Birthday Celebration, Part 2

We had a great Saturday afternoon! The girls were exhausted from an early morning filled with fun (see earlier post), so they went down for their naps just after 1. They both woke up right at 3:00, and we needed to leave at 3:15 to go to Lily's party! We had Lily's party at The Little Gym which is where Lily has taken gymnastics classes, summer day camps and currently, dance classes. She loves it there! Lily's other three birthday parties have been at our home, and while they have been fun, we thought this would be a stress-free party, and thankfully, we were right. The Little Gym did an awesome job. Lily had a great time, and we have many wonderful memories from the party!

When we arrived, Tara, Morgan and Maria introduced themselves as the teachers for the day, and they did a fantastic job. They let the kids start playing while everyone arrived. Lily was so excited to see so many of her friends. My nieces and nephew came, and both Lily and Mia adore them. Lily was thrilled that her friends from school, Sierra and Ally, were able to come; it's so fun for me to see the friendships that Lily is making. Several of our friends and their kids came too, and Lily always has fun with them. Once everyone arrived, Tara got all the kids in a circle on the mat. She introduced herself and then had Lily sit on top of a big cushion. She then asked each child their name and favorite ice cream flavor. I was really impressed with her ability to remember all the kids' names; there were 15 in all. They went over the basic rules of the gym and then got ready to have fun.

They started out by giving each of the kids part of a pool noodle which became their dance partners. They had fun running, jumping, skipping and banging their noodles on the mat while fun, upbeat music was playing. It's always great to hear squeals and laughter coming from kids!

Then they put all the noodles up and let the kids have free reign for a few minutes. I think it's a great idea to give them some "downtime" from the structured play every so often; it seems to keep their attention better. They gave this free time between each activity, and the kids loved it. 

Mia having fun while McKayla helped Zac across.

 Hadley and Molly both liked the beam too.

 William tried the rings while Vivian liked the low bar.

 Parker enjoyed swinging with Zac and Hadley while Macey looked on.

Mia trying the bars then McKayla showing how its done.

 Next, Tara and Morgan set up these two huge wedge-looking pieces of mat and told the kids they got to knock over and slide on the "cheese wedges." It made such a loud thud as the wedge would hit the mat which made them laugh really hard. The kids did a great job taking turns, and I think Mia enjoyed it the most. I wish you could have seen the look on her face when she got to knock it down! 

After a little bit of free time, it was time for the inflatable track which is one of Lily's favorite activities at the gym. They have all the kids lie down on the flattened track and then flip the switch to have it blow up. The kids loved this little ride! Once it was inflated, they got to jump down, flip down, run down and scoot down the track. Inflatables are always a hit with this age group! After some time on the track, the kids lay down again and help it deflate; then they have fun stomping out the air bubbles inside. 

After it was deflated, it was time for a little bit more free play.

Next up, the kids make a train and put their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. Then as they sing Happy Birthday, their train walks over to the snack room stopping for some hand soap along the way.  The gym provides juice for all the kids, but we brought the cake. Lily loves the new PBS show called "The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That," so we had our local bakery (McEntyre's which Lily loves to visit) make a Cat in the Hat cake; it turned out great, and Lily was so excited about it. Everyone sang and then Lily asked me to blow out the candles; she said she doesn't know how to blow out candles yet, but I think nervousness played a bigger role since she does a great job blowing bubbles. Anyway, all the kids and adults enjoyed cake and a few minutes of rest.

After cake it was time to go back out to the gym for one last activity - the big multi-color parachute. I remember loving these as a kid, and Lily seems to love them too. They pull them up, push them down and shake them all around; they all loved getting to hide under the parachute too. Lily's highlight came at the end when she sat in the middle of the parachute and everyone else gave her a ride as they turned it in a big circle. They finished this game up by throwing the parachute into the air to see if it would stick to the ceiling. Lastly, all the kids gathered in a small circle and laid down on the tummies. They did one last birthday song for Lily which included banging their hands and feet on the mat...always fun to make noise!

After this, everyone came out to put on socks and shoes and collect their party favor. We had small Dr. Suess books for each child and Little Gym had tied a balloon around each one. Then it was time to tell everyone goodbye and thank you. 

 We were so grateful that Meme and Granny were able to come see the fun!

