Kylie's Florida Birthday Party

Kylie won't be 6 for a few weeks and we'll have just arrived in CA for her actual birthday, so I wanted her to have a little party here with a few of her friends before we left. As usual, I contemplated how many kids to invite and what age because many of MY friends have young kids. She chose a few friends from church, another family who home schools and some of our military friends. We chose NOT to invite the soccer team. There are 9 girls on the team including Kylie and Ava and that would have been way too many kids. Everything I've read for party planning suggests one kid per age the child is turning, so we kinda got closer this year. We chose to have her party at the location in which the girls do gymnastics, and they have a limit on how many kids can come with their packaged rate, so that helped narrow down the number of kids as well.

I think Jonathan was more excited about going than the girls, and that is probably because they go to gymnastics every week. They did let the kids run around the gym for an hour and play on any of the equipment they wanted and the girls liked being able to just run and use equipment they've never been on before.

Excuse the quality of these photos. I'm going to whine briefly on how I want a new camera. I'm sure I could adjust my point and shoot for inside where its darker and the kids are moving fast, but I think that would all just fix itself with a better camera. Okay, that's it.

Jonathan practicing his mount onto a balance beam.

Kylie climbing a rope.

Juliet on top of some thing I have no idea what it is.

Jonathan doing a back flip on the trampoline. See, I told you he was excited!

Kylie and Keri running their little hearts out towards the vault.

The foam pit was the best "attraction" by far.

Ava running from across the room and jumping into the pit.

Kylie's turn.

We got to see Ava do some of her skills on the balance beam. She did quite well! Jonathan was shocked and I told him she better be learning something since we pay for this every month. :)

My girls getting into the chalk. Did anyone else even look at it? No. At times you'd think I was raising boys.

Juliet and A'lyn on the trampoline.

Juliet hanging from a high bar. She wasn't too thrilled, but she hung on tight!

More of daddys antics on the high bar.

After the kids had an hour of playing, it was time for cake, ice cream and presents. I went the, well not cheaper, rather quicker cake route. Kylie wanted a Care Bears theme so I went to Publix and ordered a cake. It wasn't nearly as cute as the brochure, but Kylie liked it. I've always made the girls' cakes, but with this move, we didn't have time nor was my house in any state for baking. I wanted to do ice cream and Candace suggested I do ice cream cups and boy was that easy! Thanks for the hot tip!

Ava and Maya

Sisters Carolyn and Isabella.

Keri-a fellow home schooled little girl.

Juliet and A'lyn. These 2 are so cute together.

Of course its hard to get 2 year olds to look at the camera at the same time.

Leah (also home schooled) and Devon. He was about as excited as Jonathan to be showing off his mad gymnastics skillz!

Addie and Camryn. Camryn is known for her "special" camera faces. I gave her plenty of opportunities to smile and this is what she gave me. :)

Jonathan and I got Kylie a new 20 inch bike for her birthday this year. She wasn't very excited in front of everyone when we gave it to her (she also clammed up when we all sang "happy birthday") but she does love it.

Here's a quick video. You can see at the end she runs over Jonathan's foot.

Just Kid Stuff

Ava is doing phenomenal with her school work. I'm really seeing a big jump in her reading skills. She has memorized some words and no longer needs to sound them out, the words she does need to sound out she figured out quickly what the word is, and her handwriting is greatly improving. She enjoys her school work and usually asks me to do more when I make her stop.

Since I'm not hard core with certain curriculum yet, Ava just gets to do a nice variety of work book pages or things I've printed off the internet. Here is a 1st grade work book I picked up at Sam's Club. On the page on the left, she had to read the sentences to me and then had to figure out which word to put in the blank, and write it neatly. On the page on the right, she had to read the sentence and draw a line to the correct animal it was describing. I'll say it again, there is nothing like seeing something "click" with your child right in front of your eyes.

Juliet didn't quite make it through "Bee Movie" last weekend. She snored her little heart out and drooled all over her bean bag.

