girly cuteness...

Youssef caught a picture of us reading together in the little pink play house. ;)

The other day I decided to make Lily some play jumpers since she loves to wear dresses all the time and didn't have any good *play* ones so this is the fabric she picked out form my stash. She calls it her "candy cane dress" and has worn it a lot. I finished sewing the dress while Renna was sleeping and when Renna woke up from her nap Lily went into the room and said, "Yook, Wenna! My Canny Cane dwess!"

This is of Lily spinning of course, but I have to say something about the princess nighty. We were looking at clothes in Walmart, I wasn't planning on buying anything, but Lily saw this princess nighty and and she said, "A Princess! It matches me!" Because she has EVERYTHING princess themed now adays. And considaring that she only had one other nighty.. a tinkerbell one from Christmas.. and she wares it ALL the time.. I thought it would be good to get it for her. She wanted it so much that when I tried to put it in the cart she wanted to get down from riding in the cart and just walk with it drapped over her arm.. to keep track of it I guess. It was pretty cute. I don't mind buying things for her that she wears and loves THIS much. I don't often buy her clothes because she mainly wears jammies all the time. ;)

This is just tonight. Lily fell asleep in the car on the way home from our church in Spokane and so she is up a bit later than usual. Youssef and a friend were watching a show that had some bad language in it ("Eagle Eye" - really interesting, but not appropriate for a three year old) She's watching the "Barbie Christmas carol" with head phones.. and this is just so much more advanced technically than when I was a kid.. it was funny. :)

Eleven Months!

Concentrating...

"Head and shoulders knees and toes..."

-yeah I'm doing it!!!

And she's walking!

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....