Liesl turns 5!

Our sweet baby girl turned 5 today. We started the day with snuggling on the couch and reading an installment of Ivy and Bean, and looking back at photos of her birth day and her first and second birthdays. She had requested scrambled eggs with English muffins for her birthday breakfast, mostly because she wanted to help make the eggs.

We had a few presents with breakfast. Steve made this fairy doll for her to take to preschool - so amazing.

 Sebastian made Liesl a poster page about her awesomeness as well as a book about her life:

 Wait, what's this???

 UNO!!!!!!

 Liesl opening her new erasable drawing pad (a boogie board) and immediately getting to work.

 Even the sunrise glowed pink in celebration of Liesl's birthday. :)

And then off we went to work and school and preschool - Liesl was happy to spend time with Nina, of course, and apparently they all sang happy birthday to her at circle time. I picked her up a little early and came home to get dinner prepped before we headed back out the door to gymnastics - again, she was excited to get to play and do gym and see one of her favorite friends, Vivienne.

We had stromboli, meatballs, broccoli, and applesauce - quite the birthday dinner request - and then a few more presents before we ended the day with apple spice cake.  It was a pretty sweet day with our lovely girl.

 Opening and then immediately reading a boxed set of Pinkalicious books.

CAKE! Liesl helped make her own cake this year - a smitten kitchen recipe for roasted apple spice cake with cream cheese frosting. It's delicious. I've made a lot of apple cakes, and this one might win the prize.

Salmon River hike

We headed toward Mt. Hood this morning for an autumn adventure with the Hoangs - both Anne and I had been itching to get out into the forest. We hiked about 5 miles along the Salmon River, enjoying the leaves, the old-growth forest, the company, and the sight of salmon in the stream.

Two salmon: one valiantly swimming upstream to spawn, and one dead and decomposing - one hopes after successfully laying its eggs!

Our PNW children, happily clambering streamside from rock to rock.

 Steve's reaction to seeing Cuong slip into the water. :)

 

These two are magical together - they talk and pretend and share and laugh and make-believe and run and are so fierce and wonderful ...

 Goofy children in a hollowed-out tree.

 

Ready, set, go!!! We all joined in the fun and got ourselves covered in leaves.

 Picnic lunch under the sheltering leaves and branches of a large tree. It started drizzling a bit.

 JUMP!

Sebastian is learning about haiku poetry in his second-grade class, and we were inspired to create some as we walking along the trail.

Yellow leaves falling.
Salmon River streaming by.
Sunday hike with friends.
--Bri and Seb

Counting syllables
Trying to make a haiku
A leaf falls I'm done.
--Steve