Last Day of 3rd Grade

Ava officially ended the strangest school year ever on June 4th. I thought 2nd grade was strange (and it was with the sudden shut down and never returning back to school) but 3rd grade was even stranger. This school year started with 4 days of e-learning and 1 day in-person. Moved to 2 days in person then 3 days in person then all days in person but with masks and plexiglass on the desks. The kids couldn’t get close to each other all year. The teachers had to get creative with parties, like sending in Valentines or snacks 3 days in advance so they could quarantine. On top of all that, Ava’s teacher had a hip replacement a few weeks after school started and was out most of the fall semester. Thankfully, her long-term sub from last year (who is also her tutor) filled in while her teacher was out so she had someone familiar to help with the strange transition. In spite of all this, Ava had a great year! She loved her teacher (and the long-term sub) and made some great friends. She finished with really good grades and learned so much! She won the Ravenous Reader award from her teacher, Honor Roll, Technology Award and E-Learning award (for being one of the few kids to complete all e-learning assignments). We are so proud of how well she did in such a strange school year. It was definitely a school year we will never forget. We are hopeful next school year will be a little more normal! Just cannot believe she only has 2 more years of elementary school!!

Dance Studio Ribbon Cutting

Zoe’s dance class got to be part of a special day for the studio. The Greenville Chamber of Commerce had to delay the new studio ribbon cutting because of COVID last year. They were finally able to schedule it and it happened to be right before her tap/ballet class. So, they invited the girls to help Mrs. Beth cut the ribbon. We can’t say enough good things about the dance studio. Their entire mission that dance is for everyone (no matter age, size, special needs, etc) is so wonderful! The whole staff is so sweet and we just love the environment.

Picture Day at Dance

Zoe had picture day at dance where they wore their recital costumes for professional pictures. She was such a cute little dancer/model! She posed perfectly for the photographers and looked so cute in her costumes. We didn’t order the pictures (I took some later at home) but I took screen shots of them and grabbed some (not great) on my phone through the observation window. The blue and pink costume is her hip hop class (and her teacher Mrs. Molly). The yellow is her tap/ballet class (and her teacher Mrs. Annika. We love our cute little dancer!!

Playing Hookie

The end of the school year is always filled with fun and not a ton of work. So, after Ava had her state testing, we decided she deserved the chance to play hookie. And to be honest, the day was just as much for me as it was for her. I took the girls to the American Girl store to see the original 6 dolls (the ones I grew up with, like my doll Kirsten) that they brought back out in honor of American Girl’s 35th birthday. I invited my mom to come with us since she experienced those original dolls/catalogs with me when I was Ava’s age. It was so cool to see the dolls back in their original outfits with the “Meet…” books in the original Pleasant Company design. My cousin made the comment that American Girl couldn’t have planned this better because all of us who grew up with those original dolls now have little girls who we are buying dolls for and she was so right. It was definitely a fun girls’ day out!

Career Day

Ava had one final dress up day at school before the end of the year…career day. She decided to dress up as an art teacher this year. We think this is actually a really great career option for her! (Although, we should have turned her apron around because she said people thought she was a worker from Publix, haha).

Zoe’s Party Fun

We had so much fun celebrating Zoe at her party. The girls had a blast playing in the kiddie pool, the water beads, making lei’s and eating cupcakes. We are so thankful for all these sweet friends of Zoe’s!

Zoe loved having everyone sing happy birthday to her and blowing out her candle. She actually tried to sneak the cupcake before it was time…hence the fingerprint in the icing. Then after we sang, she ate a little bit of the icing off her cupcake and then headed back to play…still not super into sweets.

I made sure to grab pictures of Zoe with her guests before they all left. She loves all these precious friends!

Grayson and Anna

Her cousin, Karla

Mary Wallace

Adi Mae

CC and Madeline

Hazel

Tiff and I tried to get a decent cousin picture before they headed home. We should have known that was impossible with this crew!

Zoe’s 4th Birthday Party

Our first event at the new house was Zoe’s 4th birthday party. It was a fun way to christen the new house. We planned it a few weeks after we moved in, which also gave me lots of good motivation to get things unpacked and settled. Zoe wanted a Moana themed birthday, which worked perfectly for a pool party in the back yard. She requested chocolate cupcakes and we also served fruit - perfect for an island theme. We invited several of her friends from church and her cousins. She had a blast playing with all the little girls and we loved celebrating our big 4 year old!

