Just for mommy....

Here is a picture of Sequoia in her new dive mask that I bought her last night and some hand me down swim fins from her cousin Aiden. The medal is one of mommy's from the Oregon State Games, but Sequoia thinks it is her necklace.

She is definitely a little miniature Colleen.

An artist at work....

Sequoia has really taken to coloring these days and her skills get more refined on an almost daily basis. Not that anything looks like anything yet, but her technique is evolving to use circles, dots, stripes, heavy colors and light colors and she is very good at coloring specific parts of pictures in addition to making up stories about what she draws freehand.

For several weeks she has insisted on drawing pictures on her way to school and takes them in to her teacher Miss Julie.

When asked what we all do for work she says "Mommy works fish, daddy works boats, I work color books." She takes it quite seriously. I am very proud of her and excited to see this trait developing since there are quite excellent artists on both sides of her family.

A bear behind.....

Sequoia is at the age where at any moment we expect her to take to potty training full force and become an expert at it overnight. Recently she took that phrase and made me realize that I need to be more precise in how I phrase things. She is indeed an expert at potty training ...

As you can see in this series of photos she is so good at potty training she can even potty train her teddy bear. 

I love how she even takes the time to wipe his little bear bottom when he is finished. 

Now all we need is for her to take the next big step and start using that little potty herself ... boy that will be a landmark day.

Daddy's Day....

Today was Daddy's Day around here and Sequoia and mommy made sure it was a fun time.

The day started with a present for Daddy that consisted of a Baltimore Oriole's ball cap (which Sequoia proceeded to wear) and shirt and a hand made card from Sequoia.

Then, after flower picking, we all headed out to breakfast for some good Daddy's Day Brunch eating and sunglasses wearing.

After breakfast we walked around and Sequoia showed me the gold fish pond, the Canada Geese and some boats.

Then it was home for her daddy's Day nap....she's the one with hair.

After the nap we headed out to a Bowie Baysox's game (a farm team of the Baltimore Oriole's) ... Sequoia's first ever baseball game. They were playing the Harrisburg Senators, a farm team of the Washington Nationals.

Next Sunday, as part two of Daddy's Day, we are all going to Baltimore to watch the real Oriole's play the real National's. It should be fun...but it will have to go a long way to beat today's game.

In addition to the wonderful ball park food, we also enjoyed a great game, going 12 innings and ending with a walk-off home run by the Baysox. But the highlight was definitely not baseball related. We had entered a raffle on the way in to the stadium where they would select 40 people from the fans and give them the chance to dig up a part of the infield using only a spoon, in an effort to find a buried canister, and thereby win a 40 inch HD flat screen TV. Both Colleen and I were selected to go dig, which was excellent since it put the odds decidedly in our favor. For being selected we each won a shirt. Later Colleen won another shirt for getting Sequoia fingerprinted with the local Kids Safety network. So we were doing pretty good right there. Well the game finally ended and we were all escorted out to second base where they had lined off a search area just big enough for all 40 people and their spoons to fit. It was a very hot day - mid 90's - and the infield was packed like concrete. We all spent the better part of a half hour frantically digging with our spoons, getting bloody knuckles and trying not to pass out from heat exhaustion...seriously it was brutal....reminded me of scenes from old war movies where you would see prisoners trying to tunnel out of a prison camp using some small piece of silverware...Steve McQueen and the guys from Hogan's Heroes get my renewed respect... but finally Colleen found the canister and we won the TV.

Daddy approves.........