We celebrated Holly's 6th birthday this weekend. Six years old. That feels like the big leagues or something. It's very grown up, very much passed the "toddler" and "preschooler" age. Holly is full of energy and a generally very happy child. She loves reading "Biscuit the dog" books. She loves playing with her sister - the intensity at which they play is impressive. Every day, Holly and Greta are thrilled to be together and they play with passion. It's adorable and I'm in awe of their amazing sisterhood. Holly's Holly! She a wonderful kid! It was a fun, busy weekend. We went to the San Francisco Zoo on Friday. It's an okay zoo. The most recent zoo we've been to is the San Diego Zoo. If that's the zoo that I hold as the standard, I think I'm going to be very disappointed every time we visit a zoo. It was fun and I'm glad we went. I don't plan on visiting again. On Saturday evening we had a very small birthday party. And now it's over. But the entitlement lives on.

I love the fourth of July! Most years that we've lived here in CA, we've gone to the Rose, White and Blue Parade - a local parade that's really close to where we live. It's so fun and I think I love it the most. When the army reserves come rolling through, I barely hang on from bursting into tears. My heart is so grateful to live in the USA. I love living here. I love the people, I love the diversity. I love the opportunity. I don't fully understand what a big deal it is to have lived in North America my entire life, because I haven't experienced any amount of my freedom being removed from me. Undoubtably I take it for granted to some degree. It's a white woman's luxury that feels a little uncomfortable to type, and yet I'm so grateful.

A trip to Half Moon Bay with Conor! Traffic is seriously so insane here these days. It can be painful to get to the beach. We were planning on going to Santa Cruz, but there was a couple accidents on the 17 and early Friday afternoon traffic... so change of plans! Half Moon Bay was cool and breezy and beautiful.

Holly's first lost tooth seems as good as any reason to start blogging again.

Being a mom is so fun! It was so exciting to first discover the loose tooth and then to have it come out. Throughout all of kindergarten, Holly watched her classmates wiggle their teeth and loose them and as any child can tell you, especially Greta, it's agonizing to want to loose a tooth! One day Holly's tooth became noticeably more loose. I still didn't think it would come out, but she worked on it for a while until she pulled it out herself. I'm convinced that it was painful - there was a good amount of blood before it even came out. But Holly was determined to finally lose a tooth!

The night the tooth fairy came. As Conor and I tucked Greta more snuggly into bed, she woke up, disappointed that the tooth fairy had not come. Little did she know...

Holly's not big on smiling with her teeth, but when I catch a glimpse of the hole in her smile, I think it's completely adorable!

Holly celebrated the 100th day of school this week. This means we're well over halfway through (about 80 days left of school) - bring on summer!

Holly loves school. She is always excited to go, she has never asked to stay home. She is so happy! She has lots of little friends and is doing really well. I started to teach her how to read this month - eek!

For her 100th day project, we counted out crayons and hot glued them to a canvas and then we melted them with a hair dryer. It was fun to make and we all felt really proud of it.

When I look at pictures of Holly from the first days of school, I see how much she's grown up and changed. For one, her skin is no longer browned by the sun and her hair is longer and much less blonde. She looks older. I feel as though time has sped up even faster than it was moving before school started!