Fun Saturday at the Park

 This has been a super busy work. I'm working 4 days and all weekend long and our hospital has been crazy busy. Apparently February is a popular month to have babies. On top of that, I have a race in 2 weeks that I've been training for for the past four months and trying to squeeze in my mileage along with my work schedule and still see my kids has been challenging. But luckily I have a super supportive husband and kids who are spoiled by family all around them and they've hardly noticed me being gone this weekend. I think its much harder on me than them. Anyway, we took the kids to the park this afternoon and I was excited to take some pictures outdoors. Being cooped up all winter I miss the sunshine that makes fantastic pictures outside. Edyn was my most cooperative (and clean) subject so I took quite a few of her.

 She really loved the swing and loved watching Isak and Lucy swing on the swings. Lucy's legs tried really hard to fit in the baby swing but oh my goodness she was way too big. Getting her out was a challenge.

 This one above was by far my favorite. I love her little nose crinkle.

 Those are angry bird tattoos we got in our valentines on Isak's hands. Yes, I'm wondering how long till they wash off...Love being able to spend some time with my sweet little family this weekend. Even if I know my house will be trashed when I get back from work tonight. Sigh. Good thing they are cute.

Happy Birthday Lucy!!

Lucy turned 4 on Saturday and this much anticipated event was quite the party. On Thursday I brought cupcakes to her preschool class for snack and they sang happy birthday to her.

 

 On Friday, she had a few friends over for pizza and cake and games. She had a great time.They also played our kinnect which has an awesome game called Kinnect party that projects your entire room and the people onto the screen. It then puts them in different scenarios, like ontop of giant buildings or flying or in a big bathtub and then places props on them. Its really fun and my kids are always breathing hard and sweating when they are done playing. A great game for the winter.

Anyway, then on Saturday we took our kids to Chuck E Cheese. We've never been there and I was plesantly suprised. It was pretty reasonably priced and much cleaner than I anticipated. Also, we went at 10 am on Saturday and it wasn't very crowded yet. There were TONS of games and rides for the kids and Lucy loved running around and trying everything. Isak was mostly concerned with how many tickets which games could get him and we ended up with a 100 total. I think Isak traded them in for some air rocket gun.

The food was better than I thought as well. I think we would go again and maybe just do the games, it was pretty inexpensive for just the tokens.

Lucy picked out this Cinderella birthday ribbon a few days ago at Wal-Mart and of course had to wear it to her party. We also stopped at Target and got her some new clothes. I bought a bunch online but had to take most of them back because they were too small. Apparently she's grown out of most of her size 5 stuff. Sad, sad day.

We had a family party for her on Saturday evening with Kevin's parents, his grandma and my parents. Lucy ended up with way more gifts then I intended but oh well. I bought a few on black Friday and then had some stored away from last fall's Wal-Mart Clearance and then between everyone else's gifts she had quite the haul.

She ran around opening each gift quickly, I think it was a tad overwhelming for her. But she loves all of them. She got a cute supermarket play-dough set, a furreals dog, barbie mini cooper, kitty purse full of jewlery and other treasures, microphone and speaker, princess shoes, clothes, little princesses and her own box of cereal and fruit snacks. And we all got to watch Lucy's cheerleading performance from a few weeks ago that was video taped that was also quite entertaining.

Lucy requested a Cinderella cake and she had a Cinderella doll already so I stuck it in a cake a decorated it. Pretty much the easiest cake I have done, other than it took forever to frost it.

And we demolished most of the cake! It was impressive.

My parents and my kids. I have so few pictures of them with my kids, I need to take more! I also haave no idea why I didn't photograph Kevin's family with my kids. I need to do that.

Happy Birthday Lucy girl! She is definitely a fun personality in our family and keeps us on our toes. At 4 years old she is:
*The same size as her almost 6 year old brother, but we don't tell him that.
*Goes to preschool twice a week and knows the names of everyone in her class and can recognize most of her friends names printed.
*Is happy 90 percent of the time. She is almost always bubbly and smiling and positive. Other than when she is not like when she has just gotten up from a nap and she can only growl.
*Loves Cinderella and princesses but also really still loves her angry birds and playing with her
stuffed animals.
*Started Sunbeams at church and is very excited to be in the big kid Primary and I've heard she especially loves it when she can have the microphone.
*I find her singing to herself throughout the day and she entertains herself and plays by herself fairly well.
*Assumes everyone she meets loves her and wants to be her best friend.
*Her favorite food is "chicken sandwiches" which is just turkey or ham sandwich. She asks for them all day long.
*Loves to listen to stories and look at books. Play with playdough. Paint. Help me make cookies and crack my eggs for me.
*Carries her pink deedee (blanket) with her still and can't sleep without it. She's on like her 6th deedee I think.
*Loves to come with me to the store and sit in the cart. She also loves to sneak things into the cart when I'm not looking that I will buy and not realize till I get home...
*Loves to see her name written and anything starting with an L.
She is a lot of fun and definitely going to challenge us as she gets older. I'm so grateful Isak is older and can keep track of her for us, we're going to need it!

Shy they are not.....

 I put Lucy in a cheer camp last week that performed at half time at the girl's high school basketball game last Friday night. It was an hour after school for four days and they practiced and took a break with a snack. Seemed simple enough. Wrong. Lucy, apparently, does her own thing all the time. All the girls would be lined up and Lucy would be spinning on the floor, hopping on one foot, or be up in the front with the high school girls dancing with them. I kept having to remind myself that she is not even four yet and although many of those girls were Lucy's age and able to follow along better than she did I shouldn't be frustrated. She is still only three. She really loved it and loved seeing all the girls and the music she just wanted to do her own stuff.

 Anyway, I didn't have super high hopes for performance night but I figured it would be entertaining if nothing else. I had to work an evening shift on Friday so I gave kevin all of her stuff and put him in charge of getting her ready and taking pictures. He did a great job right up until Lucy took out her hair in the car on the way there and Kevin wasn't able to fix it before she ran in the mob of other little girls. He handed her hair bows to one of the high school girls and put her in charge of fixing it.

 Luckily I was able to come watch her on my lunch break and my parents along with Kevin's mom were able to come along for the show as well. Lucy walked out in front, hopping on one foot the whole way. She did pretty well standing in line with the cheer, then the music started and Lucy busted out her own dance in the front. She even turned around and did a booty shake to the crowd. I was laughing so hard I was almost crying.  Lucy dances to the beat of her own drum and while eventually she's going to have to figure out that she can't always do her own thing, I think for now its okay. I have no idea where she gets all this from, I was way more shy than that! I think we are going to do our best to foster all of that joyous energy in the right direction.

And tonight we had our ward talent show and apparently Isak decided it was his time to shine. They were all done with the acts and asked if anyone had anything they wanted to share. I see Isak's had shoot up and sure enough, there goes Isak, climbing onto the stage and break dancing for our whole ward for the next few minutes. I was fairly surprised that he was so brave but he had been practicing his moves in our kitchen for weeks and the last act was a kid dancing. I don't think he could hold it back anymore. I had lots of people comment to me afterwards about how similar he is to how Kevin was as a kid. I guess Kevin turned out okay so maybe there is hope. One thing is for sure though, we don't have a lot of inhibitions in this household! I'm just glad I was able to keep Lucy from the microphone, that would've been interesting for sure....