father's day weekend

let me tell you about my weekend, working backwards.

this afternoon, i got a haircut.

don't i look older without my curls?

mom thought she'd cry to see them go, but she actually loves my summer do.

daddy tells me i'll stay cool this way.

(daddy got his summer cut today, too!)

speaking of daddy, here he is on father's day!

don't you love the necktie i made him in school?

he wore it out this afternoon while we ran errands.

(i was so honored.)

here we are reading his card together.

did you notice the "thomas the tank engine" sticker in the previous shot?

(if not, blogspot doesn't charge extra for you to go back and look!)

now yesterday was an interesting one.

we'd lost electricity since friday's storms, so we had to improvise to keep cool.

in the morning, we went to our first "language stars" mandarin chinese lesson.

my teacher alice told my parents that i was a really fast learner.

they were impressed - but not particularly surprised - to hear me speak mandarin so quickly.

after mandarin class, we headed to the lincoln park zoo.

by some minor miracle, dad found a great parking spot.

but i didn't want to stay long, so we headed home.

mom hadn't brought our camera to class or to the zoo, so no pictures there.

but i'm betting you already guessed from the previous two pictures that we played in our backyard pool once we were home.

perfect activity for such a hot day!

of course, we had to fill the pool up first.

(remember, these pictures are all backwards.)

"wheeee......!"

and what was the cause of my delight?

two new bathtub toy boats which i'd floated in my pool.

sometimes it really is the simple things...