Last night when I was straightening my hair, Halle asked me to straighten hers too. Always have to take pics when I straighten her hair cuz she looks so different. And I like seeing how long her hair really is! :)
Of course, I can also see how dead the ends are. There may be a haircut in the near future.
This is one of the pictures I’ve been holding onto in case I decided to use it in Sonja’s birth announcement. Decided tonight that it didn’t make the cut, so I wanted to share it immediately. :) She’s so pretty.
Had a full, feel like documenting it so I don’t forget, kind of day. Nothing major happened, just a nice day.
It started with Jason waking up with the girls and taking Halle to school. I woke up right before he left to take over Sonja duty, and he took Elena with him to Halle’s school. I remembered right as he got home that Halle had her 4 year doctor appointment at 10, so at 9:30 I picked Halle up from school (she got to paint stripes on a Tigger tail in the morning, so I’m glad she got that hour of school in today) and took her to the doctor. On the way over, we talked about how she was going to get shots and instead of crying, she could hold my hand and we would say OUCH together. Doctor appointment went super well. She passed her eye exam and hearing exam, and all the other things they check for. She asked the nurse if they had Cars band aids for after her shots, and they didn’t, but the nurse brought her a selection of band aids and let her choose two. She was happy with that. When the shots were finally administered, she sat on my lap, I held her hand, and we said OUCH together. She did fantastic! Then she got her stickers and lollipop and we went home.
Got home, fed Sonja, bathed Sonja and had lunch. Then Halle requested we play her new Cars Wii game together. We had fun with that, although it is a bit hard for her, but she still enjoyed playing it and watching me play it. At 2:00, Elena was ready for her nap, so I set Halle up with her new movie (Care Bears Share a Scare) and Elena and I went upstairs for a nap. I napped with her and it was wonderful. At 4, Elena and I went back downstairs. Halle wanted to play her new Fancy Nancy game with us so we did that for awhile. Then we went for a walk. At 5:30, I called Smokey Bones and placed an order for the two free salads they said they’d give us (awesome customer service at Smokey Bones), and I took Halle and Elena with me to go get them. I switched out the Cars movie with Letter Factory in the car so Elena would start getting exposed to the letter sounds. Although she’s still too young to pick that up yet, she laughs throughout the entire video. So glad she enjoys it. Anyway, we picked up our salads and brought them home to eat. Halle announced, “I’m 4 years old, so I can eat salad now,” and she did. She didn’t want the dressing, the chicken, the corn or the black beans, but she did eat the lettuce. Elena had some salad too, but her favorite part was the black beans.
After dinner, the girls and I went upstairs for a shower. Halle ran into her bedroom to pick out pjs, tripped and her face landed on the pull on the bottom drawer of her dresser. :( Her gums in between her front teeth was busted up pretty bad, lots of blood. We held her for awhile, brought her ice, and eventually she was fine. She picked out her pjs, and the girls took a shower. Lots of beautiful artwork all over the shower walls with the bath tub crayons.
After the shower, back downstairs so Halle could paint her Hello Kitty bank. Then goodnights to Daddy, and back upstairs to read three books, then the big girls went to bed. Halle and Elena were asleep by 8.
I came downstairs, heard Sonja rooting, fed her and changed her and handed her off to Jason so I could get some treadmill time in tonight. Walked and jogged a mile and a half before my hip was hurting too much to continue. Bummed that I’m not ready to fully start jogging again, but I still thoroughly enjoyed that mile and a half and look forward to slowly getting back into it. I’m hoping that with stretching and easing into it, I’ll get passed this hip pain soon and will be back to my 60 minute workouts before I know it.
Anyway.. great, full day. :)
Halle’s 4th Birthday party was a HUGE success! The decorations, the food, the entertainment and the weather all turned out PERFECT. I couldn’t be any happier. Having the party on Sunday made it so much less stressful on us too because we had all day Saturday to get the house ready and finalize the details. And today was a holiday for Jason, so we even got a day to recoup afterward. Just perfect.
The two main sources of entertainment at the party were the bounce house and riding around the cul-de-sac with Halle. The kids seemed to thoroughly enjoy both. Here are a couple pictures of the bounce house (I didn’t take nearly enough).
Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of the kids having fun in the car.
The details turned out super cute too. Love the way the food labels looked, and how well the Cars characters lent themselves to kid-appropriate food for the party.
Click here to see some more food labels.
The driver’s licenses were one of my personal favorite touches. The kids seemed to like them, but probably not as much as I did. :) They’re just so cute!
I was hoping the tattoos would go over well, and they did. Lots of kids came over to get inked. :)
Another personal favorite was the “Thank You For Coming to Halle’s Party” lollipops. They turned out just as cute as I had hoped.
Keri, Angelle, Christina.. as soon as you’re ready to start that party planning business, just let me know! :) Erica, we’d love to have you too! :)
For months Halle’s been asking for both a Cars party and a Super Why party. I told her we’d have a Cars birthday party at our house and we would bring Super Why cupcakes to her class. Since her school Valentine’s party was on Friday, we did cupcakes at school today.
I made my own Super Why cupcakes by printing the characters and taping them to toothpicks (I love my 1″ circle hole puncher). Funfetti cupcake mix and pre-colored decorating icing made them very easy to make. Which is a good thing because I started them at 11pm last night after Halle’s Cars birthday party (pictures and post about that party coming soon).
I also brought some of Halle’s Super Why toys and books to her class, read them a story, and let the kids play with the toys during gym and free play time today. The kids loved it! I wasn’t sure how many kids really knew Super Why, but turns out a lot of them did. :)
Madison had spent the night for Halle’s birthday, so she came to school with us in the morning too. After I read a book to the class, she read it again to Elena.
Austin really liked the Super Why costume.
Alyssa and Alex loved the Super Duper Computer.
Connor and Austin liked playing with the Why Writers.
I thought Halle would want to dress up and have the toys herself, but she wanted to share them with her friends instead. Super Why “Party” was a success! :)
For Valentines this year, I was planning on having Halle and I make these tissue paper bears for each of her classmates, but it turned out that was way too much work. And Halle wasn’t really into it. She lost interest way too quickly. So we gave her teacher the one we made together, and I bought some foam hearts for Halle to use to decorate lollipops for her classmates instead. Halle LOVED this simple project and did a beautiful job decorating the lollipops. :)
Here are some closeups of her work.
I didn’t take a picture, but I also made my famous spinach artichoke dip for the teachers, with the crumb topping in the shape of a heart. Wish I had left some here for me. That sounds so good right now.
This is my favorite picture from the photo shoot we had with Erica this morning:
A few more favorites:
