Lauren

Lauren likes to think big and usually had grand plans for things. With her room, she plans to “cut a hole in the roof to allow the strawberry tree grow up really big”!

Lauren did awesome in school this year, getting straight “outstandings” in her report card! Amazing stuff! We will have to do something special for her!

Last week was book week at Willowbank school and the kids were encouraged to dress up as their favourite fictional character.

Evan decided he wanted to be Klaus from A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Lauren decided she wanted to be Asterix.

The evening before, we spent some time together making their costumes. They turned out quite well and both kids were really happy to go to school in their civvies and dressed up as someone special.

Lauren’s class did a good job getting all dressed up. Most of the kids had some sort of costume on – the other grades seemed to mostly go mufty.

The kids had a parade of the dressed up kids and Lauren won an award for the best dressed! She got lots of things, a number of books and some sparkly glue sticks! She was very chuffed – so were we!

Here’s a shot of the kids:

From Evan and Lauren fictional characters

Actually, Lauren looked a bit like Zelda from Legend of Zelda!

Lauren’s new bike doesn’t have training wheels on it, so on the weekend we took Lauren out to see how she did, riding all on her own. I ran beside the bike, while she pedalled and tried to stay upright. She did very well – she didn’t have any major falls (like Evan did when he was learning) and in the end she could pretty well stay upright all by herself. She still needs a bit more time to gain confidence, but certainly the skills are there – just need to be fine-tuned.

I caught some video of it – I will post it on YouTube soon…

Lauren had her 6th birthday on Friday, which was also the last day of school. Must be a nice birthday present to have the last day of school on your birthday.

We had a party for her and her friends on the day before and she wanted to go bowling, so we took her and 6 others to the local bowling. I took the day off work to help arrange things and pick them up from school.

The kids all did well – most used the ramp to bowl the balls, but from around mid-game, Lauren started to throw the ball herself without the ramp! She did quite well throwing the heavy bowling ball. She ended up getting 2nd best and I think all the girls had a good time.

We then went home for some crafts (foam door hangers with their own designs on it) and some food. By 7pm everybody had gone and we settled in for the evening.

On her actual birthday we went to Cobb & Co for dinner and she got to order a “traffic light” “cocktail” which was pretty neat for her.

For presents, we bought her a bike, which was half-paid for by Oma and Opa and a card game that Larry sent over. The game is called “Apples to Apples” and is about matching words with similar concepts/themes. Ie the target card is flipped over to be “Fun” and people choose the card in their hand most matching “Fun” like “dancing” or “video games” or whatever. Brings some funny situations when people try to influence the judge to use their card.

Here are some pictures of her birthday:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Ralph.Hoflich/LaurenS6thBirthday#

We made an invitation to the party, which was quite cute. Lauren searched google images and found this. She’s really into dogs:

From Lauren's 6th birthday

Lauren lost her 5th tooth today. This morning she woke us up from our Sunday morning sleep to say she lost it. It just came out, with no blood or pain, so she was chuffed. I wonder how much money the tooth fairy will give her tonight?

Lauren has another tooth loose again, this time the lower incisor on her left. Should be out in a few weeks time.

Lauren is still very much in love with Alex.

Here is a mail that she sent a little while ago:

Dear Alex,

I hope we will marry and we will get a dog and I will get you a Kinderegg! And I hope you will come to New Zealand and I will meet you at the airport and I’ll drive you to the wedding shops, so we will make decisions, so we can get married. And I hope we will have lots of dogs in New Zealand! I love you!

Lauren lost her 4th tooth today, an upper left tooth that has been dangling for around 4 days or so now. She was playing roughly with Evan and it just appeared on her lip! The tooth fairy came that night and gave her $1.50 so she’s very happy. Evan loves playing with her money!

We were walking last night and we asked Lauren how many children she would like and she said:

“6. Or maybe 5.”