I know Lily absolutely loved this party. She had a huge smile glued to her face the entire time. As she would run around, she would run past me with her arm out to give me a high-five. She had a blast! By far, this has been her best birthday party yet!

Birthday Celebration, Part 1

Today we celebrated Lily's 4th birthday! I cannot believe she is turning 4 on Monday! Today was an absolutely gorgeous day which made it a great day to celebrate our sweet girl. Our day started early as Lily came in at 6:45, and Mia was wide awake by 7:15. We decided this was a good time to surprise Lily with her birthday present from us. See the picture below...

She and Mia were both so excited about the new picnic table! We knew they would love to have a place on the deck to eat, do projects and enjoy the outside. I love this picture below as they had just got a glimpse of the table and are now looking back at me in pure excitement.

So happy!
Trying out the new table and lovin' it!

We decided to treat Lily to a special breakfast since we had some time this morning. She has three princess-type cookbooks that she loves to look through. A couple of days ago, I asked her what her favorite recipe out of the books was, and she picked the marshmallow lollipops. I decided we would make those plus a few others because she loves to cook. So, after showing the girls the new picnic table, Lily and I set about making an...interesting...breakfast. Here's a picture of Lily stirring up the freshly made strawberry milk. Turns out she didn't like it a whole lot, but Mia enjoyed it.

Next up came the Sea Crunch Bagels. We sliced up mini-bagels, put a little butter on them and then Lily had a great time decorating them with our different color sugars. Here's a picture of them just before going into the oven.

She was so proud of her artistic bagel work!

Mia was having fun too!

Getting a quick snack of marshmallow.

Of all things, I realized this morning I had forgotten to buy marshmallows. I couldn't believe it. Ryan was kind enough to run to Kroger and buy a pack for us while we worked on the other items. We stuck the marshmallows on craft sticks, melted and colored white chocolate and then let the girls swirl the marshmallows in the chocolate. Lily loved watching the batches of white chocolate become neon pink, purple, orange and green. After they were dipped in chocolate, they decorated them with princess accessories. The pack I bought had gold tiaras, red apples, pearls and blue glass slippers. Lily really seemed to enjoy it. Mia had fun swirling the marshmallows and then licking off the chocolate. Here they are swirling and decorating.

Marshmallow lollipops!

Once everything was prepared, I pulled out the strawberry banana jello I made the night before and made jigglers in the shapes of tulips, bunnies and the letter H. Lily was very excited about this. Here's Lily showing off her plate with jello, pink bagel and pink marshmallow lollipop. Obviously, this sugar-laden breakfast is not what we typically serve, but hey, it's fun to do something different sometimes!

Yum...jello!

Mia enjoyed breakfast too. She also enjoyed a banana with her breakfast. Technically this was her second breakfast of the morning as she had a container of yogurt while Lily and I made the milk and bagels. This little one can put food away like I have never seen!

I had also made a snack from Lily's cookbook of Multicolor Goldfish (she is fascinated by those), raisins and pretzels. Lily thought it looked really cool, but we decided to wait until snack time to try them (okay, except one yellow goldfish) instead of adding that to breakfast. It was really fun making all these things with Lily and Mia out of these cute little cookbooks. What a great way to start a birthday celebration!

We finished and cleaned up breakfast just before 10. We decided to change clothes and head to the North Georgia State Fair for a little bit because it was such a beautiful day. We arrived about 10:50, and received a pleasant surprise when they said all admission before 11 was free. Sweet! We spent about an hour or so visiting all the animals that were out. The girls loved this! You can see Mia waving "Hi!" to the elephants in the picture below. you will also notice Mia has on her otter backpack leash that Grandpops and Grandma Jan bought her from the Aquarium when they visited recently. This is the first time we have used it, and it is awesome! With Lily, I always thought it was crazy that a parent would put their child on a leash...well, never say never! This was great! We didn't have to worry about Mia wanting to get out of her stroller (not to mention strollers aren't allowed everywhere), and we didn't have to hold Mia the whole time. It made our whole experience so much more relaxing. She enjoyed it too because it allowed her the freedom to walk around a little bit. She would walk as far out to my right as it would go and stare and/or point and/or squeal at the animals or rides; then she would go as far to the left as it would go and repeat. She was fascinated and loving her freedom.

They had four huge tigers out too. Thankfully you couldn't get too close to these guys!

