Olivia is 6

For Olivia's birthday we went to the Children's festival and got to see a live puppet show of "The very hungry caterpillar". It was so cute. After that we had a picnic at a park and Olivia got to play at the play ground. I used to LOVE baking. Since I am a raw foodist now I gave that up. I have no intention, however, of giving up cake decorating. So here is my raw cake I made for Olivia. It tastes even better that it looks. I was so excited about how it turned out. I got the recipe from a book called "Living in the raw, Desserts" by Rose Lee Calabro.

Raw Cake
2 cups soaked walnuts
2 cups (about a pound) pitted dates
4 tablespoons raw cacao powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
*Blend this in the food processor and then mold it into a cake shape

Chocolate frosting
1 cup soaked cashews
3 tablespoons agave nectar
3 tablespoons raw cacao powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 banana

While frosting
Same as above except no cocoa and add 1/8 cup water

*Frosting are blended in a food processor of vita mix

*When the cake is done put it in the freezer. It ends up being the consistence of brownie pieces you would find in ice cream. It was so good :)

Olivia is almost done with her classes at the alternative school for the year. Below is a tortoise that she made in pottery class.

Now that we have moved my two favorite things to do is walk and go to the library. I love the downtown library. Done you think it looks cool?

I also love this building. It reminds me of New York city.

Day off from school

Olivia and I went for a walk to get out of the house. It was so much fun. We walked over the the Seattle Center and Olivia decided to run in the fountain. She is the one in the purple shirt.

Than this girl below decided to drive her rickshaw into the fountain. She had two girls in the back but when she road it into the fountain they jumped out.

Olivia had a blast in the water.Afterward we decided to walk to the store to get a snack. Olivia was soaked so I gave her my coat to wear.

There are so many beautiful things in this city. I felt like taking pictures of everything.

Olivia started to dry off.We got raisins to eat at the store. After we ate some she wanted to find birds to feed them to. Or this squirrel...I tried to take a picture if it and it started hoping toward me which freaked me out.

Urban wildlife...

She finally found a duck to feed the raisins to. The duck was friendly and let us get very close.


That was fun :)

New Classes

So we enrolled Olivia in Home School Alternative School (which I already told you about). It is through the public school system. It is like a supplement to home schooling. We still school her but there are some classes she goes there for. I love it because the people are so nice. The classes are more relaxed and the parents can be in there if they want to. Right now she is in three classes. A science class, a fundamentals class (reading and writing) and a pottery class. She LOVES her pottery class.
As far as at home I am teaching her cursive. Her french is going along very well. She is getting pretty good at simple addition and subtraction. Her favorite thing is anything that has to do with animals. Every week we go to the library and get her one book to read for each day and about 5 DVD's. I let her pick one DVD and then I usually get her one musical or operetta, one about another country, one nature or animal movie and then one of something else like science or anything educational. This week we had to go to the laundromat. We practiced writing and ate snacks while the laundry was going. I love this sauce!!

These are Olivia's cursive d's. Pretty good for 5 years old I think. I am so proud of her.
This is her new favorite thing. I sock monkey she got from Kristin.

This picture cracks me up because she looks so sarcastic.

Shain just bought all the workbooks for her first grade year. She will have a lot to do. She loves worksheets.

It has been a while... here are some resent picturesGrandma gave Olivia this violin pen. She likes to pretend to play it.

Olivia took this picture. She like to run off with aunt Charlotte's camera.

Olivia took this on and the next one of herself.

She loves to pose for the camera.

Olivia doing yoga with grandma.

More fun at Grandma's house...

We enrolled Olivia in a Home school alternative school. This is where we can sign her up for a few classes that we choose and we still do the rest of her schooling. I think it will be a good balance. It will give us more resources and she will spend more time with other kids. She got tested for reading at she is reading at a second grade level (and she is still technically in kindergarten). Things are going great with her schooling.

Launromom

We have a membership at the YMCA now. I have been working out 3 days a week. There is a pool there and I need to teach Olivia how to swim. We could not let her awesome hair color get ruined so we got her a swim cap.On fridays now we do school at my mom's house. The latest math classes center around understanding coins and thier value.

Her hand writing is getting so much better and she can spell pretty big words now like "wonderful".

Her she is working on her french flash cards.

I recently painted my parents kitchen for them. Notice how the brown wall matches the appliances. This is just one wall.

The other walls are this color.

We go there is Fridays now so I can get laundry done while we do school....yaya!

Suzie's Hair, Funny Pics and Thanksgiving

This is my younger sister. I just did her relaxer the other day and I decided to do a little Suzie hair history post. This is before her first relaxer 3 months ago.
This is after...so much better.

This was an old color I did on her. her natural color is so pretty but I am still sad she doesn't have me color it anymore cuz it was so much fun!

...after that we colored it back and cut it off.

...another cut.

This is what it looks like curly.

...this is before another color.
...and after.

I think the last one was the best. This is after her latest relaxer and cut that I did the day before Thanksgiving.

In other news...

Olivia lost her first tooth. It was so exciting. She got money from the tooth faerie and bought a stuffed bear.

This pic is just funny. We put a pillow in Bernie's kennel and sugar found it...

This happen right after Draco had been soaking in the tub. Now he is drying off.

Thanksgiving

My first raw Thanksgiving dinner was not the best. When I made the raw stuffing and it was in the dehydrator the whole house smelled like stuffing. It was great. The stuffing was really good. Everything else was just so so. I think next year we will just make something that we know tastes good instead of trying to imitate a traditional dinner. The dessert Shain made, however, was amazing!

The the day after thanksgiving was so much fun too. We slept in, hung around the house and relaxed. When we did finally go out we got Mario Party 8 for the Wii. That was so much fun. We also bought and watched "Across the Universe" and it was an amazing movie. Shain got himself a Nintendo ds for when it is slow at work. This weekend has been so much fun. Now I need to go get caught up on all the cleaning.

Today is laundry day. We got a phonics lesson done at the laundromat.

Berny likes to eat the birdseed that falls on the ground. I didn't quite catch it in this picture but Berny looked like he was going to lick Bunnie and Bunnie put him in his place.