more birthday

Rachel's birthday fell on the end of the year class party so she had an extra special day at school.

Here is the "cake" she requested--tower of hostess donuts topped with whipped cream and sprinkles.

Another special thing was that her grandparents were able to come and see her.  Here she is sporting some new clothes that they gave her, along with the roller blades that she wears all day long.  (the weather tis weekend has been super crappy (so far it has been about 36 hours straight of 35 mph Dust storms) so she hasn't gotten to wear them outside yet, but since I am a super fun mom, and things are pretty casual here on the rez, I let her wear them inside.  (Right now she is still in her pajamas but she has them on again.)

For the family birthday cake she requested a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I wrote the words and then let her decorate it. (In this pic you can see the cute little navajo hair clip I bought for her from a man selling stuff in front of the grocery store. People are always selling stuff in front of the store, and usually I try to walk past without making eye contact and just say, "No thanks, not today" if they ask me anything. However, once I actually tried to find some navajo jewelry to take to a friend, and suddenly all these jewelry makers were no where in sight. So now I usually glance at the items, and when I saw these little hairclips made with leather and beaded were so cute, and it was only $7. Rachel loved it, loved that it was blue (she is starting to get to the stage where she wants things other than pink, even though she still likes it) and loved that she had another thing that was Navajo. She said excitedly, "My skin is starting to be more Navajo too." (as in tan).

This is Rach with an old friend that came by for a visit.  They were in the same kindergarten class, and she moved about 2 hours away about a year ago.  The rest of the kids, in her class would say they looked like Twins  (the only similarity being that they were both white with light colored hair--they may have actually been the only two white kids at school that year.  It didn't bother either of them, and I just thought it was funny.  Mainly as I looked at the rest of the class, I wondered how they didn't realize that with their criteria, the rest of the 20 kids in the class were "twins" as well.   And it is not an optical illusion, Rachel only was as tall as her friend's shoulder.  Out cute little shorty :)