Inside the barn they had lots of ducks, chickens, roosters, goats, birds, horses, llamas, cows and rabbits. I was impressed with Mia's ability to recognize the animals. Both girls really enjoyed this area.

I was very impressed with this tall camel. He kept sticking his head over the fence which I thought was funny. They also had a zebra, alpaca, turkey, ostrich and goats under this tent.

Lily and Mia both loved picking up hay and feeding it to this tiny goat through the fence.

After visiting with all the animals, we walked into the ride and food area. Lily wanted to ride the farris wheel which we agreed to until we realized she wasn't tall enough; maybe next year. Then Lily got her heart set on the game where you use a sledgehammer to hit a target and it moves a little weight up to ring a bell. Obviously, she isn't strong enough to make that happen, but the vendor was very kind and helped her so the bell rung when she hit the target; she won a pink ball for her effort, and she was thrilled. We ended up not riding any rides. Neither girl seemed too interested in the carousel, so we opted out of that. All the kid rides were single rider only, so no adults could go with them. There was no way we could let Mia go on by herself, and we doubted Lily would want to go by herself. So we bought a big lemonade to share, nachos for the girls and corn dogs for us and enjoyed a nice lunch under some shade. We headed out about 1 and went to McEntyre's Bakery to pick up Lily's birthday cake for her afternoon party. Both girls were exhausted when we got home, so they took naps. Ryan and I finished cleaning up from the morning, he took a nap and I took a shower. Then it was time for Lily's party! More about that in the next post. This was a great way to start celebrating Lily's birthday!

End of September

I cannot believe today is the last day of September! Where has the month gone? I tell you what, my mind has been going a thousand miles an hour in a hundred different directions this month. I feel like I have barely stopped. Ryan took a couple of days a week or so ago to go to the lake and "download his brain." I think that's a perfect description of what I need to do too! I realized tonight I have not taken any pictures of the kids since September 7. It's not like we have been doing tons of things (actually, we were sick for a lot of that time), but still, I can't believe how few pictures I have taken recently. We have a lot of fun stuff coming up the next few months though, so I think I'll make up for it soon. Anyway, when I realized this tonight, I grabbed the camera and snapped a few bedtime pictures of the girls. So, here you go!

Mia still has the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen.

She is really getting into books now. Here she is before bed "reading" her animal book. She is especially fond of finding the goat (aka "goad") and fish (aka "feesh"). It still cracks me up that when you point to the lion and ask "what does a lion say?" she will whisper "roar." All other animal sounds she does in her normal voice, but not that one! We typically read two to three books together before bed time, and then we say our prayers. She is so sweet. We will be playing and reading, and then I'll say "Okay Mia, it's time to say our prayers." She stops right then and folds her hands together while I say a short prayer. When I say "amen," she smiles and says "AMEEN!" So sweet.
Lily showing off the rainbow artwork she made in Mission Friends class Wednesday night. She was so proud of her "colored Cheerios" (you probably know them as Fruit Loops). Lily also mentioned how she ate a lot of them before gluing them down ("I ate 10 at a time" is what I believe she said). As if we couldn't tell from the sugar high that had her running in circles way after bed time last night! It's really a cute little picture though. Lily asked to hang it up so Mia wouldn't get a hold of it; she has a tendency to tear the pictures which upset Lily greatly. We hung it on her closet door, so she could admire it whenever she wants to.
Mia showing off her teeth. Slowly but surely, they are coming in! She is also so excited about her new pajamas. These are her first two-piece pajamas. I absolutely love little ones in footie, one-piece pajamas, but Mia's a big girl now, so she is into big girl pajamas. She wore them for the first time the other night, and she smiled so big when she showed them off to Ryan and me. She is so precious!

Mia's First Sentence

Our sweet Mia said her first sentence today. When Ryan brought the girls home from school, he gave them each a snack: Curious George gummies for Lily and a few vanilla wafers for Mia. When Mia finished, she walked over to Ryan and said "Daddy, Meme cacker peaz." Translation - "Daddy, Meme crackers (aka graham crackers which my grandmother, Meme, always gives to the girls when we go visit) please." Ryan had no problems agreeing to that! She is saying so many words every day now, but this is the first time we have heard her make them into a sentence. Our little one is getting so big!!!