i'm six!!

Today my oldest is officially six years old! She is growing into a very sweet little girl who loves school, plays well (ok, most of the time anyways...) with her brother and sister, enjoys helping me out around the house, will choose a cherry tomato over chocolate (!!), and just this past week learned to ride her bike without training wheels!

This is her last night at her little birthday party. She seems so big now - especially when I look back at this picture....

This is before I came. She was so cute and chubby!! :) And it's funny to think that one of those two teeth on the bottom there is now missing! :)

Reegan came over last night to help us celebrate. We had given her this Tinkerbell T-shirt for her birthday last monday and what my kids didn't know was that I had shirts for each of them too! My middle child loves Ariel and the two older girls enjoyed matching with their Tinkerbell shirts.

Mommy got a cool pirate hat for the baby to wear! Here he is trying to figure out the whole string below his chin thing.... :)

Once again, Mommy set a beautiful party table!

The kids got to each make their own pizza to share and we made a couple extras for the adults to eat that hadn't been touched by children's hands. :}

This is Wendy's brother, Steve. He stopped in Knoxville for a few days on the way home to Arizona from a business trip and was here to help celebrate. In this picture he is being a good uncle and leading the kids in banging their hands on the table and saying, "WE WANT CAKE!! WE WANT CAKE!!" My baby for some reason calls Steve "Sir" which we all got a kick out of.

Gary, my kids grandmother, got a very special present on her birthday six years ago today - a granddaughter! We celebrate both birthdays together. They are waiting together while everyone sings to them.

Then they both wished. Very hard.

And blew out all the candles!

There were some very lovely presents - including this beautiful Tinkerbell nightgown from Reegan, Lauren, and Catrina.

The birthday girls!

My kiddos with their Uncle Steve. I think they all had a blast! Great party, Mommy! :) And Happy Birthday TCR!!

picture of the day

tea party at lulu's

Yesterday we got to go to a tea party! Lauren's little sister, Reegan, has become a good friend of my girls and yesterday was her 8th birthday. We were all invited to come celebrate with her at Lulu's Tea Room. It is set in an old yellow house and I am not sure why I didn't get a picture of the outside of the house! Each room is decorated in a different theme and we got to have our party in the butterfly room - green and pink - just perfect for a little girl's birthday party!

The birthday girl. Isn't she beautiful?? :)

All seated around the cute table! Austin is a little boy that Lauren babysits. He looks thrilled to be sitting at a pink table with a bunch of girls all wearing dresses, doesn't he? :) He ended up moving to a table with my baby, Lauren, and me. :)

Little sister, Reegan, with big sister, Lauren.

My little man looking oh so handsome! :) Before we left the house yesterday morning, he had stuck a play gun in his pocket and Mommy said he looked like he was from the 1940's! :)

While we waited for our food, there were plenty of things to keep the kids occupied. The little girls got to have their drinks in tea cups. There were plenty of sparkly pink wands to go around. There was even a stack of hats and gloves to try on!

Ok, so the kids weren't the only ones who had fun with the hats! :) This is Catrina, Reegan and Lauren's mom, looking very lovely in her hat.

My baby entertained himself by eating the lemon's off of our drinks! I will be interested to see if his tastebuds change eventually - for a long time now he has liked lemons and pickles, and just last week we discovered that he loves flaming hot Cheetos!

The two boys of course found a better use for the magic wands and promptly turned them into swords! After a few minutes the "fight" took a turn for the worse and they all of a sudden decided they didn't particularly like each other. Austin would say, "I don't wanna look at him!" as he gave a thrust with his "sword". To which my baby would say, "Don't hit-uh me!" (He has a funny way of adding 'uh' to the end of his verbs ...not sure why...)

Finally the food came and it was VERY good!

Very happy after a fun pary and a yummy lunch!

