Mara was the very lucky recipient of two original paintings recently, and she helped us hang them in her room. The first picture is a wider shot to show what her room looks like now (with the new wall and door!).

In the second picture, Mara gives her version of an excited reaction…

(We actually asked her to say thank you, which she does know how to say in two languages – but of course not on command!)

There’s a bit of a story behind these two paintings, both of which are by Mara’s Auntie Kim. Kim’s new site is at KimRempel.com and in exchange for my work in setting it up and hosting it, Kim offered to do some artwork for Mara.

Kim keeps a daily painting blog as well, and the story of the bus painting is told in three posts:

• “Bus!” work in progress + a sketch
• “Bus!” + oh boy…
• The new “Bus!”

Kim’s blog is definitely worth following. And make sure you check out her site!

A compilation for the purposes of parental-bragging

(again, video might take a moment to load).

We also went into James’ work this morning, to show off Mara’s costume and to catch a glimpse of the kids from the daycare doing their tour of the building (they all have parents that work in that office). Mara was so excited when we ran into the crowd of kids! They were a bit older than she is, but she would have happily gone off with them for the rest of the tour.

I carved our pumpkin this time — Mara helped, mostly by napping long enough for me to get the bulk of the work done!

Here is a collection of recent stuff, mostly shenanigans

(Please be patient… the video sometimes takes a while to load)

James got our bikes up and running so we were able to take Mara out for her first bike ride.

He also set up her wading pool, which she seems to love. She figured out all on her own that there is a slide (I wasn’t in a hurry for her to discover this feature).

This afternoon, Mara and I checked out a kids’ gym for the first time. It was pretty hectic there, but Mara definitely had fun. Not sure if I’m ready to keep up with her on the trampoline, though!