Maeve’s Blog

I’m not sure where the summer went. I could summarize it, but there are many photos and a couple of videos that might do it better justice…

We traveled more than we expected, but had some wonderful highlights – at the boat, in Spring Lake, in Eganville, and at home in Chicago… We celebrated our nephew’s 1st birthday and had lots of opportunities to enjoy summer with our family and friends. We are so thankful!

The video that includes Maeve swimming by herself from the bottom of a very large water slide in 3′6″ water where she can’t touch is the most recent thing for which we are most proud. She also has rocked her recent doctors appointments in preparation for school – including her first eye drops.

Maeve will begin 2.5 hr/5 day/week preschool on Sept. 6. She will be joined by her neighbor and buddy Abby, and we hope it will be a really good year for her. She also will keep doing soccer and art, and will try Irish dance and swimming classes to build on her progress in the pool this summer!

As her 5th birthday approaches, it’s hard for us to find the words to express how amazed we are by Maeve. She is such a terrific, smart, playful girl and we love her more and more every day!!!

Camp CBG (Chicago Botanic Garden) was a huge success! Maeve loved her Salad Science camp and they had terrific weather all week. She made a new friend, learned how to harvest and clean fruits and vegetables, made salads and strawberry jam, and brought home 4 new plants for our garden!

This week she is doing art camp at the Paintbrush art studio. They learn about a different artist and style each day. I published a portfolio of her work at week’s end (June 24)…

We celebrated our anniversary and father’s day this weekend. Lots of work and play outdoors, and great meals! Some photos have been added to Picasa.

P.S. If you’d like to see some of Maeve and her soccer pals’ moves from Lil Kickers this season, be sure to check out the new movie in the MobileMe Gallery.

I haven’t posted in awhile so here are some random newsy updates:

Maeve is counting orange cars. Every time she sees one, she says, “I found another orange car. That’s (insert number).” She’s on 28 as of yesterday and plans to go to 100! Why orange cars, we don’t know…

Between more rain storms we have finally gotten back to riding the train around Chicago. Maeve LOVES to take the train, talks about the letters at each stop, and gets really excited about the different color trains. The other day we took the blue line to the pink line, then the brown line to the bus (another favorite option). Yesterday we went downtown on the blue line to the Printer’s Row Lit Fest and saw a Justin Roberts concert!

After a quick trip to visit Grandma, Uncle Matt, Auntie Beth and Nathan, we made it to the beach on the hottest day of the year so far (Memorial Day). This week is shaping up to be a warm one too, so let’s hope we don’t kill our new sod. Check out the photo gallery for pictures of our new and improved back yard!

Maeve is proud to have her very own library card now and we have started her first series of chapter books, The Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osborne. She loves the imaginative stories about a brother and sister who travel into books and learn about different places and times. This week we are reading the first in the Judy Moody series, since we don’t have the next Magic Tree House book.

Last week we said goodbye to our beloved art teacher, Ms. Cheryl. She is retiring this year from the Park District, so Maeve was in her last class. I plan to put together a portfolio of Maeve’s work and have a few pieces to frame as well. I will get photos of them up online too. Maeve has a week of art camp to look forward to, but it’s going to be hard to top Ms. Cheryl’s classes.

This is Maeve’s last week of preschool at the YMCA. She has loved her teachers and made a good friend, Amia. Next year, she is excited to be going to Belding with our neighbor Abby. We went to see the classroom last week where she met her teacher and got a tour from a sweet 5-year-old. She left saying “I love it here!”