Rylie's GOLDEN 6th Birthday!

Rylie's birthday falls on a busy weekend each year being two days after the 4th of July.  The 4th was on a Saturday this year.  On Sunday, Rylie had her "friend" party at La Fleur's in Germantown where the kiddos can play around on quite a big of the gymnastics equipment and jump in the bounce houses.

Listening to the instructions

All of the kids in the foam pit

And the mandatory silly face picture

Singing to the birthday girl

Cupcakes and ice cream

My sweet birthday girl

The next morning was Rylie's actual birthday.  I took the day off work so we could add one more fun day on to the weekend.  We had breakfast and opened a couple gift and had plans to go to the Tosa pool for the day with cousins.  Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate so we didn't get much time there.  We've been fortunate with just about all of our outdoor celebrations up until this point, so a little rain was ok.

Birthday girl breakfast

Putting on a performance in her new tutu and ballet shoes

Rained out after 45 min in the pool :(

More Lego Friends!

Caroline is ready for some tennis

We made up for it the rain by going to Kinderberg Park splash pad later that night so they could get wet, swing, and slide.

Trying out one of her new games, like Twister, but Disney version

M & M concrete mixer was the birthday treat of choice

This 6 year old of mine is a sweetheart.  She LOVED kindergarten and did very well.  I was surprised at how much they learn in Kindergarten now.  From what I remember, it was half days and we spent the majority of our time playing.  She has learned how the sound of every letter of the alphabet, along with writing upper and lower case.  She counts and writes up to 100 and counts by 5's and 10's.  She started writing sentences by sounding out words and by the end of the year was reading books on her own.  They started some math as well.  She would come home from school just about every day and "teach" her class or her younger sister.

Don't get me wrong, she picked up some attitude after she turned five as well, but so far that has been mostly reserved for Dan and I...lucky us.  From what we have heard from her teachers, she is very polite at school.  She listens and uses her manners and is friendly to others.  In one of her conferences we were like, "well it would be great if she were like that all the time at home too." And her teacher said, if your child is going to misbehave, wouldn't you rather it be at home than for others. Which is so true.  In the first month of school, she came home with the "County Line Comet Code Award" which is awarded to an individual for being responsible, respectful, safe, and caring.  It's given to 12 students each month.  We were so proud of her! 

Rylie still loves gymnastics and does some amazing cartwheels. She does them all day long.  She was in a tennis class this Summer and when it was time to pick up the balls, she would pick up a ball and do a cartwheel to the next one.  She's getting close do doing a back walkover. She loves teaching and as part of that, scolding her students.  She still loves singing and dancing and making up performances to songs.  She sings along with just about every song that comes on the radio and has her sister joining her in that too.  She worked at the monkey bars all year and would come home from school with calloused hands, but it's still her favorite part of the play ground.  She learned to pump her legs and swing on her own. 

We're still working on riding a two wheeler.  She has been very determined with everything she has wanted to learn to do, such as the monkey bars and cartwheels and would practice and practice, but for some reason, she's nervous about riding a bike.  Maybe next year.  

Rylie and her sister play so so well together sometimes and other times they argue non-stop.  It's a love/hate relationship.  Reagan wants to do everything her big sister does which is good sometimes in that they'll teach together or play legos or play store together.  But when Reagan wants to follow her to a friends house and we tell her she's too little, it's basically the end of the world to Reagan.  So that will be tough.  But Rylie does a good job including her for the most part and she is very caring. 

This girl still lights up my life and we love her SO much.  Her hugs and kisses are the best.  I always tell her that I can't believe my baby is getting so big and she tells me that even though she's big she'll always be my baby, which is exactly what I need to hear.  She is just my sweetheart girl and I'm so blessed to be her mom.