Eleanor's 4th Birthday!

Before the birthday post, I thought I'd show a few of her "dimnastics" pictures. Allie is in an advanced tumbling class (Jolley's in Draper, if you're curious. They're freaking amazing!) and Eleanor loves to pretend she can do what Allie does too.

 

 Luckily, little people are still naturally bendy, so Eleanor can do the scorpion thingy here and the back bend thingy above. I know, I should write books about gymnastics!

 P.S. We had a fun time at Tom and Jenni's house once having adults try this move. You take a tape measure and measure the distance between the toes and the back of the head, the smallest number wins. Most people were around 27 inches. I don't think I even tried, I mean, it was my game and all...

 Our little Pro!

 Allie, teaching Eleanor the ropes. I love these girls!

 Another self portrait to mark her last days of being 3.

 March 12th is Eleanor's birthday, a day she starts getting excited about around March 13th. I went more low-key this year (for me) and decided on a theme of Sprinkles. Here are the invites, I blurred out the address in this picture as I am super web-savvy and cool like that.

 I made a cute picture frame covered in sprinkles for her party and tried to take a sweet picture to put in it. 3 year olds are definitely hard to photograph easily. There is a reason you pay people to do this.

 20 pictures and I ended up using another picture I had on hand.

 Happy!

 The morning of her birthday, she picked out her favorite outfit (the slip) and got to open her first present, Wreck It Ralph. What a cute show. We didn't see it in the theaters, so it was fun to watch it at home.

 Her sprinkle cake! So cute and so easy. One of the darling things I saw on Pinterest and wanted to try, thus the "theme".

 Her adorable little friends! We did face painting and made "circle things" necklaces. Basically Fruit Loops, Life Savers- gummy and hard, peach rings and anything else I could find to string up. I lined them up here for present time. From left to right: Lucy H, Eva H, Charlotte G, Eleanor, Kherrington W, and Allie H.

 Princess makeup! And girl Legos, treats, nail polish, a bunch of helium balloons, a Doc McStuffin's toy set, a Cinderella doll and other magical things that 4 year olds live for. Thanks, friends!

 Girl Legos!

 It's so cute to see how happy they all are watching and how ecstatic she is opening. The time flew by and we had to send home some of the cupcakes as we ran out of time.

I bothered to make her cake extra colors inside for.... um, not any reason. I wanted to make a polka-dot cake, but didn't get the pans in time. Also- realized how little 4 year olds care about the inside of cakes. We probably ate 2-3 pieces and ended up throwing most of it away. Every year I think I am just going to make cupcakes and always end up making a cake too. They are just so fun! We got her art supplies, more girl Legos, some bug catching supplies (Why???) and other odds and ends. She had a fun day and I'm happy it went well. The only sad part was that my parents were in the middle of their cruise and missed it. Eleanor loved her party, and she's been steadily planning Winston's party ever since. Last night, her genius idea: "Mom! I've got it! Balloons!" Not even joking, she thinks she is making his birthday amazing. Ok, she kind of is.

March 2013 Part 2

  More of March! One day we had the most beautiful day after all of the hideous snow. We high-tailed it to the park where the kids played and ran and Winston continually tried to steal other people's balls. He did better constrained to the swing. When E was a baby I had to save swings for last as she would never want to get out. Winston does about 5 or 6 passes and then wants to "Det dowwwwwnnn." He also likes to walk RIGHT IN FRONT of the other kids swinging. So far, he is like Mr. Magoo, miraculously missing getting plowed in the head by mere inches. (Foreshadowing... dun, dun, duuunnnnn!*)

  Bicentennial Park has the most lovely boardwalk over the "wetland" bit on the southeast end. I tried to get the kids interested with bribes of apple juice and cheese sticks, but they couldn't have hated it more. Winston constantly wanted to crawl over and get in the water, so it was a struggle just to make the loop back to the park. Lesson learned.

 Winston is the tiny little bit under the giant tree. That is the tree Clayton and I had our engagement photo taken under over 7 years ago! The park outing was nice, especially since it snowed two days later. Ah, March, ah, Utah. Remind me. Why do we live here again?

 On another day, I took Eleanor on a date with me to JCW's and to Target. Ok, so I got to pick where we went.

 I finished off the day with a trip to Sam's club with Winston and a slice of pizza.

 All dolled up for Church, with her super awesome red boots.

 Visiting with Grandma Marguerite.

 Eleanor takes some more pictures of us.

 Daddy looks great.

 Then we took some together. Basically to prove that I exist.

 How many pictures feature a stuck out tongue? (4 in this post.)

 Cute. She loves her slip. She tries to wear it almost every day. I let her and love it, as I had one just like it when I was her age.

 Trying on the doll's glasses.

