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Waiting patiently for cake…

And waiting…

And waiting…

Waiting patiently for presents…

Present time!

Fun presents!

Good presents!

Love for presents!

The little, human shredders.

LiliBee watches.

Party aftermath.

Well, we did… we managed to pull off a 4 year old’s birthday party successfully! There were around 12 kids there and I don’t think there were any serious altercations or crying fits!

CareBear loved her party. We had it at the local Round Table Pizza so the kids were able to climb around in the play structure while we were waiting for important things like pizza and cake. CareBear got to blow out her candles twice (she didn’t wait for us to sing to her the first time!) and received lots of fun presents from her friends and family (there’s a lot of pink in our house right now). She mostly loved being the center of attention, of course. She’s very impressed with being 4 years old, too. She has decided that she can only wear clothes that she got after she turned 4 since apparently the clothes she wore when she was 3 are too small. Considering she was 3 just a few days ago, I’m hoping to compromise with her on that one!

LiliBee seemed to have fun at the party, too, since there were several relatives available to pack her around and run after her. She’s always happy to watch the bigger kids play and follow them around. She’s been a little worried about not being able to play with any of CareBear’s new toys, but CareBear is relaxing that rule now that it’s been a few days.

Our party plans were threatened by a Friday tummy ache, but luckily that was mostly gone by Saturday morning. We did make a trip to our pediatrician to make sure CareBear didn’t have anything serious (like appendicitis), but we’re still not entirely sure what caused it. Still, no one else has come down with anything yet so I’m happy about that!

The rest of our week was pretty normal… the usual doctor appointment for me, “working” at preschool, feeding the ducks at the farm. I’d like to take a few days off to recover (I just don’t have much stamina these days!) but we’re pretty much repeating last week’s schedule of preschool commitments and doctor appointments! I’m lucky that Chris has been picking up some of the laundry and cooking duties or we’d be in sorry shape around here!

Happy Birthday to my big girl!

Is everyone ready for Thanksgiving? Christmas? New Years? Where did this year go, anyway?

We had a fun birthday week… LiliBee turned two years old! Of course, if you ask her she’ll tell you that she’s three. I can’t convince her that she’s actually two and now she has CareBear on her side. Anyway, she got to have a special birthday dinner of spaghetti and both she and CareBear helped me make the birthday cake.

We had a nice little birthday party for her over the weekend (even smaller than planned since Cousin H had to stay home with the flu, poor kid). LiliBee wasn’t too sure about blowing out the birthday candles, but she’s apparently some kind of present prodigy since she tore right into them with almost no prompting! She loves all of her gifts and the party balloons, but mostly she was impressed by everyone coming to her house all at once.

In other news, LiliBee had her 2 year check up! She’s still tiny for her age, but perfectly healthy. Both kids got flu shots at that appointment and CareBear is still complaining about how annoyed she was by “LiliBee’s doctor” giving her a shot.

After all of the party fun, Chris and his folks continued our renovation project by painting the living room and getting molding up around our doors! The project is almost finished and the house is looking really nice… and I can’t help but think that being pregnant is an excellent way to be allowed to just stay out of the way!

This week should be pretty fun. We have our follow-up ultrasound on Banjo (and I promise to actually get some pictures out from this one!) and lots of Thanksgiving fun with my folks. This weekend will be more work on the house and, hopefully, a little bit of downtime to enjoy the new stuff before gearing up for December.

We had quite an exciting week… a trip to Alder lake, a trip to the doctor, lots of sprinkler fun…

We all headed out to Alder lake to celebrate my dad’s birthday and CareBear had her first fishing lesson. She was very impressed. Pas brought a fishing rod just for her and showed her how it worked.

She got to hold it and practice reeling it in. She was excited about it for awhile, but soon traded fishing in for “skipping” rocks and playing at the playground. They ended up catching a few little fish and CareBear helped release them back into the wild. All in all, a very successful introduction to fishing.

