6-year-old rerun day

Molly turned 6 on May 28th. I know, I already wrote about her party here, but I decided to include a few pictures from what we did on her actual birthday. Because I was tired, but also because it went over so very well with Charlotte, I kind of stole a few ideas from Charlotte's actual birthday day.

We started the day with breakfast at Papa Pancakes. This was the first one Molly's been able to attend in a long time, what with school and all. As a bonus surprise, my sister-in-law, Aime, came with my adorable nephew Thomas in tow. The girls were super excited about to see their baby cousin.

Molly with Aime, Thomas and Gigi.

While we were eating, one of the waiters came over to deliver a birthday card to Molly. It had been left by two of our favorite servers, Corey and his wife Alyssa. Molly loved both of them and was sad when she couldn't come see them anymore. I thought it was incredibly sweet that they took the time to leave a card for her, especially considering neither of them work there anymore!

Molly with Papa. (In the corner of the picture you can see the card from Corey and Alyssa.)

Next up on our special day was a trip to the mall to pick out something from the Disney Store. In a small world coincidence, we happened to run into her friend Riley at the Disney Store. That made for some fun play time.

She tested out a couple things ... (I was rooting for Miss Piggy)

But, finally decided on Merida from Brave.

The next stop was the nail salon. Can't have a birthday without getting your nails painted.

Molly said her favorite part was having the guy hit her legs. Me, too, Molly. Me, too.

Charlotte sat with me and got her toenails painted, too.

And, because we were at the mall, we had to stop by the carousel. I got dizzy, again, but managed to keep down my breakfast.

Molly picked a dolphin.

Charlotte, a bear.

We ended up going over to my friend Alyisa's mom's house because Alysia was in town from Wichita. Molly and Charlotte had a blast playing with her daughter Rylee. Then, we headed to dinner with Cory once he got home from work. I'll give you one guess where we went?

Noodles & Co.

I may have stolen the ideas from Charlotte's celebration day, but Molly had a blast, and really, that's all that matters, right? (That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.)

Taking time to take pictures

Two weeks ago, the big finale to the spring racing season finally dawned. It was Hospital Hill time.

Because I was an official Hospital Hill blogger, I got the opportunity to attend a reception down at Milano at Crown Center on the Thursday before the race. Now, even though I was a blogger, I didn't know many other people involved in Hospital Hill. I mean, I sit behind my computer and type, type, type away. I don't actually interact all that much with other people. So, I made Cory go with me so I wouldn't feel like an idiot standing by myself. Cory was excited because it promised free food and drinks.

Because we were driving all the way down there, it only made sense to pick up my packet while we were there. We walk over to the expo, and what should I see?

Yup, that's me underneath a picture of me. I'm a dork and took a picture with it.

I picked up my packet, then headed over to the reception. We sat at a table and chatted with another of the bloggers and enjoyed the wine and delicious Italian food. We even talked with one of the previous winners of Hospital Hill half marathon. He won in the early 80s with a winning time of 1:03-something. When I joked that I was way behind him in the crowd of people, he said, "Oh, I'm not anything like that now. I'm more like 1:25 or so." Oh, ok, that's much closer than me. (Please take note of the sarcasm.)

Posing outside Milano.

Race Day

The morning of race day, I rode down to the race with Sarah, her brother and her brother's friend. Now, usually, Sarah is perfectly content to show up to races 45 seconds before the race starts, but because she was riding with me, she kindly agreed to try to show up earlier. Cory usually comes to all my races, but couldn't come to this one because he was playing something for Corporate Challenge. (I think he's participated in approximately 4,768 events for Corporate Challenge. Not that I'm annoyed by it or anything.)

After all the races of this spring season, I had no desire to really race Hospital Hill. Sarah, however, did have a desire to beat her brother. Nothing like a little friendly sibling rivalry. We met up with Anne, Kelli and Marsha at the starting line. The race changed how the starting corrals were set up this year, so we couldn't figure out how to get into our designated corral. We all had to climb through a fence and still ended up in corral F instead of D or C. Oh well, I didn't want to race it, remember?

With Sarah, Kelli, Marsha and Anne squeezed into starting corral F.

Wait, how is kindergarten over already?

Almost three weeks ago, on May 22nd technically, Molly officially completed her last day of kindergarten. While part of me was scared stiff about how to occupy this energetic and constantly "what are we doing next" questioning child for an entire summer, the other part of me was sad that my baby was finishing kindergarten. So, really, no part of me was doing great that day.

Tell me that doesn't freak you out. She went from a baby to a little girl!

Molly's school had a special "Farewell Kindergarten" program on the last day for parents and family to attend. And, for weeks before the day of the program, I could overhear small snipets of songs as Molly practiced in her room or in the car. She warned me, "You're going to cry at the last song, Mommmy. Mrs. Clutts says you will."

Great. Yup. That's just what I needed.

So, because Molly had warned me about music and singing performances, I knew I needed to be able to record it. The problem with that was ... our videocamera. See, we had bought it right before Molly was born. And, while I still think she is my baby, she is graduating from kindergarten. Our videocamera was six years old. Now, as you all know, six years is practically an antique in the electronics world. I'm surprised we don't need an archaeologist specializing in hieroglyphics to read the menu on it.

That meant, I really needed to get a new camera to record the performance. I mean, who wouldn't want to keep rewatching and keep crying, right? Because I like to plan way in advance, I headed to Target the night before to pick up the camera. I had actually been in Target earlier that same afternoon checking out what they had, then went home and gave the reviews a cursory glance.

In actuality, I picked the camera because it looked pretty cool, was a decent price, and the guy said it was a good one. I took it home to show Cory. He opened it to get ready for the next day, and we realized that while the camera seemed cool, we couldn't try it out because it didn't come with a memory card. NO memory card! Aha, now I see the reason behind the reasonable price.

Fine. I would get one the next day. So, the morning of the performance comes, and Charlotte and I have music class. As is always the case whenever we have to get somewhere early in the morning, we were running late. I left the house without the camera. When I got to Target to get the memory card, I realized I didn't have the camera with me. I would have to guess at which kind I needed. I know you see where this is going. Yeah, I guessed wrong.

And, again, I didn't try it out until about an hour before the program was to start. At that point, I realized that the regular SD memory card would not fit in the Micro SD card slot. Well, crap. I called Cory, and made him stop at Target on the way home for a new, correct, card. If you're keeping track, that would be five trips to Target (including the one to return the wrong SD card). Geez, this program better be amazing.