CinderEllie turned 3!

Ellie had been talking about her "big Cinderella party" for months. So the pressure was on to make it feel big.

Isaac made a sign for her door with leftover streamer.

When we all came to wake her up, there were a couple of balloons present. She was miffed at not being included in the balloon-blowing process, but recovered shortly thereafter. When she came downstairs she was pleasantly surprised...
 

 

 

 The boys were very excited about all their hard work.

 She liked it. A lot.

 Grandma Laney's present was overwhelmingly awesome!

Dairy Queen really really tried to make Cinderella not be scary on a delicious cake...I guess you just can't get good help anymore! Check this out:

 It makes me laugh every time!

 It didn't bother the Birthday Girl one bit. She loved it.

 

 I love their faces when they're being sung to.

 

 Mmm, ice cream cake! When will this song end?

 Blow out the candle,

 

 clap along with everyone,

 and dig in!

 

 Let's put this poor girl out of her misery.

THIS girl had a great birthday.

 Her favorite gift? Cinderella on Blu-ray! Ours has been loved and watched TOO MUCH.

 I can't believe this big girl was so tiny just three short years ago!

 

  

 

   

We love this cutie pie.

I'm a Little Teapot

Okay, enough catch-up!

This was from last Saturday. Ellie had her first dance recital! She was so excited to be there! She even sat well after her performance and watched every other number with fascination. Her arm was around my neck for just about the whole time. I wish I had taken some pictures of Noah--when we finally got he and Isaac to sit, he was also fascinated--actually trying to dance along with whatever the dancers were doing! It was adorable.

From her last day at dance class (the dress rehearsal)--

Just for good measure. This is how it usually is with this age!

And this...is me. Any similarities?

All About Christmas

This post is all about our Christmas in 2012.

Christmas decorating

We had lots of excited helpers. There's a tree under those garlands somewhere....

 

Christmas Cleaning
Okay, maybe not necessarily cleaning for Christmas. But you can't pass up a photo opp with a two year old drying your kitchen floor with maxi pads! She enjoyed those skates.

Christmas Parties
Noah's cute little pre-K class had a lovely feast with lots of dancing as a bonus for us [parents] to watch.

Isaac and the entire first grade had a big shin-dig of prize-winning pizazz in the cafeteria...and that grade has a lot of kids in it. Like, as many kids as my whole elementary school had!

Christmas Eve
Siblings. I love these kids.

Christmas
The "before" shots:

But what they weren't expecting was the roadblock at the bottom of the stairs, very badly wrapped and obviously from their parents.

These "gifts" were accompanied by this note:

They were surprisingly graceful about all the 6 months' worth of toys we'd collected from them whenever they neglected to clean their room. They were happy to see it all again and mostly put it all away while we slept a little more. But that didn't stop Ellie from finding her first real gift, opening it and waking her parents with a tea party.

 

There were some costume gifts, of course.

One serious superhero.

And we can't do with Jared's constipated "look what I got!" faces...

And...the aftermath. I couldn't even come close to cleaning up as we went. It took a while to get our house back to normal. We're going to have to lay down some rules next year!