Friend's b-day party

Isabella's best friend Sierra  had a wonderful out-doors birthday party, complete with bouncy castle and Princess to do face painting, balloon animals, and parachute playing. She did an absolutely awesome job on Isabella - the face paint perfectly matched Isabella's costume of the day, which was her new sparkly gymnastic's leotard and skirt.

We tried to keep the face paint as long as possible, but sadly, it washed off pretty quickly. Isabella and Ian's new favorite pastime is to play in the shower, which is great on the one hand (keeps them nice and clean, happy, and generally quiet since you can't hear them squealing behind the shower door) but not so great for the environment!

 The fairy princess made a balloon animal for each kid, after doing a pretty funny how do I blow up this balloon spiel. The kids were very patient, each one waiting until they got their animal. Isabella got a white bunny. Even the small kids got one, although they didn't survive the small kids for very long!

There was also a pinata chair, which Maya Rose used as, well, a chair, it being her size and all.

Ian was absolutely fascinated both with the balloon show and the food. He ate pretty much all the grapes and blueberries he could get his sticky paws on, and quite a collection of crackers as well. Stuff, stuff, stuff. He worked some of it off playing catch with Louis' dad. Have red ball, will travel.

We skipped out on Henry Cowell to go to Sierra's party - also meant we weren't back-to-back-ing camping wise, since Yosemite was coming up. We did try to do Portola at the start of the month. I was late getting out, then nearly ran out of gas, it was further than expected, Ian threw up in the car... so got there kind of late. No one was there because of the expected weather. Which was, well, wet. We managed to get dinner before it started to rain, then had a soggy pack-up before heading back on Saturday. Oddly, no one wanted to spend all day in a tent with the kids...

Ian has a new scooter, his size. Sound effects are "whee, whee, boom!" Not really sure why the boom... Isabella and Ian have been riding back and forth in the hallway. I'm sure that once we get to St. Louis they will be doing laps around our figure eight...

We also had a play date with Julien - went to the pool. The kids had a good time, although I wish I'd brought more toys so they didn't fight over them. Then again, doesn't matter how many of something you have, someone always wants the one they *don't* have!