The end of Gr.3 and the beginning of our summer

June 19/11

..... her similarity to her dad!

Jaymi is so much like Mark.  And although it drives me crazy sometimes, I love that she is like him.

They are both perfectionists.

They are both extremely stubborn.

They both have the same sarcastic streak and sense of humour.

They are both so smart!

They are both disorganized and scattered sometimes.

They are both so distractable.

They are both the loves of my life.

:)

June 21/11

..... her love for school.

She especially loves being with her friends, now that she is older.  This picture was taken on a field trip to a garden, during the last week of school.

June 22/11

..... her love for pretty things.

These are new shoes Jaymi just got.  She is wearing out shoes more than anything lately!

June 23/11

..... her courage to try new things.

Jaymi auditioned for a ballet this year, and she got a role!

She will be in a real ballet with a real ballet company in December.

She will be a snow flurry in The Nutcracker.  She went through an hour-long audition process and was so happy when she got in!

June 24/11

..... her recovery this year.

Her teacher awarded her a certificate of courage at the awards ceremony.  It is still unbelievable to us that she had her second brain surgery, still lives with a brain tumour, and has now graduated from Gr.3.

She has accomplished so much this year, besides recovering from surgery.

She has run a 1.5K, earned a role in a ballet (and finished her Primary year in ballet - ready to move on to Gr.1 ballet in September), made up for 3 months of lost time in taekwondo and has now earned her purple belt, and has also done a lot of growing socially & emotionally this year.

June 25/11

..... her enthusiasm

Ever since we discovered McHugh Rd we just HAVE to visit it when we are nearby!

June 26/11

..... that she likes to get wet.

It's so much fun to have a water balloon fight with a kid who WANTS to get wet.

June 27/11

..... her fun ideas

We declared this week "Fort Week" after Jaymi built this fantastic fort.

She has hung out in it, read in it, played in it, and eaten meals in it.

We ate dinner in it on this day.

June 28/11

..... her adaptiveness (recently)

Jaymi has never been great at accepting other people's ideas, but this year she has improved so much with it.  She let me change up her fort and tweak her ideas, and she liked the changes too.

June 29/11

.... her perseverance

I have been wanting to do a study of Virtues for a while now, and decided to do it this summer.

We began with Perseverance for two reasons.  One - because she used a lot of perseverance building her fort (it took hours and kept falling apart).  Two - in taekwondo right now they are discussing perseverance as well, so it fits right in.

One of the activities Jaymi is doing is lifting these cans (as weights) a certain number of times every day, and increasing that number.

June 30/11

..... her sense of responsibility.

Okay, here is the newest member of our family.

We adopted the cutest, tiniest kitten two days ago.

Jaymi named him Socks.

He is nine weeks old, he is very playful and very cuddly.

He is a rescue kitten (he was fostered after he was born from his mother - a cat found in the wild).

He is Jaymi's kitten and right now (until he is big enough to meet the other cats) he lives in her room.

She feeds him his wet food twice a day, she makes sure his dry food is filled up and his water is fresh, and she empties his litter every day.

She loves him so much, and is so amazing with him!

July 1/11

..... her sense of tradition.

She insisted on going to Fort Rodd Hill as we do every year, and we always take this family picture as well, on Canada Day.

She feels that tradition is very important.

July 2/11

..... her artistic ability

Jaymi has been wanting to be an artist for years now.  (She also wants to be a black belt in taekwondo and to work at an animal shelter.)

She loves to paint, draw, and colour.

She is turning her room into a cat-themed room right now, so she painted two canvasses for her room.

May 31/11

..... I love her school

I love that her class is small (not this small, however - almost half of the class was away for the picture that day).

I love her amazing teacher!

I love that her school encourages the grades to look out for each other and care about each other.

June 1/11

..... her love for dance

Jaymi's end-of-the-year ballet recital was last week.

At the dress rehearsal she begged to stay and watch the whole thing, and like last year, loved every minute of it.  She was so disappointed, in fact, that she couldn't watch the first half from the audience seating (she had to be back stage until her own performance in the first half).  But she did watch the second half with me, and loved every single dance.

June 2/11

..... her age

I love that we can go biking together and she can keep up now.

June 3/11

..... her self-control

This was Jaymi's first time ever, having cotton candy.  Yes, there are certain things we don't let her have, like pop, most hard candy, sugary cereals, and pure candy things like cotton candy.  So we had agreed, for her school fun fair last week, that she could have cotton candy.  We let her have the whole bag to munch on and she loved it.  What I liked the most however, is that about 3/4 of the way through the bag, she got full, handed it to me and said she was done.  I love that she regulates herself and listens to what her body tells her.

June 4/11

..... her sense of humour with fashion

Jaymi loves shirts that pretend inanimate objects have a personality, or feelings.  This one in particular is a piece of paper and a pencil who love each other.

:)

June 5/11

..... her love for books

When Jaymi found this Special Edition of Warriors (her favourite series right now) at the library, she was so excited.  It's over 500 pages long and she started reading it immediately - as soon as we walked out of the library.

June 6/11

..... her natural beauty

Yes, I know, I'm biased.  Of course I am!  But I do think that my daughter is beautiful and this is my new favourite picture of her.  It has become hot enough recently to put a fan in her room for nighttime, and I had forgotten to take a 365 picture yesterday.  She was in bed reading, so I snapped this photo of her with the fan blowing in her face.  I love the result!