Ellie's 4th Birthday

We officially have a FOUR year old!  How can that be?  I got all mushy and sentimental on my last post all about Ellie, so this will be all about her big day and her party.  It was a GREAT weekend!

Remember last year after the big Wizard of Oz party when I said I wasn't doing that again next year?  Well I think I stuck to that for the most part.  Ellie just seemed so out of her element and overwhelmed with the huge crowd that we decided to keep it small with 5 of her little friends around her age and the grandparents.  I think it was the best decision we could have made FOR HER!

Since she is so into dressing up and princesses we decided to go with a girly princess theme complete with Disney princess dresses, crown making, and nail painting.

Peeps and DeDe came up the night before.  We let Ellie open her gift from us, one from them and her gifts from Granny and Grandonna!

Everything was all set up the night before!

The girls decorated crowns...

And each girl had a dress to wear!  Ellie has quite the collection:)

She was ready to party!

 The party was at 11 so we had lunch.  Ellie requested Chick-fila chicken nuggets, popcorn and chex-mix, so they of course made the menu.  We also chicken salad croissants, pimento cheese sandwiches, magic wand fruit kabobs, and cookies!

Once again blown away by her cake this year!!!!  It was SO good.

Baby brother napped throughout most of the party, but he was there!

Sweet little friends.

Favors.  Magic wands, princess cups, lip gloss, crown sucker, crown candy bracelet, earrings and stickers.

Time to eat!

The biggest surprise of the day was the appearance of a real live princess!!  Sweet Abby goes to church with us and does pageants.  She was so sweet to come and be a princess for the party.  She even brought Ellie a crown, sash and flowers!

With their crowns all decorated!

Painting nails...

For me, the best part of the whole day was when Ellie blew out her candle.  This was BIG for her!  I was so proud of her.

Miller woke up to the wild and silly girls running around playing.  Sweet baby!

BB, Eric, and Mammie gave Ellie this trampoline!  She was thrilled and jumped right after they finished putting it together.  It was a great day for our super sweet FOUR YEAR OLD!!

And just because...

1st birthday...

 2nd birthday...

 3rd birthday...

4th birthday...

Baptism and Christmas Play

The Sunday before Christmas was our church's kids Christmas play.  I also knew that we wanted to have both kids baptized, so we decided to do it all on the same Sunday!  It turned out to be a great decision since our families were going to come watch the play anyway.  We also ended up officially joining our church so it was a very special Sunday for us!

Our church is VERY small.  About 75 on Sunday mornings.  But we have a wonderful group of young kids that attend that are some of Ellie's very dear friends.  That is what drew us to our church the most.  We have recently re-vamped our young adult Sunday School class and we have really enjoyed getting more involved there.  I am so glad we found such a sweet church home here in Greenfield!

I will let most of the pictures do the talking, but it was a great day.  Everyone came back to our house after church for lunch.  We are so thankful for everyone that joined us in celebrating our kids special day!

Ringing the bells...

Sweet little angel girls singing

Sweet cousins!

Our family

Almost FOUR

We are in pure birthday mode in our house.  Every year when January rolls around, I can't help but get an overwhelming feeling of pure thankfulness and JOY that Ellie has brought to our lives.

I cannot believe she is about to be four. FOUR!

We are facing a few decisions on where she will go, what she will do next year.  She is SO ready to learn and grow and go to school.  My this momma heart is having a very hard time dealing with the fact that she will be gone everyday, all day if we go that route.  On the other hand, I don't want to be selfish and hold her back on my emotions.  I really think she is ready and will love it.  We will see.

She has blown me away these past 8 months.  She loves Miller more than my heart could have every hoped for.  Their age difference has been wonderful!  She is very independent and the best helper to me!  They love each other so much and it is so so sweet to see them interact with one another.  Such a sigh of relief to see.

She is very into anything Princess, American Girl, cooking, dress up, coloring, "school", Doc McStuffins.  She still takes dance once a week, goes to Awana on Sundays, our church on Wednesday nights and is a Little Spirit cheerleader for a couple more weeks.  She stays busy, but not too busy.  If she needs a night at home we don't push it.  She is still just three after all!

We have decided to go small, low key this year for her party.  I hope this is the right move.  I am thinking it will be.  The poor girl didn't enjoy much of her big over the top party last year...she didn't even want to blow out her own candle!  So just a few little friends and the grandparents will be around this year.  The girls will play dress up and have their nails painted.  Very girly and VERY pink!  I am excited!

She didn't want a bow in her hair the other night and I let her go out to eat with out it.  I'm hoping this isn't the beginning of bow/clothes issues!

I am going to go cry in the corner now and stare at the baby monitor and watch Miller sleep.  It all just happens way too fast!

Christmas 2013

Better late than never, right?

I love looking back on all of my posts but the Christmas ones are always my favorite.  I promised myself that I wasn't going to stress or get overwhelmed too much this year, and now ooking back almost a month later, I think I managed to do pretty well!

We had a wonderful Christmas as a family of four!  I loved dressing up my babies, spending time with family, taking lots of pictures with my REAL camera and making lots of fun memories!

Our first celebration was before Christmas with BB and Eric.  The kiddos were spoiled with so many fun things!  It was a great day kicking off all of the many celebrations.

Sunday was the kids baptism and Christmas play at church.  That will all be a separate post!

Monday we headed to Bartlett for Christmas with my family.
Anytime you have two 7 month olds and a 3 year old under one roof, it is bound to be a little wild:)

We had a yummy steak dinner with my parents and then exchanged gifts with them!  Don was so relieved Miller started receiving his own toys.  He was tired of seeing him play with all of Ellie's old PINK ones.  Ha!

This sassy mermaid still loves to dress up.  This costume was a hit!

Peeps and DeDe got all the babies new Pottery Barn chairs!  This made for a fun photo op!

Christmas Eve day we took Ellie to see "Frozen" (so cute!) and then came home, got dressed up, and headed to the Christmas Eve Candlelight service at church.

 After church was Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle's house.  It was a ZOO!  But a very fun zoo.  I love that we have so many kids so close in age.  We need to rent out a party room next year to accommodate us all!

We always bring our Christmas jammies and change into them.  It's a fun little tradition:)  I thought they looked so sweet!

 

 More gifts!!

After a fun 2 days in Memphis, we headed home that night to get ready for SANTA!  He didn't go too crazy on Miller this year since he is still so little.  He figured he'd understand.

Ellie's stash was full of American Girl and princess goodies.  Every little girl's dream!  I think she was pretty happy.

Miller was pretty pumped about new pacifiers that came in his stocking!!  So glad he is easy to please!

  Kit!!

And the gymnastics set she had asked for!

Christmas day Don's side of the family came to our house for lunch and Dirty Santa.  I was pretty busy and only managed to get a few pictures at the end of the day.

Saturday after Christmas we headed back to Bartlett for Christmas at Granny and Grandonna's!

DeDe was determined to get a picture of the whole family.  I think we got a lot of really good ones!

So proud of DeDe!  Seven months after a horrible back injury she's playing Twister.  Pretty impressive!!

Coach Pitt was the Twister champion.  So funny to watch these two play!

Princess bowling,  princess scooter, princess helmet, and princess gloves and knee/elbow pads.  We are covered in the princess department for sure!

As usual, Christmas flies by way too fast.  It always reminds me how blessed we are as a family.  I am so thankful for everyone we get to spend time with over the holidays!