five.

roll that around in your head…

5.

it doesn’t seem like the day she was born was that long ago… 

 

but here we are…  she is so excited about 5!

I think it’s funny that she still calls this skirt her “birthday skirt”, still loves to wear it, and was the first thing she thought about wearing today.

(I made it for birthday #3.)

  

there have been a lot of changes, like the obvious things:  height, hair, shoe size…  talking and the like.

then there are the things that haven’t changed:  still sucks on those fingers (trying to break her of that..), she still loves to snuggle, she is the best sleeper of the bunch, the best eater too..

I pray every day to make the most of each with her.  I have never had just me + one little girl at this age, there was always another sidekick floating around.  I hope to make every moment a special one for her.  I have enjoyed her so much! 

this morning, she opened a few of her gifts.  the girl loves the lion king, make-up, and candy, so we chose just a few gifts for her to open first thing, saving a couple more for later.  she opened lion king 2 and got so excited.

“mom!  remember when I watched this a long time ago when I was 4?”

“I remember like it was yesterday…”

and that is how it goes.

she may be five, but she is still my baby..

a decade.

lynn is 10 today.

ten.

just in case you didn’t get that….

(!!!!)

she keeps reminding us about this annual increase by sating things like: I’m in the double digits!!” or, “I have been alive for a whole decade!!”.

she is a little excited.

please, someone explain to me why she is so happy, when I am so sad.

I am happy, don’t mistake my joy for sadness, but seriously, just where exactly, has the past ten years gone?  and while you are answering my questions, tell me why it went so fast.

(there is a little bit of mourning going on at this house.)

but really..

I am so thankful for this girl!

I was SO.FREAKED.OUT. to find out that we were having a girl.  SOFREAKEDOUT!!  turns out it isn’t that bad.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

she is our designated babysitter, and she is pretty awesome at it.

she is always helping.  (even when it isn’t a mandated punishment for flooding my bathroom.  what?  you haven’t heard that story yet?  I must document it soon.)  she is always asking what she can help with.  as my life has seemed to increase in the level of craziness, she is always the one to help me out when she can see that I am about to blow.  as I was getting ready for a book club meeting, she vacuumed the house, cleaned the bathroom, and tidied the living room.  she just knew I was going to lose it, I swear! 

she is pretty good about rolling with the punches with our “experimental parenting”.  she is the oldest, and sometimes, she gets the newest of stuff tested out on her.  if we don’t screw her up completely, she will be an incredible mother.  she will remember the tried and true.

but about that whole “being a mother” bit, she says she doesn’t want to do that.  she doesn’t even want to get married!  she wants to live with me and merrill forever and take care of us.

she will ever be a bookworm, and I love it.

she is eager and so excited to learn how to do many new things.  her latest is laundry, but she loves to cook with me.  she was my little assistant making thanksgiving dinner.

while I am emotional, a little sad, looking back on all of those pictures that I love of her as my little girl, I am so thankful at the same time.  so thankful to be her mother, to be a part of her everyday life, to see the sweet young woman that she is growing up to be.

happy birthday sweet lynnie-lou!!  I love you.

p.s. thanks for being so cool with me and dad when you opened your new walkie-talkie set and we were awesome and forgot to buy batteries for them.  your patience is quite impressive!

quite the weekend.

this last weekend, was one to never forget.

ashley turned 8.

she was baptized the day after her birthday.

(thanks dad for taking this picture!!)

it was a good day.  2 soccer games (at the same time no less), conference, and ash was baptized between sessions.

we like to keep it simple in our family, simple program, short and sweet, nothing too crazy. 

merrill baptized and confirmed her, he did wonderfully.  it was fun to watch them in the hall before, practicing the hold and dunk move.  this time, I made sure to remember the controls to the electric blanket to help warm her afterward.  (I forgot them with lynn, she froze!!)  I love how simple ashley is, she has a different personality than lynn, and her taste is more simple.  her hair wasn’t a big deal, neither was her dress.  love this girl.

I did find it interesting when merrill confirmed her, that she was blessed, again, with integrity.  the same thing was said when she was blessed as a baby.  I found it interesting then too. 

it has been fun watching her grow up and come to this point.  she’s quite a girl!

and I marked one year (ONE YEAR!!) of no yelling (out of anger) at my girls.