I’m going to break the pictures up into 2 different posts to show off the decorations (thanks Pinterest for all the wonderful inspiration) and then show off the party fun.

After the party was over, I had Zoe dress up in her Moana dress (her birthday present from us) and pose with Maui’s ship. I also wanted to make sure to get some pictures of her with her birth mama flowers from her party. As usual, I made a flower arrangement in honor of her beautiful birth mama for her party.

Happy Birthday, beautiful girl! We love you to the moon and back!!!

The New House

I did not do a good job of documenting the house build. I think DJ has more pictures on his phone but I wanted to share the ones that I had. We started back in June of 2020 and moved in on April 13, 2021. It was a long process and was crazy in the middle of COVID. We are so thankful to finally be in our house! Thanks to Nana and Papa and all their crews for helping our house become a reality.

Zoe Through the Years

It’s time for my annual look back at Zoe on her birthday every year.

This isn’t actually April 7th, 2017 but it’s one of the closest pictures I have to that day.

April 7, 2018 - 1 Year

April 7, 2019 - 2 Years

April 7, 2020 - 3 Years

April 7, 2021 - 4 Years

Zoe is 4!

I still cannot believe that Zoe is 4 years old! She is growing up way too fast. I know I say that all the time but it is true. I wish we could slow down time. We tried to take some of Zoe’s portraits while we were in Cades Cove for Spring Break but she wasn’t thrilled with that idea. She cooperated a little but there were too many distractions. So, I decided to take some more after we got home and moved into our new house!

Zoe is growing so much these days! She had her well check right after her birthday and she is right on track developmentally. She is actually doing some things that are a little more advanced. The doctor asked if she could ride a tricycle and was shocked when I told her that Zoe was riding a pedal bike. She was also impressed at Zoe’s knowledge of letters and ability to write some of them (more on those things in a bit). Zoe’s stats were:

Height: 40 in (58th percentile)

Weight: 34.2 lbs (45th percentile)

Zoe is wearing mostly 3T clothes. She can wear some 4T shirts and dresses, especially the hand-me-down ones since they’ve been washed so much. And being the 2nd kid, she has a LOT of hand-me-downs. She has so much because she is able to still wear things from last year and some slightly bigger things. I pulled out multiple boxes/sizes for her to try and the girl ended up with way more clothes than she could possibly wear. So, we put a lot of the larger ones up for next year. She is wearing size 8.5/9 shoes.

Zoe is growing in size but also in how much she is learning. She recently became obsessed with learning her letters. She looks for letters everywhere and is getting pretty good at recognizing them. But the most impressive part is how well she can write them! She can copy any letter and will sit and work on writing letters for the longest time. She has pretty good handwriting already too! And she is definitely a lefty! She is working on learning to write her numbers too but doesn’t seem to be as obsessed with them as letters. She is going to love preschool in the fall. She is beyond excited to finally get to start school after not being able to go to 3K because of COVID. She really has a desire to learn and figure things out. She seems to have an engineer brain because she always wants to know how things work and is always tinkering with things and putting things together. We foresee a lot of STEM projects in our future with this little girl.

I continued with the annual birthday questions with Zoe this year. Like I’ve said before, I love being able to remember the girls at different ages in their own words.

How old are you?

4

What is your favorite color?

Orange

This answer still changes all the time, just depends on when you ask her. Although, orange has been fairly consistent. She usually switches between orange and purple...good little Clemson girl!

What is your favorite food?

Pasta

Zoe is still not a big fan of stopping to eat. She is doing better about sticking to 3 meals and 2 snacks. She just doesn’t like to stop to really eat much. But, when I talked to the doctor about it, she wasn’t concerned about how little Zoe eats at some meals. She said Zoe is healthy and is maintaining/gaining weight at a proper rate so she is actually regulating herself well with food. Zoe loves most fruits, avocado, almonds, cashews, peanuts, pecans, granola, pizza, pasta of any kind, tortillas, quesadillas, red bell peppers, broccoli and smoothies. She also still loves her yogurt and applesauce pouches. She also still loves her almond milk. We still have to limit her milk every day because she would be more than happy to fill up on that and nothing else. She still likes savory over sweet but is starting to get a little bit of a sweet tooth. She loves lollipops and loves the idea of cakes/cupcakes but doesn’t ever eat much of them. At her birthday, she ate a few licks of the icing on her cupcake and said she was done. She did really love the marshmallows at the cabin though. She loves m&ms and fruit snacks but we reserve those for hair time.