Meanwhile, LiliBee hung out throwing things into the water and watching everything. She probably would have waded right into the lake, but it was one of our chilly days so we wouldn’t let her.

Both of them really liked the tire swing and playing with their uncle, though.

On Saturday, CareBear woke up in a panic because she couldn’t open her eyes. Poor kid picked up pink eye somewhere last week (probably the Y) so we headed in to the doctor for eye drops. That has been a bit of a challenge, though talking her into sitting still for the drops takes much longer than actually getting them into her eyes. She’s actually pretty cooperative.

I told her that we couldn’t go anywhere if she didn’t let me put the medicine in her eyes… that kid hates staying home. She’s not contagious anymore, but I’m guessing it won’t be long before LiliBee comes up with it, considering how much they both touch everything!

We had a nice weekend overall, though. We went to the new pancake place for breakfast and had a fun trip to the hardware store. Chris spent some time smoothing out part of the lawn (or starting the process, anyway) while the girls and I worked on cleaning wallpaper off of a wall.

This week will be interesting. We have the usual classes scheduled, but the pink eye could change how we do things if it travels through the family. Hopefully, we’ll be able to hit a park sometime and enjoy the nice weather.

Our visit south got cancelled, but I’m sure we’ll find lots to do.

Greetings from flu-ville. Chris came home early Tuesday with a fever… the flu strikes again! Because he was watching for the symptoms, he was able to go to the doctor early enough to get Tamiflu. It seems to work very well for making the flu symptoms much milder than they would otherwise be. He still had several days of not feeling well, but little in the way of fever, cough, aches, etc. Though having the flu on his birthday was no fun.

And then on Friday, the last holdout succumbed… LiliBee came down with the fever. She’s doing pretty well right now as she’s in the middle stretch of lower temps and feeling better. If it follows the same pattern as the rest of us, she’ll have another couple of days of fever and then be done with it by the end of the week. She and CareBear had the flu shot, which seems to make it a bit milder for them. Neither of them got the terrible cough that I did (and still have) and CareBear certainly recovered faster!

Consequently, we didn’t get to have much fun again this week. We’ve had to postpone Chris’ birthday and family Easter fun and we missed out on the first week of classes at the Y. My mom pointed out that we at least have an end in sight now since we’ve all had it! It will be nice to be done with the flu and able to leave the house again. The girls and I are dealing with a bit of cabin fever.

This week, I’m looking forward to no new cases of flu in the house! And lots of fun stuff this weekend, assuming everyone is feeling better.

 

We had a big week around here… CareBear is three years old! 

She had a good birthday, I think. She had a fun party with balloons and cupcakes and dancing and games. Many of her favorite people came to her house for her party and I think everyone had a good time. LiliBee was quite a little social butterfly, going from person to person to get picked up and carried around. We’re still enjoying all of the presents and play with them several times a day. 

It’s hard to believe it’s been three years since CareBear was born, though. It makes me a little sentimental since she can’t even be considered a toddler anymore! She told me yesterday that she was going to take a dance class and I couldn’t come with her, I had to sit with the other moms… my little independent girl… sigh.

The girls and I also went to a bridal shower this weekend. It was lots of fun for them as they got to have their own party with some cousins and even more cupcakes. It was quite a weekend!

And, of course, this morning we woke up to 3 inches of new snow! We got all bundled up and headed out to play. It was good snowball snow and CareBear had a great time having snowball fights. She also enjoyed eating the snow off of her slide. LiliBee is getting really good at walking around in the snow in her boots… she still falls a lot, but it doesn’t bother her at all anymore.

Chris is on jury duty this week. He has the potential to get on an interesting (and maybe long) trial. I’m actually hoping that he does since I’d love to hear about it (once he’s able to talk about it, of course).

In other news, we had our appraisal, which I think went well. And it’s now daylight savings time, which is not going so well yet. It’s making me feel like I’m late for everything and messing up our bedtimes!

I hope everyone is staying warm!

CareBear 2006

CareBear 2007

CareBear 2008

CareBear 2009