Sakes Alive! Maya is Five!

Maya had a super busy weekend.  Her birthday, Saturday, was the first day of basketball at the Y.  Maya is very into being a sport girl and was so excited to join the team.  Excitement turned to butterflies as soon as we got to the gym.  But after the initial coaches huddle she thought it was the greatest thing ever and wanted to do it again.... immediately.  Which may be a good idea - she really needs to work on the basics.

See Maya back there? - the only one that did not want to wear her golden "Wolves" shirt.

For Christmas & her birthday, Maya got some wonderful vintage (ok, hand-me-down) crafting toys.  Here on her birthday she is taking the Fisher Price Table Loom for a spin.  She plans to make a blanket for baby Alex.... eventually. She did get half way up the weft by the end of the day.  I don't remember ever completing a project on this thing 30 years ago so that's pretty good.  (Did I use weft correctly there, or is it the warp?)

My first ICE CREAM cake.  White Chocolate Fairy was fashioned by the portraiture method described by the Hansens in http://www.thewhimsicalbakehouse.com/books

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, Devil's Food Cake, Vanilla Ice Cream "Frosting".  Made in the Angel Food Cake Pan.  I must admit, I did steer Maya towards Mint.  Her first instinct was Butter Pecan.  But the party theme was Winter Faeries.... so obviously Mint was the most appropriate choice.
Ice Cream Cake was not as difficult as I was led to believe, but I was not thrilled with the effect of using ice cream as the frosting.  I'll have to try again.

Thanks to Angela, David, Maggie, James, Alex & parents for celebrating with us. 

xmas2012

Merry Christmas!

St. Croix

December 7-14, 2001
(Did I mention that I destroyed our camera the day before the trip?  All the pics are courtesy of Joy/Bob & Babçia/Grandpa.)  All I had to do was whittle 800+ images down to 45 and then combine them to 9 collages.  (oops, I included one twice).  You can get a closer look by clicking on any pic to pop out a bigger view.

Once again, we are grateful for the hospitality
aboard Exit Strategy.

All the cousins played with each other so nicely.

Genna was a handful, or a ham, most of the time.

So glad we disregarded slightly dicey conditions to visit this tide pool.  Love to explore this area more next time... in calmer seas. 

Maya finally realized her ambition of snorkeling.  Albeit, sans snorkel.  She preferred the familiarity of goggles and only let me make her wear flippers once.  Unexpectedly, the Cruise Ship pier was the best snorkeling we saw on the island.  (Corals at other locations: Green Cay & Buck Island were sub par).  Plus, Frederiksted's western location shielded it from the open Atlantic and was the best, calm beach for playing around.  Bob spotted the turtle (top), Jeff noticed the camouflaged flounder (bottom) and the giant spotted ray (middle) was apparently after me.  Maya is also very proud to announce that she spotted her own flounder and got to swim though a school of a million little fish.