What is your favorite restaurant?

Papa John's Pizza

Zoe also loves to eat at Chick-Fil-A (or chick-a-lay as she still calls it). With COVID and some dietary restrictions for me, we haven’t been eating out much. But, hopefully we can get back to restaurants a little more often soon. We did go to a pancake restaurant for Zoe’s birthday and she loved it!

What is your favorite outfit?

Ariel dress

Zoe is getting into dress up more these days...although still not as much as Ava did at this age. She has a closet full of princess dresses and ballet leotards that she rotates through. For the longest time (at least all winter), Zoe stayed in her pjs all day….girl knew how to handle quarantine, haha. She LOVED her footie pjs when it was cold and never wanted to put clothes on. Since we weren’t going many places, it really didn’t matter so she pretty much lived in her pjs. Recently, she’s been getting dressed with Ava while Ava gets ready for school. She tries to match Ava somehow pretty much every day. She either wants to match Ava or her stuffed Eeyore. She is at the age where she wants to pick everything out to wear and she thinks that pink shirts go with pink shorts/skirts or a blue shirt with blue shorts, etc. She will take advice on what does and doesn’t match but sometimes insists that things match...it’s one of those pick your battles situations most of the time, haha.

What is your favorite TV Show?

My Friends, Tigger and Pooh

This is a new discovery and she absolutely loves it. She watches it while I get a little bit of work done each day. She also loves Daniel Tiger, Angelina Ballerina, Llama Llama, Doc McStuffins, Puppy Dog Pals, Vamparina, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Minnie’s Bowtique, Chico Bon Bon and Mira Royal Detective. We let the girls watch several episodes on Saturday and Sunday mornings or while I fix Zoe’s hair and they love it!

What is your favorite song?

Twinkle Twinkle

Zoe still loves music and loves to sing. She loves Disney and Disney Junior music (as we all do) but also loves some Broadway classics. A favorite Broadway song is Seasons of Love from Rent. She also still loves the music from Trolls, The Greatest Showman and Jingle Jangle. We recently let the girls watch the Hannah Montana movie and they both love that music. Lately, that is Zoe’s request when we get in the car. She also still loves Jamie Grace and Toby Mac.

What is your favorite book?

Super Fairies

This one surprised me because this is a chapter book that Ava gave to Zoe when she was finished with it. Ava read it out loud to Zoe and now it is apparently her favorite. Zoe told me she was on chapter 22, haha. Some of her other favorites are “Goodnight Moon,” “Dream Big Little One,” “Think Big Little One,” Charlie the Ranch Dog books, My First Little House books, Clifford books, and Princess Truly.

What is your favorite toy?

My “merican” Girl Doll

She is referring to her miniature Nanea doll that she bought at the American Girl store. I love that she thinks her mini doll is just as cool as the regular (MUCH more expensive) American Girl doll. She had a blast picking out her doll and a backpack for Eeyore when we visited the store recently. She still loves her baby dolls as well. She loves playing in her kitchen and building with the big duplo blocks. She really loves puzzles too. She also loves to color but her true love is stickers. She can be occupied with stickers for a long time. Another favorite activity is playing with the random screws, bolts, washers, etc that she has collected from DJ. Like I said, she loves to tinker with things so she has a little container where she collects these little tools and she loves to play with them all the time.

What is your favorite thing to do?

Play with the airplane (a toy plane outside)

She actually started to answer, go outside. Zoe still loves being outside. She asks to go outside every day and would be happy if we spent the entire day outside. She loves to fly the toy airplane outside, color with sidewalk chalk, play in the sprinkler or kiddie pool, ride her scooter, fly her kite, look for rocks (a true favorite activity) and bubbles. She is obsessed with bubbles! We gave her a new pedal bike for her birthday and that is also a favorite activity. She mastered her balance bike and kept asking for a pedal bike like Ava. She still has the training wheels on it but I think we can probably take those off soon.

Where is your favorite place to go?

To the beach

Which she’s never been to but keeps asking to go. She and Ava don’t know but we planned a short beach trip this summer because we felt bad about Zoe being 4 and never seeing the beach. We thought about going last summer but COVID got so crazy (especially at the beach) that we decided to be safe and stay far away from the COVID hot spots. They are both going to be so excited when we tell them we are FINALLY getting to the beach.

Who are your best friends?

Eeyore

Eeyore is her new obsession. She decided he was her favorite stuffed animal right after we moved and he now goes everywhere with her. She has to make sure he has pjs on at night and clothes during the day. She is quite attached to him! I am a little sad she isn’t as attached to her gray bunny anymore and am a little concerned that we only have 1 Eeyore (we had back up bunnies). Zoe is still a very social little girl. She is such an extrovert and has been much happier having some social outlets lately. She loves going to dance class, the park for preschool Bible time with our church or to outdoor church (which they are not doing now but once we are fully vaccinated we will be able to go back to regular church). She asks every day if we are going somewhere and gets very disappointed if I tell her we have no plans for the day. She lives for social interaction and will be so happy when she can go to preschool 3 days a week in the fall! Her real (aka human) friends are Adi Mae, Mary Wallace, CC, Hazel, Madeline, Grayson, Anna, Anne Shealy, Tallulah (from ballet) and Wynn (from hip hop). She also loves hanging out with her cousins and second cousins (and is super excited to have a new second cousin coming in a few short months!). But, her true best friend is still Ava. She loves her big sister so much and wants to do everything just like her. They are sharing a room now that we’ve moved to our new house. It took a little while to adjust but now they love being together at night. And they are loving their playroom and are playing so well together (most days). Like I’ve said before, we really hope they are always best friends.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

A Teacher

Zoe is so excited about starting school. We hated that she couldn’t go this year as originally planned but know she will thrive next year. She talks about going to school all the time and just cannot wait for her school to start. She loves going to pick Ava up from school every day and she loves to say “hi” to the principal in the car line (like I said, our little extrovert). Zoe also had some really great dance teachers this year. She loved working with Mrs. Annika and Mrs. Molly! It was a great social outlet for her since she couldn’t go to preschool.

What do you hope to accomplish as a 4 year old?

Go to my summer camps

Zoe is talking about her dance camps this summer at her dance studio. She is going to a Princess Dance Camp and a Moana Dance camp and she is so excited! Zoe loves her dance classes! She did one semester of ballet and tap with Mrs. Annika in the fall and then took the same class again this spring. The class starts with tap and then they move to ballet halfway through and dance with their little “Twinkle Bears.” It is a super cute class but Zoe tends to be a little bored when they get to the ballet part. The studio added a new class this spring called “Tot Hop and Tumble,” which Zoe took with Mrs. Molly. It is a combination of hip hop and tumbling and Zoe absolutely loves this class. It is much more energetic and high paced for her than ballet. They start with dancing and end the class with a little tumbling obstacle course. She has learned how to do a forward roll and a bridge in the class and is now working on a cartwheel. We told Zoe she could only do 1 class next fall because of preschool and asked her which one she wanted to do and she picked hip hop. She is definitely a little athlete and does super well with the gymnastics part. We may look into true gymnastics in the future (when COVID is even better - so many surfaces touched, haha). Zoe will have her first true recital in June and she is so excited! They did a little mini performance with her class at the studio in December but it wasn’t the typical recital because of COVID. We cannot wait to see what she does when she gets on stage!

Zoe still has such a big personality! She is full of life and loves to be the center of attention. She is goofy and loves to make people laugh, as I’m sure you can tell from these pictures. She loves to stick her tongue out when we ask for a smile and she loves to shake her little booty...such a little ham. Her smile still lights up a room...I know I say this all the time but when she smiles her whole face lights up! She definitely has a tude and can be super sassy (always keeping it real)! She and Ava are really learning how to communicate best with each other when they both want different things...which can lead to screaming but they are slowly learning how to work through things together. Zoe loves big though! She loves to snuggle all the time and gives hugs and kisses all the time. She randomly says “I Love You” and is just so sweet!

We are so thankful for this precious girl. She brings so much joy and silliness to our lives. But, like I say all the time, we know the joy she brings comes only because of a great loss from her birth mama. We never take that loss lightly and we think about her birth mama all the time. We love her precious birth mama so much and will never be able to truly express how much she means to us. Zoe loves her birth mama too and is starting to talk about her more and more. We love watching the girls recognize the bonds they have with their birth mamas as they get older. We are so grateful to have both of them as part of our extended family!

Zoe, we cannot believe you are 4! You are such a joy to our family and we cannot imagine our lives without you. Mama, Daddy and Ava love you to the moon and back baby girl! Happy Birthday!!!