Jada's Big Birthday Bash and her new pink bike ....

Jada's Big Birthday Bash and her new pink bike ....

Of course Jada was embarrassed when we sang happy birthday...

The games were great! Jada's Nana is a great game planner and had: suck the skittles out of a bowl using a straw (Jada was not great at it but had fun playing...she acted sad for the picture), Pick a cotton ball up using your nose (and a dab of Vaseline), Treasure hunt where we hid dollar store treasures inside the playland, and Fill the bucket by passing a wet dripping sponge over your head in a line from one bucket to the other. Great fun lasted for hours!

The presents from Jadas birthday...

Hiking Adventure Day

Jada at the picnic sight...

Jada and Mike having a Juniper Berry fight ...

On our way down the mountain Sunday we spied a tarantula crossing the road. Not uncommon around here, this is the third I have seen in the past 2 years. He started chasing me after I took his picture, so I ran...I had enough of being chased this day!

So for three years Mike and I have hear of wild raspberries growing on the mountain but no one could tell us exactly where. We found an obscure website that suggested the burned parts of the mountain and a certain trail so we found the trail and went raspberry hunting. Mike happened to notice a stack of rocks on the trail, which is used to mark something and went hiking up the hillside off the trail and behold there they were. Unfortunately, many had gone before us and there was only 2 berries a piece left.

As we hiked further, Jada and I stopped to admire a patch of clover which had leaves like hearts. Jada picked out her lucky clover, oddly it never left our possession until we got back to the picnic area....perhaps it was the luckiest of the bunch.

The trail ahead...

And this is the picture I took of the trail behind us. If I had waited about three more minutes, it would've had the mamma bear in the picture coming around the corner...

In retrospect I wish I wasn't so scared and could've shot a better picture but when your in danger you prioritize and Jada was the priority. So here are some pics of the "adventure" part of our hike.

The ol' black bear before we had any problems...seems like everytime I found the bear in my viewfinder she hid behind a tree.

End of School Year

Jada by her playhouse showing off her ballet costume, they did a country dance.

Jada backstage before final bows...

Graduation from Kindergarten: Jada and her classmates made their own paper hats. We didnt have shoes to fit and had to run to a shoe store right before graduation, unfortunately all they had was heels so this is also Jada's first pair of heels. She loved them. May 2010

We grew butterflies from caterpillars, this one of them

the day we released them. We had to convince them to leave the yard but Jada got lots of play time and up close observations of the butterflies.

apricot tree loaded with this years bounty: