The BIG play place!

Josie and I have discovered our FAVORITE indoor play place-Out of this World Pizza and Play in Hillsboro.  It's only $4 for Josie for unlimited time there.  And there's coffee for me too.  It's a big warehouse, basically with bouncy houses, slides and a huge climbing structure with tube slides and other stuff.  They also have little bikes on a racetrack, a "shopping area", playhouse, kitchen, soft area for the 2 and under crowd.  There are couches and lots of tables and if I get a good table I can see the whole place so I can sit and read or visit with another mom while Josie plays for HOURS.  It's great.  She checks in with me periodically and usually seems to attract the attention of a girl a couple of years older than her and they'll play together.  It's great to see her play so well with other kids.  She's not too shy with her peers-she'll go up to them and ask them to play with her.

Here's some pics of a few visits to the BIG PLAYPLACE-as Josie calls it.

Running the cash register:

The 5 and under bouncy "thing":

The racetrack:


Josie waiting in line for the slide. She had a hard time with this-she was often "caught" by the employees trying to cut in line. I had a hard time not laughing at her-she would maneuver herself in the front and when they turned around and noticed her-they'd make her go to the back of the line.



Ah-this waiting thing is REALLY hard!



This cool slide is worth it though.


And here she comes!


Really awesome climbing structure for the big kids (although Josie was all over this thing from Day 1. Kind of a crummy pic though, sorry.



Happy girl! Having a blast!


I wiped the kid out! Mission accomplished!


The next group of pics is from a playdate with Chloe, Taylor and Coby before Christmas. We dressed them all in red T-shirts to make it easier to keep track of all of them.

Josie:

Chloe:


Josie and Chloe:


Josie hamming it up for the camera.


Posing at the end of the slide:


Josie on the climbing wall:


Coby in one of the few moments he wasn't causing his Mom grief.


More ham from Josie:


Taylor putting gas in Chloe's "car". Taylor spent most of her time being the mechanic for the day. She had a line of "cars" waiting for her at one point.


Josie and Chloe in the playhouse:



After Christmas we got to go again and this time have a playdate with Shali and Priya after not getting to see them for over a year! Unfortunately neither girl cooperated for pictures with the exception of Priya on the slide (she couldn't help but smile!)  but I did want to document the event.

Better late than never! (Belated Xmas post)

okay-so the stupid camera breaks right after xmas and it took me awhile to get the pics off the card (it wouldn't power up). I now have an awesome new camera. One of those times when it truly paid to buy a warranty. Of course-I bought the warranty because I figured if the camera broke it would be because of Josie!

Christmas was so long ago-it's hard to recap. Christmas Eve was at my mom's house with my brothers and their families, grandparents . . . . Josie was spoiled appropriately (as were the rest of us) with gifts and had a blast. We went to the children's mass earlier in the afternoon and I tried to undo a little of the Santa stuff and get Josie to understand the true meaning of Christmas. Didn't succeed too well-she's fairly obsessed with Santa. And that's okay for now . . .

At about 9pm I left for midnite mass in Portland. Josie was a little warm so Mom was going to give her some Tylenol before bed. I returned at 2:30am to Mom looking pretty frazzled and a little girl with (according to the ear thing, which is suspect) 106 deg temp. Poor thing. Gave her more Tylenol and almost took her to the emergency room before I had realized I could call the on-call doc. Josie has never been seriously ill with the exception of one time and her fever responded quickly to Tylenol. And it wasn't that high either. Anyway-while I talked to the nurse-her temp started falling and she finally fell into a good sleep around 4am. I finally got to sleep around 6:30 and we got up when Josie woke up at 9am. I took no pictures on Christmas Day-I was barely functioning to get through the morning round of presents and then dinner at my Grandma's.

Oh-and the whole Sleeping Beauty/Ariel saga? Grandma came through and found a little Ariel barbie for cheap and we put that under the tree too with the Sleeping Beauty doll and a bunch of Cars stuff that was all from Santa. She immediately went to the Ariel doll and wasn't interested in the Sleeping Beauty doll until a few hours later when I showed her how to change Sleeping Beauty's dress from pink to blue and back again. Blue! Pink! Blue! Pink! She loves that part of the movie and will walk around randomly yelling "Blue! Pink!"



A few pics while waiting to see Santa (including one her classic "Pirate" faces!):

Christmas Eve: