Wow-- it's been a long time!!

Lily as Tigress from "Com Poo Panda" - her favorite character lately

 Stompin in puddles in her favorite shirt lately-- a $3.99 steal from the airport in OKC

Pics from cooking class. She liked it and took it very seriously. (sorry they're blurry)

I've been very bad about updating this blog lately because I've been over at Hope's blog. We got our travel approval this week, so I've been busy confirming travel details. We leave June 15th, meet Hope on June 19th (Father's Day!) and come back June 30th. We are so excited! Three weeks feels like a long time but I know it will go quickly, especially since we'll have visitors in the meantime (the Hahn's for the weekend--yay; and my parents until they find a new house-- double yay).

Lily turns 4 1/2 on the day we leave for China and she seems so grown up lately. She really loves numbers and letters and at the rate she's going, she'll be reading by fall--through NO fault of my own. She's really interested in what sounds letters make and how words are spelled, so I am literally an innocent bystander watching her learn to read. It actually might come in very handy that she and Hope are learning to read and write English at the same time.

Lily has also gained a couple of new friends lately-- Judy and Emmie. We haven't technically met these friends, but we know LOTS about them. Judy is forty-sixty-five and is in kindergarten. She lives in our neighborhood. Or my parent's neighborhood. Or whatever neighborhood we're driving through that strikes Lily's fancy. Some days not a sentence comes out of her mouth that isn't about Judy. I almost jumped across the car to muzzle Kyle on a recent car trip to Dallas when he started to mention Judy. Once she starts.... oy. She also texts and emails her, and occasionally they talk on the phone.

She's gotten really tall lately and is already too tall for some of her 4T pants. That would explain the numerous "eating days" she's had lately (as opposed to a regular day when she consumes about 10 calories). We were at the Wittmaiers' for dinner the other night and they couldn't believe how much she was eating.

Though she's choked down some healthy food on her eating days, she continues to be a candy fiend and her ears will perk up from across the house if she hears some type of wrapper being undone. A couple of months ago she heard a wrapper rustling and rushed into the kitchen to see Kyle standing suspiciously close to the candy jar. She asked him if he was eating candy and he said no. She didn't believe him and said, "Smell my breath!"