(soccer is another matter.  that qualifies as excitement, not anger.)

more on that later.

treasure found.

while cleaning the c drive the other day, I found one file folder that read “mom’s”.

that was vague and mysterious enough to have me wonder what it was, and instead of deleting it immediately (pffft.  like I would do that..) I played it.

I am not going to lie when I tell you it brought tears to my eyes.

I forgot this even existed.

it is only a few seconds, but they are wonderful seconds.

ashley’s birthday

it was october 5th, 2004.  ashley made her way into this world via emergency c-section.

my plan for how that day was supposed to go, was completely thrown out the window.

as I look back on that day, I remember how wonderful it was, but realize how terrifying it must have been for merrill.  I have nothing but wonderful memories.  sure, I was nervous.  but it was one of the four most wonderful days of my life.

those days are in the past, the seconds have ticked by way too fast.

eight years later…

and here we are!

happy birthday my little ashley.

for the record:

- you LOVE anything and everything coconut.

- you are not “short”, you are “fun-sized”.

- you love soccer.

- despite your energy level and active little body, you are not exhausted at the end of the day.  you are a night owl.  (one more item to add to the short list of traits you inherited from me.)

- you want tacos for your birthday dinner tonight.  my bet is that you eat the leftover tomatoes.

- you are so excited to be baptized!

- I can’t tell you what your favorite color is.  I am not sure, it seems to change weekly now.  just a couple of weeks ago, it was orange.  you wanted your whole room orange!  then it was fuchsia, then blue, and now, well as of yesterday anyway, it is maroon.

- you have suddenly turned into a neat freak.  your room hasn’t been messy for 2 weeks now!

- you are so thoughtful.  you asked for a coconut cake for your birthday, but realizing that lynn and dad don’t care for coconut, you asked if I could make a chocolate cake too.

we are so happy to have you as our favorite middle child!

how many ways can you say 4?

(indulge me here, k?)

today, peyton turned 4.

4 brings lots and lots of excitement to life around these parts.

today, we tried out various combinations with our fingers to get the number 4.

we based a whole day around a new obsession, “aladdin” and all things princess jasmine.

the other day, peyton finally wrote her name!!!

(and in “finally”, I mean she finally showed interest in writing anything more than a “p”.)

as she wrote the “p” there was a little excitement, cause you have to show it every time.  then she got to her “e”.

I teared-up.

after she wrote the rest of those all too cute letters in her name, my eyes were glassy.

she said, “let’s do it again mom..  and this time, don’t cry.  k?”

see, she’s 4 alright.

                       

and because my children want to challenge me in my cake decorating skills, peyton asked for a jasmine cake. 

(her eyes are too big, but what of it?  they are turning into poop even as I type.)

to aid me in my feat, we watched aladdin.

a lot.

the music is etched into my brain.

so, now she is 4.

little lynnie turns 9.

I was a little (and to say a little, is totally understating it) shocked to think that it has really been 9 years since this kid has entered our lives.

I like to relive every moment of her entering our world, reliving that moment when she made me a mom.

gosh that was awesome!

today, I am thankful for her.  she is turning into such a little lady!  I mean, she really was all along.  sure, she had her dinosaur phase, her super-hero phase, but all the while, underneath it all, she has been a girlie girl.  she called lip-gloss and lipstick, “glip-gloss” and “yip-stick” for the longest time.  she never went anywhere without it.  still doesn’t.

lynn, I love that you love to read, even if it is four different books at a time.  I love that you sing, no matter what.  even if your friends (or family) give you weird looks, you belt it out.  you are silly.  I love it when you are tired, and something really tickles that funny bone of yours.  that giggle is awesome!  I will buy you orbit gum just to hear you do your own version of an orbit commercial.  that giggle again…

I am thankful that you are such a great help with your younger sisters.  I am so happy to see you take peyton and give her make-overs.  I love seeing that special relationship that you have with her.  I am so happy that you and ashley are so close.  even on the worst days, when you two swear that you will never play with the other one ever again, we can find you two snuggled up together in one of your beds.  sometimes you are even asleep!  you have inherited my gift of gab, and it is quite entertaining to have you talk, non-stop, as soon as you are in the door after school.  I love that you have also inherited my love of carbs.  a roll with butter should be considered part of every meal, especially your sack lunch (which is a sandwich, drink, sometimes chips, and cookies).  I am thankful that you give everything your best, that you can be so stressed over an up-coming test, but you get 100s like it’s nothing.  you give it your all.  I know that you and your dad are best buddies, you almost couldn’t survive with him gone for two weeks, but I am thankful for the relationship that we have and that is growing everyday.

