Happy 4th Birthday Annalee

Annalee,

How in the world are you already 4 years old?? You are such a sweet little girl and we are so blessed to be your parents. You love your sister so much and are so gentle and kind to her and she loves you back just the same. You love to work with your hands painting, drawing, writing, doing playdoh, coloring, cutting...you are very much a fine motor/detail girl. You can write your name using lowercase letters where appropriate as well as several other words from memory. You love your baby dolls, princess castle, dress-up, reading and helping mommy cook. You also love for daddy to do "dead-bug swings" at bedtime and you enjoy bath time until it's time to rinse your hair. You love to hug and kiss us throughout the day, but especially at bedtime and when someone leaves. Even though you are slow to warm up to new people sometimes, once you do, you are completely yourself and such a silly girl. You were so excited to turn 4 and tell everyone how big you are getting. We've talked about what happens when you are 5 (kindergarten...sob, sob), so when you turned 4 you asked what 4 year olds do! We pray many more blessings on you this year and expect to see you blossom even more! You've asked to take a dance class, you'll be practicing riding your new bike, learning more in mother's day out, and taking in new experiences every day. We love you Annalee, you're the most awesome 4 year old we know!

(listening to JoJo and Papa sing Happy Birthday)

Girly Day

With 2 girls, we've had/will have lots of girly days! I love every one of them. Today, we had our first American Girl Doll Store and Bistro experience. It was too cute. We browsed all around for a good while, checked out the dolls getting new hairdos in the salon, and then settled in for a yummy lunch. Of course, the girl's dolls joined us. The waitress set them up with highchairs and tea cups! Thanks JoJo for the fun b-day memory for Annalee (and me too!).





After lunch, we headed over to see the huge Christmas tree and watch the ice skaters.




Grace had a blast too!

Swimming in December

This weekend we celebrated Annalee's 4th birthday! (I'll save the sappy post for her actual b-day on the 27th!) We had her party at an indoor pool because we had some credit left over from a cancelled swim lesson. It was a pretty random thing, but ended up being a really fun party! Thanks to all of our friends and family who came to help Annalee celebrate and for braving your bathing suits in December to do it!! :)

31

Another year older. I had a great birthday yesterday. Of course, my day started with a random and funny cake. Micah decided on a bumble bee this year, although, when he went to pick it up, it was a little smaller than he expected, so he plopped it on top of a cookie cake. Bonus: we can recreate a bee cake another time using the plastic pieces that were used to assemble it. Score.

Grace couldn't take her eyes off of it!

Then later, someone knocked on the door with these...

Thanks Kandi for the sweet surprise!

The rest of the day was spent having lunch with Micah, getting some Christmas shopping done, and finishing with a great dinner at Macaroni Grill with family. Thanks everyone for making my day special.

Gingerbread House Making

Last night Micah walked in the door with a fun surprise for Annalee, a gingerbread house kit. She was so excited! They quickly got to work and, of course, our little detail gal was soon entranced in making sure every m&m and skittle were properly placed (with no m's showing!)


















Wonder what Grace was doing the whole time? Begging for candy...until she was kindly escorted to bed! Don't worry, she scored some m&m's before bedtime.






The finished product.




Also, last week, we bought our Christmas tree. Once again, Grace couldn't be contained...this was the best I could do at "stand still and smile at Mommy."

Bye, Bye, Mullet!

The before...

During...before things went downhill!

Over the Thanksgiving break Grace had her first haircut! We were having lunch in a cute little shopping center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and we came across a hair salon for kids. We ran in and chopped off the mullet! She did great at first with her little sucker, but then things took a turn for the worse and she screamed the rest of the time. We ended up with a little bob that's a bit shorter than I expected. She has a cowlick at the base of her neck, so we had to keep triming to get it to even out.

After!

