Long-Awaited

I have been wanting to get my niece a nice little tea set for quite a while. Of course I had to wait until she was old enough to understand it and handle having something a little more fragile than a plastic Little Tykes toy. Saturday is her third birthday, and I decided it's time. She may still need supervision while playing with this set, but I think she'll enjoy it for years to come. It's a beautiful set, and I splurged a bit more than I intended to. It comes in a cute little picnic basket, with a table cloth, matching napkins, and utensils (the rest of the set is under the utensils). It's so adorable I'd like to keep it for myself! I hope she enjoys it. Maybe next time I come to visit she and I can have high tea.

Haystacks and a Yo-Yo

Tonight we went over to our friends' house. Damie and Jared are expecting their first (also a little girl!) in November, and since Damie started working in Jason's office, we've been doing a lot more together. They've invited us over several times, and we haven't had a chance to return the favour, but they're a lot of fun. Tonight was haystack night, and it was delicious! Aside from us, there was also Ryan, a 2009 WWU grad, there (a former photographer of mine), and Will, whose wife was out of town, and his two daughters, Lydia and Charlotte.

After dinner, Jared kept the girls entertained with all sorts of toys...though they were perfectly capable of entertaining themselves with the cat's plastic jingle bell balls they found all over the apartment. In the above photo he is testing the yo-yo out before giving the girls a lesson in how to make it work. Though Lydia (the older girl) tried for about 10 minutes to make it work, she couldn't get the hang of just letting it fall. She always tried to catch it! Yo-yos are complicated! Who knew?

And here's Jared giving a demonstration as Lydia and Charlotte look on in fascination. (They adore Jared, and it's so cute to watch him with them. He'll be a great dad.)

A Look Into the Future?

Today at church, a little girl named Emily did the special music. She did Kum Bay Ya, and was accompanied by the song service musicians: a guitar, a mandolin, and the piano. She did a fabulous job, and it was so cute! It makes me look forward to when Little Miss is old enough to do things like this...I just hope she's interested when the time comes!