I really enjoy watching Brad and Katelyn play together.

 

One day they decided to build a tower.

 

They made the tower as tall as they could, and then Brad grabbed the camera…

 

 

 

 

 

It was pretty fun to see the pictures… oh – and do you like my empty frames?

We’ve entered the stage of “I want to get dressed by myself, and pick out my own clothes” and rather than go against her independence, I just say “Sure” and take her picture…

 

 

 

I love it – she’s wearing her pajamas, with snow boots,  on top she has a sweatshirt layered underneath a  leotard, a scarf, and a purse as a back pack… all that’s missing is some jewelry and hair accessories, we’re still working on that part…

 

I decided to do a friend party for Katelyn this year. I love hosting parties, and I REALLY love planning parties. Katelyn chose the theme, and I was really excited to do a party based on one of my favorite movies too! Our overall color scheme was purple and yellow

 

The invites – I have a template if anyone wants it.

 

 

The Decorations and food table.

 

 

 

For the painting, I used the mural that Rapunzel painted above the fire place in her tower, I just used a plain poster-board and sketched out my simplified version. I hung it in Katelyn’s room after the party.

 

Katelyn and I had fun decorating together. We also had SO much fun making all the food.

 

 

 

This was our ‘tower’ out of Krispy Kreme  donuts (I think I ate at least 4, I have a severe weakness to donuts.)

 

 

 

Katelyn’s favorite was the marshmallow sticks, I wanted to tie little ribbon bows to the sticks, but – again – ran out of time and besides, would the little kids care if there were bows? Probably not.  They were just excited to see big marshmallows dipped in chocolate and sprinkles.

 

 

Our Menu was:

Krispy Kreme Donut Tower

Vanilla Cupcakes with Flowers (Rapunzel and Flynn are holding cupcakes in the city in one scene)

Tower Kabobs (Ham, String Cheese into Cubes, Colby Jack Cheese Cubes, Strawberries, Grapes, Oranges, and Apples)

Braided Hair Bread Twists

Pretzel Paintbrushes

Boat Ride on the Lake Jell-O Cups

Marshmallow sticks

Cookies (in the shape of the sun and flowers)

Lemonade & Water

 

 

Before we ate we played a few games, and I am so, so, so grateful to Rainbow and Rachel who stayed and helped out.

 

We played a fishing game (because of the lake the castle sits on), a toss the bean bags into the tower,  a pin the flower on Rapunzel’s hair game (which we missed), and Duck Duck Goose (came from the “ugly duckling” pub). I also had Tangled playing in the background so the kids who didn’t want to play could watch the movie.

 

 

 

After all the fun and excitement of the games and food, Katelyn got to open presents. All her friends were so generous and I loved watching them ‘help’ open the presents too.

 

 

I forgot to take a picture of the treats in the ‘thank you’ favor bags our friends got to take home. We loaded them up with goodies, a Rapunzel coloring book and crayons, bubbles, play dough, play jewelry, a ring pop and other candy, a punching balloon… I can’t remember all of it.

 

Overall, it was a very fun party. Katelyn had so much fun having so many friends over to eat all the yummy treats and play games. A big thank you to all her friends and their mommies who came and played with us!

 

 

 

I can hardly believe my baby is three years old! Her birthday was great.

 

The night before Brad and I blew up so many balloons. In the morning before she woke up we put all those birthday balloons in her room so it would be the first thing she would see.

 

To say she was excited would be an understatement.

 

 

 

 

The birthday balloons will definitely be a tradition we carry on.

 

After breakfast she got to open presents, we simplified and only got her three gifts. One from Mommy, one from Daddy, and one from both of us.

 

 

 

Daddy got her a Black and Decker toy tool set. I was skeptical when he told me that was what he wanted to get her, but as you can see in the pictures she LOVED it.

 

Her and Daddy play ‘tools’ all the time now. They work on her Jeep or on computers…it’s pretty cute.

 

 

 

Mommy got her a baby Rapunzel doll. I am in the process of making her matching princess dresses, but we’ll see when that gets finished!

 

 

 

Our gift that we got her together was a little cash register for playing store. She loves to go grocery shopping and we knew she would love this one too.

 

 

Later we got to Skype with our families while she opened her gifts from them. She was so happy to be able to open presents all day long.

 

 

Later that night we had some friends come over for cake and ice cream to celebrate Katelyn’s birthday and mine. It was really nice, and I got to make a pretty cake.

 

 

 

Finally, some February pictures! It was pretty chilly, so we decided to try an indoor studio set up this time, complete with a giant lollipop sucker! Anything for cooperation right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And yes, Katelyn of course doesn’t always cooperate or like her pictures being taken… but I sometimes like the ‘blooper’ pictures too. This is her ‘stinky cheese’ face, and at the end she just laid down and decided she was done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am still so behind in updating this blog… so here’s an attempt to update for the month of January…

A great find on craigs list… I have really REALLY wanted a piano for a long time. I’ve missed being able to sit down and play. I’ve lost a lot of my training and skills over the last 6 years, so when I saw this beautiful piano for $50!

