, clapped and fist pumped her little arms in the air for quite a while.  After the show people came up to her and told her that she had the entire audience laughing during that time.  Pure joy on that little clownfish face.  Love it.

We went out to brunch after the performance.  It was a great way to spend a Sunday.  At home after the show with her bouquet of flowers.

Helaina loves roses so that's what she got this time.  She was so happy with her flowers.

After brunch it was home for chocolate cake decorated with Little Mermaid squinkies, of course.

One of these days I'll have to post the video from this show and also from The Rockin Tale of Snow White last December.  Not enough time in the day to accomplish all I want to.  Helaina's taking the summer off from acting(!) and wants to sign up for the Fall show - an adapted version of Rapunzel.  She loves it so much - how can we say no?  Yah, and we enjoy seeing her perform on stage too - just a bit!