18 Months Old

Grace is 18 months old today! We had her check-up this morning, and as soon as she saw the nurse in the hallway she started to cry. She pretty much screamed the entire time we were there, poor baby. She received an A plus today for her well-check! She measured in the 10th percentile, so she's petite right now, but she has a big personality to make up for it! I haven't done a good record of her milestones and "tricks" lately, so this one's for the baby book....
Words she can say: mama, daddy, uh-oh, bye-bye, fish, Abby (from her toothpaste, Abby Cadabby!), baby, night-night, bow, shoe...we are working on our vocabulary!
animal sounds she can do: quack, moo, buzz, baa, roar, she can also make a fish face and rabbit face
Songs she can "sing" (knows the tune, jibber jabbers the words): The B-i-b-l-e (Grace's version goes b-i-b-i-b all the while holding her little hands out like she's holding a bible), The Barney song (gives herself a big hug and blows a kiss at the appropriate time), Jesus Loves Me, ABC's, Old MacDonald
Other tricks: can itsy bitsy spider with the best of them; can point to her nose, eyes, ears, hair, hiney, mouth; feeds herself her own yogurt or applesauce with a spoon; she'll still stand in her exersaucer and watch a movie in my bathroom while I take a shower.
Things I love about this stage: She's my snuggler, as soon as the lights go out at bedtime she snuggles into your shoulder and let's you rock her. The nonsense jibbering, she'll have a whole conversation and you can't understand one word! Sometimes she hardly moves her mouth, but there's lots of sounds coming out. The way she wraps herself up in a blanket and walks around...looks like Yoda or Mary...sometimes she even covers her face and still walks around blindly. The way she says bye-bye and waves when people leave, it can get pretty loud sometimes. The way she loves praise and worship...she'll just clap and raise her hands in the air and grin. She even does this in the car when we listen to praise music on the radio-first thing she does is raise her hands!


I love a good baby squat (this was during our insanely long visit to the car repair shop, 3 hours people!!)



caught red-handed coloring the wall...I grab my camera knowing that a good scrub with the magic eraser will take that right off, so why not document the mischievousness!

Big Girl Day

We had such a fun day today with the Maxey girls! We dropped the babies off with their grandmothers and headed to Sweet and Sassy for some pampering. Annalee got a much needed haircut (about 2 1/2 inches off!). Then the girls had a mini-manicure.

After that we walked down the street to Mi Cocina to dine on raspberry lemonade and quesadillas, yum!

I think these girls were trying to make up for the lack of craziness without the babies around, they were silly pants to the max! This was the insanely long and dramatic good-bye hug.

Let's do it again sometime Karson, that was a fun day!

Van Grow

Ok, another chance to win a cool giveaway from Summer. Go check out her blog and order some great teacher gifts (yummy seasoning and/or coffee) and enter to win a $25 gift certificate to an adorable art studio for kids called Van Grow. I know Annalee would love this one since she's my little artist!

The Token Halloween Post

I know you've all been on pins and needles waiting to see what the Van Halen wig was going to be used for this Halloween...well, wait no more.

This, my friends, is the beast (as in Beauty and the Beast)...can't you tell? I bet you didn't know that the beast was a Ranger's fan too!

This is my beauty!

And here's my sweet pea ladybug. If you've been around this blog long enough, you know that Annalee was this same ladybug on her first Halloween. We resorted to an oldie, but a goodie for Grace this year. She started out in the wagon at first, but didn't last long. This girl figured out the routine quick! She proudly walked up to each house, held her bag out, gladly receieved her candy and even said trick-or-treat (although it sounded more like tickle tickle!)

Walking home...she could have kept going and going!

So Happy

A certain someone is overjoyed that JoJo and Papa are back from Africa!

Not Cool

Ever tried taking a 3 year old to the doctor having promised her that she wouldn't get a shot, only to have to retract your promise when said doctor is "out" of the flu mist and a shot is the only option???? Not cool. Broke my heart hearing her say how sad it was making her and how the shot was going to hurt so bad. Major drama, tears, struggles, but we made it...barely. Let's just hope and pray that we don't get the freaky strand of the flu that wasn't covered in the vaccine, that might just put me over the edge!

Go. Seek. Love (and some pumpkin carving)

Alrighty, only one more week to order your t-shirts that benefit Summer and Jason's adoption. I just ordered ours. It worked out great because Annalee knows all about Africa since that's where JoJo and Papa have been all month. This morning she was riding her little car and giving herself directions, "go north on African, and then go to North Richland African!" It cracked us up. Anywho...get on over to Summer's blog and check out her give away this week!

We carved pumpkins last night. I use the term "we" very loosely. Micah is the artistic one around here and Annalee is following in his footsteps. He takes his pumpkin carving pretty seriously...there were power tools involved, ok. My job was to supervise the impending mess and to roast the pumpkin seeds, which turned out quite yummy. Without further ado...here's the pumpkin family.

Grace, Mommy, Daddy, and Annalee

Her best impression of her pumpkin!

Smelling the mums.