Happy St. Patty's Day

Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day....right?

In our case most of us actually do have Irish in our blood so it seemed like a fun idea to celebrate it and we were lucky :) to have Nana in town for the weekend. She had some fun ideas for our Irish day and brought necklaces, head pieces, and plates and napkins.

Here's a look at the fun accessories:

For lunch we had Irish handpies and Rainbow fruit kabobs with gold at the end of our Rainbows:

Those handpies were a labor of Irish love! They called for a pie crust and wanting to forgo the chemical included store bought pies I decided we'd roll our own. We had to cut perfect 7 X 7 squares but of course you can't roll dough out to a perfect square....so Nana rolled, cut, rolled, cut, and rolled some more. We wouldn't have had these perfect pies without her work! But they looked so pretty and tasted so yummy!

For dinner we joined our sweet friends for a Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner. I didn't get many pictures but these sweet girls played an Irish gig....or something for us: 

May the luck of the Irish be on you....

Happy 4th Birthday Cupcake

Decorations, invitations, excitement, friends, their families....oh how we LOVE a birthday party. 

BUT....we also really LOVE the quiet celebration shared at home, just us. Here's our precious Cupcake on her true 4th birthday: 

We had the whole cake left over from the party so we did candles, singing, and another wish!

Cutie Pie was more than happy for more cake: 

We had left over icing bags and decided that a 4 yr old was old enough to decorate her own piece of cake. Of course my creative girl was THRILLED for the challenge: 

The masterpiece:

At 4 you are still sooooo sweet! So many kids want to be your friend! When you leave school I'm always amazed how many of your classmates want to give you a hug goodbye. At Little Gym so many girls want to hold hands with you and be in your rotation group. At church kids are always excited to see you come. You are kind to everyone and gentle. You are compassionate and fun. You are beautiful, smart, agile, and fun...and yet you have no idea how amazing you are. You are the.best.big.sister....EVER. You are helpful, patient, loving, and gentle with your sister. You are not envious and you share so well. She loves you sooooo much and follows you around because you are so so so sweet to her. It melts my heart and blows my mind. You love books, stickers, painting, crafts, butterflies, and dress up. You talk my ear off!! You love to sing. You have a great sense of humor and an incredible memory. I miss you when you are at school and get excited to pick you up and hear about your day. You are able to recount your day and tell the story of how the day unfolded. You always ask me about my day and Dad too when he comes home from work....you are thoughtful. You give great hugs and use manners more than I can take credit for teaching you. You can cook macaroni and cheese (except for draining the boiling water) and you do lots of other things to help in the kitchen.

We LOVE being your Mom and Dad....we LOVE you. Happy 4th birthday sweet girl.

Little Gym, Big Birthday!

 We've been part of the Little Gym family since Cupcake was about 6 months old. When we won a free birthday party I knew Cupcake would LOVE to celebrate her next birthday at the gym. After months and months of waiting for her Little Gym party it was finally time! She also wanted a Strawberry Shortcake theme so we brought in some BERRY sweet decorations to mesh her favorite sweet character and her gym.

The party tables: 

The BFFs: Cupcake, Her best friend, Her best school friend, and her Little Gym best friend:

The jumping air track was a HUGE hit:

And of course Cutie Pie was determined (with Gigi's help) to keep up with the big kids:

Silly faces....sweet friends. 

Under the parachute with her Daddy:

Making a wish:

Sweet Cupcake had a BLAST at her birthday party. Thank you so much to our friends who came to jump, twirl, kick, and flip our way through a super fun birthday party!

Sweet pickin'

 Still playing catch up here....

In early March we had a Strawberry Shortcake themed party planned for our special 4 yr old-to-be. So, with Gigi in town a few days early we were able to pick 17 pounds of fresh berries to have for our BERRY special party. (Well...17 pounds minus a few batches of homemade strawberry icecream ahem).

The picking duo searches for perfectly sized, red berries:

I think we did a great job:

And our berry special girl LOVED being able to pick her own berries for her party!

And this one was happy to watch:

Oh how we hope to make it back for a few more berries before this season passes by. There is nothing like a fresh picked berry!

Green day & birthday chapel

March was green month...no biggie, right? Unless of course your day to celebrate your birthday at Chapel falls on green day when you'd prefer to wear pink. Cupcake is an excellent problem solver so she managed to wear green, wear pink, AND her birthday grown and STILL look beautiful. Oh how I love this precious sweetie!

Here we are at home...you know the drill: snap a color day picture, let Cutie Pie jump in for her color day pic:

Then we got to school and Cupcake got a birthday crown to wear to chapel!

Cupcake's teachers are so sweet and understanding of Cutie Pie's desire to be in school. They invited her to sit with the class for her sissy's birthday chapel: 

They get to go on stage for their birthday and everyone sings to them: 

And then they get to pick a prize out of the birthday bag:

For your birthday week at school, you get to provide a treat for snack time. The standard is cupcakes, donuts, cookies....but when I asked cupcake what she would like she was specific: "How about something healthier. Could we do an apple cinnamon muffin? But could you make it pretty?" 

How do you say no to that? I was so proud that my girl actually WANTED a healthier treat. Additionally, one of her teachers is gluten free and doesn't get to enjoy the birthday treats so I took it a step further and made Gluten Free Apple Cinnamon Muffins....with a touch of pretty on top. My Cupcake was thrilled, I was proud of her choices....a win/win kind of day. 

As they sing at school, "God's blessings to you," birthday girl! 

A special birthday

 Remember these two precious babies?

Well here they are 4 years later....

I feel like I've blinked. Joshua is growing into an amazing little boy. He is thoughtful, fun, energetic, creative, and loves to be with friends. It is so dear that after all these years these two are still very special friends. Joshua wanted to celebrate his birthday at Sea World this year and invited one friend....our Cupcake to join the fun. How could we turn down the offer? We had an awesome weekend with our friends. I managed to get a few pictures on my phone but hold even sweeter memories in my heart.

Happy Birthday, Joshua! Thanks for sharing your special weekend with us!

School party

The school Valentine's party was on a Wednesday which meant Cutie Pie and I would get to start the day in chapel with Cupcake. This was also the day before I got sick with strep...so we were all still festive and excited about Valentine's day. 

Here's Cupcake ready for school in her shirt from Nana: 

They do a great job with the Chapel service each week. Here they are hearing the bible story for the week: 

Normally Cutie Pie sits with me in the pews. We watch the kids come in, we watch all of chapel, we watch the kids go out, and then we head home. With each passing week though Cutie Pie wants more and more to be with the kids. On this special day, Cupcake's sweet teachers invited her to do just that....come be with the kids. They are the sweetest teachers!

The lighting is terrible with the sun coming in but....it took Cutie Pie all of 2 minutes to realize that she was being invited up to make a bee-line for a lap where the action is. She was so happy to be part of school!