The Birthday of a Lifetime

This year, Kate's 4th birthday was on 12-12-12!  And you know me, I can't pass up a reason like that to celebrate.  I knew it would make my life crazy to have a party in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day, along with another party the same week & Christmas a week later, buuuut I figured I'd had a party, had a baby & Christmas all in 14 days before, so what the heck!  

There are so many pictures, I decided to split this into 2 posts!  Here come the details...

the invitation

Kate's outfit

Goody Bags

 For the party, Kate's & her friends got to go to different stations to do Kate's 12 favorite things.  At each station they completed a game/task and got to take home one of Kate's 12 favorite things with them in their goody bag.



Here they colored pictures of 3 of Kate's favorite movies: Veggie Tales, Princesses, & Mickey Mouse.

They took home some popcorn to watch during movies & a packet of crayons!

 Next, they made their way over to where they blew bubbles & created their favorite shape with play-doh.

Favors: bubbles & play-doh!

 At this station, they had to dig through a buckets of fruit loops & find a tube with their initial on it. Inside the tube was stickers! - This had 3 more of Kate's favorites: fruit loops, letters, & stickers

Favors: a bag of fruit loops & stickers

 Lastly, they flipped over a card that showed them which bag to choose candy from.  Kate's favorites: Candy Land & candy itself!

favor: candy!!

 Lastly, they ended up back inside to dress up!  Kate loooves to dress-up!

favor: girls got a tiara & bracelets & boys got a cowboy hat and bandana

We started the party right at 12:12!

All of my birthday girl's details!

Decorating the Tree

The business of life slowed us down on decorating our tree this year!  It took me a few days (and a couple trips for more lights!) to get the lights on, then took us a few more days to find time to all be here to do it!  

The girls loved getting to put ornaments on!

Sweet Natalie watching from her Exersaucer

our finished tree!  

Forest Home Baptist Church

My friend, Patti, told me about this church that has a drive-thru lights display that was only 20 minutes from our house!  So, one night we loaded up in our PJs with pop-corn ready to go and went to check it out

It was so fun!  Right when you pulled up, they handed you a cup of hot chocolate!

First, there were all sorts of cute things to look at...

a light tunnel

hard to see - but these were teenagers dressed up as all of the reindeer!

Santa & Mrs. Claus

After you got through all the cute stuff, they had the story of Jesus all laid out - birth to the cross & resurrection.  The girls loved it & I think I did just as much!

Graham Cracker Nativity

We had such a fun event planned with our MOPS group!  The girls got to put together a gingerbread nativity scene together!  They loved it & were so proud to show Daddy that night.

There were coloring stations set up to work on while waiting to do the nativity.

And a they got to hear a cute story too!  We had such a great time with friends!

The girls' nativity!

Christmas Parade

Another one of the free, fun things I planned for us for our Christmas Season was the Longview Christmas Parade.  I had these great plans of picking up dinner at Chick Fil A, taking it with us & meeting up with the Molinas, but after driving around for AWHILE looking for parking, we finally just found a spot on the other side from where we intended, hiked up a hill and watched the parade.  W didn't even get to be with the Molinas.  :-(

The good news about this age of kids is they don't really know that things didn't go as planned.  They don't know that we were going to be with friends.  They don't know that being 30 feet back from the parade is not really optimal seating.  They don't know that when you only stay 30 minutes because it's cold & it's hard to stand on the side of a hill, that it wasn't really the plan to do that all along.  

They just know that they got to wave at a lot of people, hear some bands, see a lot of fun lights & most of all had fun!

Girls eating dinner

Next year, we'll plan to get there a little earlier, and hopefully our plans will workout.  I was still thankful for an attempt at Family Fun!

We Joined the Party!

I've wanted to do outside lights since we've had a house, and taking the leap didn't happen til this year! Our neighborhood has houses with great lights, so I'm glad we finally joined the party.

David wasn't so sure about this idea, but once he got started he jumped in with both feet!  He even went to the store one day on his own & bought more lights so we could put them in the bushes too!

The picture doesn't do it justice, but it was so pretty & I loved turning them on every night!!

Happy 6 Months, Natalie!

I don't have a chair picture this month either.  Ugh.

This month Natalie:

--pushed up to all 4s.  

I was SURE she would crawl by Thanksgiving.  She didn't.

-- started solids.  Just cereals for now.  She usually just has it once a day.  Sometimes twice - whatever happens to fit in our schedule!

She did like it - even though this pic doesn't look like it!