My baby and his favorite "LaLa". :)

Happy birthday, Reegan! :)

st. pat's day and abby's visit

Ok, I was going to do a post about this week and the things we did for St. Patrick's Day, however, I just uploaded a bunch of the pictures to my Facebook page and don't feel like typing the exact same things here....SO! check out my Facebook album to see how our day went! :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=233323&id=729430647&l=3e73fbf452

You don't have to have a Facebook page to view this album, although I'm guessing most of the people that read my blog do. Just click on the link and it should let you view the photos.

happy st. patricks day!!

A longer post about today will follow later..... :)

jonathan is two!!

Today is my "almost nephew", Jonathan's second birthday. I cannot believe it has been two whole years since I was at the hospital waiting to hold my best friend's first baby! It is so much fun to watch him grow and change each time I get to see him. Shannon had his little party on Saturday. Can you guess the theme?? :}

Bouncing balls with Gram. He did this for hours. Literally. At least two!

Taking turns with Pappy. Gram and Pappy are Dave's parents. It was good to see them! :)

When it was time to open presents, Jonathan had been having so much fun with all the balloons and balls that he didn't even want to open any presents! When Shannon asked if he was ready, he shook his head and said, "Ball!!" and held his hands out for Gram to throw another ball!

Eventually he got into the present opening. A musical card helped. :)

Auntie Catherine (Shannon's sister) gave him this very fun xylophone - an instrument he can actually play! I gave him a very chubby harmonica and recorder for Christmas and he hasn't quite gotten the idea of blowing into them - he just puts them up to his mouth and hums! :}

The yummy food! Sausage balls, spinach balls, a cheese ball, oreo balls, cupcake balls.... have you guessed the theme yet?? :)

I found the idea for the basket ball and the baseball in a cupcake book that I have. The tennis balls I saw online. I wasn't sure how to do a soccer ball but Catherine was the genius that figured that one out!

Thanks to Rebekah for the Oreo balls recipe again! They are so easy to make and always turn out soo yummy! :)

Auntie Catherine holds the cupcake with the lighted candle for Jonathan to blow. Evidentally, Jonathan thought this was pretty funny. :)

Blow!

Mmmm! Good cupcake!!

A verry good cupcake! :) I think he had a great day on Saturday. I know I had a great time celebrating one of my favorite two year old little boys!!

playground fun

Yesterday my girls had their homeschool classes all day so my baby and I got to hang out together. While I love having all three of my kids around, I do enjoy my days of one-on-one time with the baby. Since the weather was so beautiful, we went to the church across the street to play on their playground. We are taking advantage of the playground in this warm, before-spring weather as much as we can right now because as spring brings beautiful weather it also usually brings families of bees and wasps that love the playground as much as we do!

There are several things we like to do when we visit the playground. There is a huge field of grass in front of it that is perfect for kicking around a ball without worrying that it will go in the street or parking lot.

The switch from trying to stay warm in freezing cold weather to running around in the 80 degree weather with the sun beating down just around noontime wore him out! So he had to stop and rest a minute.

Kiki took the opportunity of her toddler sitting still for one minute to tickle him!

He loves to ride on these horses - they bounce up and down and from side to side. Yesterday, however, his spot of choice was right here in the middle! :)

The swing is probably his very favorite thing to do at the playground. He will very happily swing for 30 minutes at a time!

Next, he wanted to try out the "big kid" swing. Right here he is saying, "Go away, Kiki! Alone!" Which means he wanted to do it all by himself.

So I walked a few feet away to the little picnic shelter and sat down in the shade and just watched him swing "all by himself" for a couple minutes. He thought it was pretty cool.

Pretty soon he hopped off the swing and trotted over to join me in the shade. Here he is sitting and pondering. A moment later he said, "Star song, Kiki." He has always loved music, even when he was teeny tiny, so while we cooled off a bit, we sang some favorite songs. It is so much fun now that he is big enough to try to sing along with me!

Happily listening to Kiki sing.

Goofy, sweet, and wonderful! Little boys are so much fun! :)