 

Yes that’s right $50!!!

 

I knew we had to get it. It took a lot of work, and I am so grateful to a wonderful home teacher who lent us his awesome van so we could pick it up. I think it took four very strong men to move it and a few more showed up to help us move it into the house.

 

Katelyn and I have really enjoyed playing on it, and when she is a little older I am excited to start teaching her.

 

 

 

 

 

Poor Cooper, he get’s dragged into playing ‘girly’ games all the time, luckily he likes Katelyn enough to just go with it. Rachel and I may or may not have encouraged all the accessories for black mail purposes later in life.  Regardless, I think these two are so much fun to watch them play together.

 

 

I like to move my dining room chairs into the kitchen when I vacuum so I can get all the food and crumbs under the table.

 

Side note: I HATE having carpet in the dining room.

 

Katelyn likes to play on the chairs in the kitchen and was having a tea party with some muffins and juice. Her hair is finally long enough now that we can do cute stuff with it, like pig tails. I need more ideas and suggestions on what to do with her hair.

 

 

 

I’ll blame this picture on her dad – for some reason she thinks I need to take a picture of the chewed up food in her mouth…I don’t know where she got that from… (uh - see this post for reference)

 

 

Another funny quirk about this little girl is that – if given the choice between say, fruit loops or granola, she would choose the granola. Her other favorite is Cracklin Oat Bran.

 

 

And last, but not least, here we have Miss Katelyn modeling the latest fall footwear.  I can not keep her out of my shoes, it doesn’t matter that I just put them all back on the shelf all organized and pretty – that just means it ready to play again. She loves the high heels and currently has decided that my boots are #1.

 

I feel like all I do is play catch up on this blog! Oh well, the pictures are still cute enough to share ( despite the fact that they are from January! ) It had snowed the night before – and yes my grass is was still green.

 

We woke up to a little snow left on the ground and decided to take advantage of it in the morning sunlight.

 

 

Katelyn was really excited and happy about the snow – I was just grateful her snow suit and boots still fit.

 

 

It took all the snow in our back yard to make our little snow man. We had a lot of fun, and boy did my muscles ache when we were done.

 

 

 

 

The smaller pictures are kind of difficult to tell – Katelyn felt bad that her snowman had a scarf but no gloves!

“But Mommy, she will get cold!”

She then took her gloves off and put them on the sticks and gave her a hug.

 

So, I made a new years resolution to do a ‘photo shoot’ of Katelyn once a month this year. I needed some updated pictures, and so did her Grandma and Nana! Sad – I know!  It has been so rewarding and so much fun.

 

Here are the pictures we did in January. It was a warmer day, but still we were only out for 30 minutes before we were all freezing and I had successfully gotten tangled in some climbing roses bushes ( I have a scar on my foot where the thorns got me.)

 

 

 

You know those moments when you are REALLY upset and you know that if you take a picture you will be grateful because you can look back on it and laugh?

 

Well…

 

The other day this happened…

 

I was not a happy mommy – and Katelyn was not happy to be sitting in time out. I was so grateful that they were washable crayons – but… we have flat paint in our house. Flat paint has it’s purpose I am sure, but NOT in a house with toddlers!

 

She got to help clean it off the walls, and boy was I grateful for ‘magic erasers’ to take it off. She knew she was in trouble, and yes looking back now, I am grateful I took a picture because it doesn’t seem that bad.

 

We had fun – we love Conference. I had all kinds of snacks, treats, and activities to do. Katelyn was allowed to pick one brown bag to play with during a talk (there were enough activities for each speaker)

Activities Included:

• Conference Wall (Pictures representing topics)
• General Conference FHE Tree – each speaker had their own leaf, we would write the main topic of their talk on their leaf and put it on the tree. During the next six months, we would take a leaf off for each FHE to use as the topic for our lessons.
• Coloring Pages/Packets/Crayons
• Beads/String
• Watercolor Painting with Q-tip
• Paint with Fingerpaints
• Stickers
• LDS Bingo
• Cut Paper & Glue
• Hide/Find The pumpkin
• Friend Magazine
• Playdough
• Don’t Eat Me Game
• Build a Tent
• Prophet & Apostle Memory Match Game
• Prophet Coloring Pages (Friend)
• Toilet Paper Tube Coloring Activity (Friend)

I had such great hopes for finishing our General Conference FHE Tree – maybe this time I will be better. We only did a few Family Night’s that were based off of the talks given at General Conference. It was a lot easier to use the lesson that were already created.