Ana is 11!

 

Ana offered (was coerced) into doing the write up for her birthday festivities! I’ll pipe in after she’s done:

 

I started my wonderful day with… you guessed it, CREPES. I along with my crepe, I had some homemade orange juice, and boy, was it a good way to start of my second day of school.

 

My mom was was pretty busy making my birthday awesome so I thought ehh, ill just make the cake myself, and  let me tell you there is NOTHING better then sheet cake.

 

I got all pretty because I knew mom would take pictures for the blog and the whole family sat down and sang happy birthday…

 

I blew out 11 candles in one blow!!

 

A few days after my actual birthday, I had a party at the community pool and we started off with ice blocking. My BF Johnny was the first one willing to try. It was really fun even though a lot of people were scared to do it.

 

But not Elsie!

 

Here are some of my friends

 

After ice blocking, we took a dive in the pool.

 

Here is the food table, not quite ready yet.

 

After playing some really fun games, we all settled down and had some cake!

 

“Happy birthday to ME!”

 

Lanea got me some really cool stuff from Claire’s.

 

Okay, Mom is back.

 

It was a really fun week of Ana’s birthday. She is especially good at being grateful for all the hard work it takes to meet her high expectations, so that makes it worth it. I think she is done with the huge birthday parties though… she said she only wants to have one or two friends next year, and I am going to hold her to it. I have asked her to do all the planning and most of the preparations for her own parties since she was five, so I think she is finally getting a little burned out.

 

Here are some other photos from the month after we got back on island.

Elsie so glad to get back with her best buddy Sophie and show her all the costumes we brought back in our bins.

 

Right after we got back to Maui, Po finally finally became 100% potty trained where we didn’t have to ask her ten times a day if she needed to go or worry about putting a cloth diaper on her when we went out. She figured out how to crawl up on the big toilet all by herself, and that made all the difference, because when you haven’t learned how to talk yet, it’s hard to communicate that you need to go. She still has accidents once and awhile, but she’s also been mostly dry at night and always dry for nap times, so this is big time progress. We started potty training at birth (google: infant potty training) but it was still as much work (but much much cheaper and infinitely less stinky) as using diapers because we had to take her to the toilet six times a day. But it is totally awesome now that she just goes without even telling us. Score! Although I must admit that all three girls were 100% potty trained at 18 months with all three different methods, so I don’t think the infant potty training made the whole “I’ll take care of my own business” happen any earlier. Now if we had done it with Cam, it probably would have helped a ton (google: barely potty trained at 30 months), and interestingly, most of the infant potty training books are written by moms of boys.  I probably should do a whole post on this some day because now that we are done with it, I feel a lot more knowledgeable.

 

Po loves those organic frozen peas from Costco.

 

The kids had school photos (luckily not while I was out of town as it usually happens), but the photo packages here in Hawaii start at $40, and I’m sorry, that’s just too much. I’d rather just get them year books. Especially after all of Jonah’s, my, Ana’s and Cam’s school photos burned in the fire this summer, I decided it just wasn’t worth it. So here are their digital and natural school photos.

 

Peace out!