Birthday Princess!

What you can't tell in the picture is that the tiara and wand had flashing lights!
This was such a fun birthday party because she is now at that magical "3" age where everything says "3 and up" ... she is playing (princess) bingo and (princess) dominoes and candy land and everything now. It's really fun to see her grow into things and it's so much fun to play with her! I love hearing her imagination as she makes up little things with her toys and dolls too.

Her party wasn't really long enough though! I wanted to play more games, but it was just right for the kids I think. After the hot dog dinner (that she'd picked out when we went shopping a few days ago), we watched the "Pirates who don't do anything" on the wall with the projector. It was just the right time for the kids to watch a movie... what with all the sugar at first and then hard playing afterward they were ready for some down time.

She's looking in a mirror. ;)

The girls took turns wearing the crown too. And all the girls got princess lip gloss necklaces and a pirate compass (because of the pirate movie.) They were pirate princesses, of course. ;) Lily was pretty excited about all of it, and it was so fun to be able to ask her what she wanted for her party (like what movie) and to have her tell me and remember what was going to happen and keep being excited and anticipating things.

The crazy candy-land-castle-cupcake-princess-birthday-cake
that I made for her was well received.


It was really fun... I've never really tried decorating a cake before since I'm not a huge fan of the taste of cake, but it was really fun! Though... I'd do some things differently now that I know more of what to do.

Her favorite thing about the cake was the princesses that were decorating it and she started playing with them right away. It is really cute to hear her little diologs with her toys. The cake actually just survived long enough for her to enjoy the singing and blowing out of the candles and about an hour later the top had toppled over.... perhaps it was from a little kid grabbing a snack? Or perhaps it just couldn't take any more stress, but it didn't matter much anyway since we threw away most of it. The point wasn't really to eat it (since we did all the decorating of cupcakes and eating candy bit right before this...) It was all about the princesses and the castle. Though the blue "mote" cookies were eaten even if not much else on it was!

I'm really glad Lily had so much fun! :)

Missing Christmas...

I couldn't bare to take these down quite yet.. especially since I just finished Renna's

I'm sad to see these things go

It was too short of a time...

Oh.. and cheap oranges...

I was ready in a way to take down our decorations.. but not at the same time. I've never felt like a Christmas season has gone by as quickly as this one. Usually, I'm ready to take everything down the week after Christmas, but this year I only took stuff down because the tree was so dry that it would lose needles if you looked at it and Lily's birthday is on Sunday (got to decorate with everything princess!) So everything is taken down except the Christmas pictures that I just couldn't take down quite yet...

Our first Christmas.. the good old days..

Pregnant with Lily feeling really heavy..

Lily's first Christmas where we went a visiting all of Youssef's side.

Last year looking forward to the baby sister (but I didn't want to be in the shot this time... and anyway, Lily was too cute by herself!)

This year! Renna's first Christmas and all of us together.

I think I'll do a group picture every few years or so and the ones in the middle will be just the girls. Mainly because they change a lot quicker than we do. :)

Christmas happenings...

I let Renna try some candy cane... She has a sweet tooth now that she has FOUR teeth, and she just got her two front teeth in time for Christmas... how ironic!

Renna thought her newest cousin was pretty interesting. I got the fun job of waking Sophie up so she could eat.. hence the playing with the toes. ;)

Lily is standing in front of her new doll house holding her Tinkerbell doll, wearing her new Tinkerbell nighty, and holding her baby doll with the new matching Tinkerbell outfit. She was flipping out with all the fun Tinkerbell things and kept saying "For me" over and over as she opened the presents. :)

She had chocolate for breakfast on our own family Christmas (which was before the big family Christmas which was before the BiggEr family Christmas.)

This was within the past week before we got at least another foot of snow! Lily and Jonathan have been enjoying the snow a LOT. Tomorrow might be a good snow fort making day since it is starting to warm up. It's going to be really nasty if it warms up and ALL the snow starts to melt.. we are talking over two feet at least!

Well, it was a fun Christmas! And now that I'm mostly done with the Christmas projects (except our letter which is usually a newyears letter anyway.. and mailing presents to Youssef's side.. we were a bit late) I'll be needing to get ready for Lily's birthday in one week! *A moment of panic* It will be fun though and a princess theme (Christmas was all Tinkerbell.. and her birthday will be all Princesses.) :) She's going to love it! I'm not sure when I want to invite people for a party though... hmm....

Christmas Pictures

Happy family!

Giggles!

Whoops, one is slipping down!

Renna has been feeling her bottom teeth a lot... it looks kind of funny. ;)

A few days ago when I got our Christmas stuff out the girls had lots of fun with the nativity! They've been playing with it a lot and Lily's been talking about Jesus and the wisemen and everything. It's really fun. We haven't read many of the Christmas books yet, but we had our Fondue tradition today (that starts in December and keeps going through Christmas.)

Decorating!

Renna really liked her ornaments. I think she was confused though as to why I kept taking them away to hang on the tree.

Lily picked out her ornament this year and she wanted a Tinkerbell ball one. The picture above is of her hugging it when I first gave it to her! It was really cute. She is really into Tinkerbell and princesses and sparkly girly dress-up things. ;) (*shh* She's getting a Tinkerbell doll for christmas AND a nighty with Tinkerbell on it too!)

The girls were watching Rudolph this afternoon after I finally finished straightening and rearranging the living room (this was before we put the ornaments on the tree)

Youssef had fun outside rolling a snowball. Lily was with him for a while but then came in because she was wet and cold (her snow stuff isn't the greatest).

I made a really tasty quiche this morning. I didn't use a recipe, but it turned out really good! A guy that Youssef interviewed for a story in the paper (who was a buffalo farmer) gave him some buffalo sausage and I put some in the quiche. It was really good. Youssef thought it smelled like bacon. I thought it smelled like jerky, but which ever way it tasted (though it did have it's own taste) was really really good. And nice to know that it is so much better for us than the store bought meat that is mainly fat and junk that they inject the animals with.

If anyone would be interested in going in with us to buy some buffalo meat let us know! Youssef is going to find out how much it is and I'm guessing the more people the merrier as far as splitting a side of buffalo. It's organic in case you are wondering. :)

Renna sees her first snow fall.

Lily feeds the nutcracker some breakfast meat. It is so funny how much she loves the nutcracker. I think we'll have to take her to a showing of the nutcracker next year. Every other year she was always fascinated with it, but afraid to touch it. This year she's been carrying it all around and treating it like her own special nutcracker. She really does need her own because this one is mine! I got it the second year we were married because we couldn't aford it the first year... and the first year we were married we went to the nutcracker together.