we celebrated the big 7 today. i have been having a hard time with thinking that she is no longer a little girl. she is becoming so independent.

she loved her tee pee and all of her other wonderful gifts.

thanks to all who sent wonderful wishes and made it such a special day for her.

still working on the tee pee. i just finished the sewing. we made a few errors on measurements today but we were able to make modifications that i think will work better anyhow. we should have a nice tutorial when we finish i will post it. sweet pea has no idea what she is getting for her birthday.

we had a great day today. it was my daughter's last day of first grade. she climbed off the bus and told me how sad she was, she said there was a lot of people crying at school. a few of her friends are moving from here. they will be going to korea, utah and northern california. so sad. we did meet the family that is moving to california at the pool. she swam for 4 hours straight. it would be great if she would sleep in on her first day of summer but she probably won't. no worries lots of fun to have, rest can come later.

sweet pea took the "beach in a jar" that she designed for daddy that she designed for daddy and made it into a terrarium for a few of her little animals. so sweet.

i have decided that i miss helen too much. we are going to have momma camp this summer. we have so many things that we would like to do together, so that is what we are going to do this summer.

i began to set up my etsy to sell account today. i am hoping to start selling my way out of this overcrowded house. i know that andrew would be thrilled. i am really ready too. i feel like i am becoming one of those people that have so much stuff that it takes over their home and their family. a pretty frightening thought. i will have to do this while helen is not around. she has the family gene that will not let her get rid of anything. my family gene of course.

big news in rochester kodak decided to stop producing kodakchrome film. so sad, not that many use it anymore but seems like film is just getting whittled away. it is getting harder to find any film now.

andrew and i have been working on a tee pee for helen for her birthday. i worked on it for a good portion of the day. andrew helped my try to work through the measurements.

sweet pea brought her gifts for daddy into our room this morning. they have been very busy at school making gifts. she mad a few extra this morning. she also wrote him a note from me that said i love you. very sweet. the neatest thing that she made him was a terrarium. she took a jar that she had in her room and made a beach in it. she took some sand that was in a balloon weight and added some glass stones and a few other things. the funny thing about this was i had seen some terrariums somewhere online and that was one of the projects that i thought we could do over the summer and i had not shown it to her she came up with it on her own. i knew that she would really like them she loves the dioramas they have at the science museum and they remind me a lot of them.