It seems like I was just posting Taryn is 8, but now she's 9!

Taryn's first sleepover party was a success. She invited 5 girls over. They had pizza and cupcakes. Taryn's dance teacher (poetryofthefoot.com) was generous enough to give a dance class at her house to all the girls. They had so much fun, dancing, playing games, and being girls.
The sleepover part was good, they were quiet and went to sleep early enough, although I'm hearing different stories about that.

We piled all the mattresses we had into Taryn's room so they could all be comfy, although they ended up in each others beds.

In the morning they realized they had forgotten to have a pillow fight, so they ran back upstairs to create this memorable event.

Taryn's early birthday present

We had this whole thing planned to take Taryn down to Kent station and surprise her by telling her she could get her ears pierced for her birthday and then go out to dinner. She has been talking about this for over a year and we've always told her she had to wait until she was 13. Vic distracted the kids while I went into the place to make sure they had two people on hand. So then we told Taryn our big surprise and she says, "um...no...not right now." So we went to dinner instead and talked about what she might want instead. During dinner I guess she changed her mind and decided to do it. Of course I quizzed her to make sure she was sure about it (I'm not helpful when she's making decisions).


She was super nervous and just held still and didn't say hardly anything. Then when they did it, she just stared straight ahead and didn't even cry. I was pretty surprised. She's happy now though, and loves to wear her hair in a pony tail to show them off.

Erik's robot costume

Erik was so excited when he saw this box from Vic's skateboard. He messed around with it for quite a while until he figured out what to do with it.