I am thankful that it was you who grew in my belly first.  you that we get to practice all of our parenting skills on.  I am thankful that you are such a good kid, and we don’t have to practice too many things on you (ashley bears the brunt of that, that darn kid).  I am thankful for your bedtime kisses, your spontaneous hugs, even though the top of your head is getting ever closer to mine…

I am thankful for how persistent you are at everything you do.  even if that means practicing your cartwheels inside the house, in the family room, when I have asked you not to, repeatedly.  but you don’t give up!

besides the fact that you look just like your dad, you were meant to come to this family, and I am thankful, above all, to a loving heavenly father who trusts me (somehow) to be your mother. 

I love you.

back to our regularly scheduled life.

we just got back from a lovely and very fun-filled vacation.

we did disneyland.

it was awesome.

I think everyone who lives in this house, is a little homesick for all things disney.

but I now realize that this transition from vacation to real life is a lot harder than I thought.  it is also made more difficult when I realize that there are a few things that I neglected to do before we left..

like plug the latest product releases from jessica sprague. 

so, let’s rewind, pretend that it is last monday, and instead of getting ready to surprise the kiddos, pack all of their stuff, clean the house and all that junk, I will do what I am supposed to, and show you what I made:

first up I will show off jodie lee’s latest water color paper..

I saw this dreamy stuff and was transported to last fall, when we hiked the “u” near our house.  the colors were too perfect.

(click on layout for full credits.)

I have been dreaming up some hybrid projects to use this stuff on, print it off on linen look paper..  it would be lovely, I am sure.

then there was the big one.

I based ashley’s birthday party around this next one.

splendid fiins “trick or treat” practically yelled my name, winked, and then grinned at me.  it knew it fit the bill for our halloween themed birthday party.

invites:

(click on image for full list of credits.)

a little lesson learned, that I will share with you for free:

don’t put names (even though it is so fun, personal, not to mention stinking cute) on a first grader’s birthday invites.  you are better off to leave those babies blank, that way, your child doesn’t distribute them a child with a different name and thus, have a buttload of confusion on your hands when parents are calling you and asking if their child was really invited because their invite doesn’t have their name on it.  oh, an then you get to make more, because a few kiddos don’t get their invites due to the whole, “not give them to the right kid” issue.

we had a great time though..

we put together goodie bags with fun stuff from target’s dollar area, candy was a necessary addition, and I put together these little notebooks using splendid fiin’s “trick or treat” line.

they were pretty darn cute.

I added these little tags for ashley to sign, a little thank you to all her friends.

(splendid fiins again, and I used the font mtf “jotted”.)

In the way of decorations, I used my old felt ghosts..

some balloons (which all the right colors were sold out, should have anticipated that one..), and this banner that I threw together the day of.

(polka-dot paper from splendid fiins, some good old cardstock, ric-rack, and letters I cut out with my cricut + storybook cartridge.)

I employed the old dry ice + rootbeer in the plastic cauldron trick.

played “pin the eyebrow on frank”, ashley’s new boyfriend.  we made him out of foamcore, and vinyl.  his eyebrow was some black felt with double stick tape on the back.

this game was also a last minute add, but I saw it on a local tv program, and had to do it!

I took three kiddos inside, and wrapped them up with crepe paper, just like a mummy.  as I wrapped, I hid three cards with one letter on them, in different places in the wrapping.  as their teams unwrapped them, the found the cards, and the first team to spell their spooky word, won!

I used words like bat, boo, and cat.

(I got the idea from this fun mom blogger who has a ton of fun ideas.)

and what’s a party with out cake and ice cream?

I prepared cupcakes and frosting a head of time, portioned out the frosting in little disposable cups with a plastic knife, and put out candies for them to decorate with.

I found a genius idea for ice cream serving at a birthday party on pinterest, and I will be using that one again and again I tell you.

before your party, like an hour, you take your regular old cupcake liners, place them in your muffin tin, and scoop your ice cream into them.  pop the tin, with the portions of ice cream in it, back in your freezer and when it’s cake + ice cream time, bring them out, and give one portion to each child.  it was a breeze!

ash had a great party, and I must confess, it is the first birthday party I have ever thrown.  I will do it again.  it was so much fun, but next time, I might just request no gifts be brought.  I know, I am so mean, but we are seriously overrun here.