 Grandma Marguerite's sister, Kathleen came over to visit. She usually stops by once every week or so. She just turned 90 and grandma is 93! I snuck in to take this picture as they both had fallen asleep holding hands.

 We got a lot done to the house while grandma and grandpa were gone on their cruise. We painted and steam-cleaned carpets and finished a bunch of little odds and ends chores. They were missed very much, but it was nice to have the time to try and surprise them.

 Then, hooray! They came back! Tan and happy to see the kids.

 They brought Eleanor a Hula-Girl outfit that she promptly put on and danced in for us.

 

 And Winston got an ukelele which he adores. "Gi-taaahhh! Gi-taaaaahhh!"

Winston enjoyed her hula skirt too.

 

 Well, he does look awesome in it.

 

Well, this was a bunch of odds and ends. Also- I feel like I can't write today. Like my head is all muddled. So, sorry if this all sounds dumb and cheesy. 

*A story to tell! However, it just happened this June, so I have to catch up first.

March 2013 Part 1

March was a busy month for our family. My parents went on a 14 day cruise to Hawaii so we held down the homestead and took care of Grandma Marguerite all by ourselves. Eleanor had a birthday and gave her first talk in Primary while they were gone. Which almost killed them from the cruelty of it all. Her talk was adorable and hilarious. It was about our Savior's plan for us. One line I wrote for her was, "We lived in Heaven with Jesus before we came to earth. He was our brother there." Only, every time we practiced, she said the last part like a very shocking question: "Jesus was our brother there?!?!" I suppose we need to work a little harder on Gospel principals. Ha ha.

We had another fun sleep over with sweet Allie where we made plastic butterflies.

Kids eating rolls.

 We had a get together at Tom and Jenni's house where Kirsten's Rozzie found a rather large See's bag.

 Which she played with for quite a few minutes. Have I mentioned that she is a bite-sized nugget of tiny-baby? Yes, she was walking at 9 months, but she looked like a 6 month old at 1 year, so it is downright hilarious to watch her wander around.

 Hello! 

Little story about Rozzie. Did you also know that she makes the cutest little mewing sounds when she cries, and when she was a baby she sounded like a pigeon? Like, totally like a little cooing pigeon. So much so that one day Kir left her window open to let in some air during her nap time. When she came back later to check on her there were feathers everywhere. Rozzie had cooed the birds into her room for a little hang time or something. Kir was parts horrified, grossed out (Would you want possibly dirty, germy, stray birds playing with your baby?) and fascinated. She gets them to talk to her at the park, too.

 Since she already had the legwarmers on, Rozzie decided to try out McKenna's balance beam. (McKenna is Allie's American Girl doll.) This is the balance beam that my dad helped me make Allie for Christmas! Isn't it cute?

 We may or may not have a new hobby in our lives. Jenni has gotten bit by the Lego bug and we now spend a lot of our time playing Legos. Did you know they are freakishly satisfying to put together? It started when she began buying the new girl-Lego sets for Allie, then digging into Tommy's (Elder Tommy!) sizable stash for more to do. Now she buys them online and gets big sets for her birthdays. I could sort Legos for hours. For people who think it's weird, your wrong. To me it's the same as putting together a jigsaw puzzle, nobody thinks that is weird. AND it's something you can totally do with the kids. Am I defensive? Maybe. 

Anyhow, Here are a few of us upstairs playing in the Lego room. (Formerly Tommy's room. He'll get it back when he comes home.)

 Adam likes to make complicated motors and working engines and stuff.

 Allie taking a picture of Jenni's marina with her "phone".

 Just E being sweet after eating her waffle.

 My pale Casper of a boy.

 The kids helping with the dishes. Winston was basically just balanced on his tummy across the sink.

Better, with the stool scooted up.

Mask on. He never gets it straight, so he usually only has vision out of one super-hero eye.

 In case I didn't write enough about Rozzie in this post yet, Rozzie had a birthday party! Her birthday is a few days before Eleanor's. They held it at the rec center up in SLC and that place is amazing. I am so so stoked that Provo now has one too! The kids loved the pool and I loved how shallow it was. It also had a slide built right in the middle that Eleanor enjoyed after she got over her initial fear.

 Cute Win.

 For her party Kir reserved a little room right off of the pool deck where everyone had pizza and cake.

 The big event. P.S. Kir looks so lovely. Everyone else looked like drowned rats at this point.

 Look at sweet Rozzie!

 Who's a big (little) one year old?

 Kir's sister Allison was able to come down from Boise with her kids Ayla and Roman, so they got to play at our house for a day. They are both almost exactly one year older than my kids, so they play well together. I wish we got to see them more often.

 Ha ha. Roman is too funny.

 And one more of the girl of the hour.