I had to take her to the beginning part of a baby shower I co-hosted last weekend and she thought she was cool stuff sitting in the front seat of daddy's truck.

Oh yeah, Juliet's new talent is fake sleeping. It is so hilarious! Jonathan got suckered into it a few days ago. He turned to me when we got home and opened the van door to get her out and whispered "she's sleeping". I whispered back "she's faking it". He quietly turned back to her and said "are you fake sleeping" and she cracked a big smile and opened her eyes.

Kylie is great at helping out around the house. Her newest chore is feeding the animals and emptying the bathroom trash. She's great at getting down cereal bowls and pouring breakfast for her and her sisters. We just haven't mastered the gallon of milk quite yet....well we haven't let her try.

These sweet sisterly moments happen, but they are usually few and far between these days.

First Soccer Game

And the crazy early Saturday mornings have begun once again! We learned this week that 6:30 isn't quite early enough to get 2 little girls ready for their games. Oh Saturday mornings how I will miss you for the next few months. We have the same sponsor as we did in the fall, so we have the same pink uniforms, which of course the girls love. Kylie is #3 like last season, and Ava is #4. Kylie scored a goal this game and Ava scored one too, just for the other team. Jonathan is an assistant coach again and he loves it! I also enjoyed having to keep track of only Juliet on the sidelines.

Kylie has the ball.

Ava's turn.

Ava's turn once again.

Kylie (and Jonathan) and their way to the goal!

Potty Power

Juliet is a potty queen! She has been doing awesome with using both her potty and the "big one" (with her little seat attachment) as she calls it. Last week she had been using her Pull Up as a crutch when we were out (its not all her fault...I did pump her full of fiber when she wasn't using the toilet for #2, so she had a nice 48 period of a colon cleanse...sorry baby). I've got like 2 pull ups left and I don't want to buy anymore so we've been risking going out in just undies and she's doing great! She even stays dry at nap time! She's only been wet once, but I did leave her in there for a while one afternoon after she woke up...again not her fault. Kylie took a year to stay dry at nap, Ava took a month and Juliet took, well, no time! I still put her in a diaper because I have a ton of them, but I like seeing my diaper/Pull Up budget go towards other things.

I found Juliet on her potty like this recently.
I took off Horton's trunk to I could get her cute mug in the picture.
On that note, Ava has been staying dry at night. She too TOTALLY used her Pull Up as a crutch. Why kids like to just sit there and pee and lay in it, I'll never know. When I told her not to pee in it anymore (the first two nights she was rewarded with cookies) she moved to undies at night and we've been doing that for 3 weeks now.

Potty in the Big Easy

"Who Dat" you ask? That's right! Juliet is pretty much potty trained and it took no time at all! I took a big chance in choosing to start potty training Juliet the day before we were to go out of town for the weekend. Why not, right? I've got nothing better to do. :) She spent last Wednesday in big girl panties and after only one accident, she realized she needed to use her potty chair and not the inside of Kylie's jean drawer to pee. She quickly got the hang of it and enjoys screaming "POTTY", dropping her drawers and running to the bathroom to do her business. The candy she gets as a reward may have something to do with it, but she understand if she pees, she gets a treat. Before she actually starts peeing, she'll say "I did it" and then go.

We left town on Thursday to head to New Orleans (Jonathan is there for work) and I took the potty chair with us. I wasn't about to let her go diaper-less in the car. Its a little too soon for that. I brought it so when we were in our hotel room, she could use it. And she did over and over and over! Thursday night we got to NO late and she even pooped on the potty all on her own accord! Jonathan was on the phone, I was getting thing settled and Juliet sat down and filled her chair! She is so proud of herself when she does it and she even does a cute pee pee dance in which she kicks her leg. She gets mad when I have to put diapers on her for car rides or bedtime, and she also cries in the morning when she wakes up and needs to use the potty. She will hold it until I wipe the sleep from my eyes, try not to fall as I'm half asleep walking to her bed and quickly rip off her diaper and PJs so she can use potty. She did pee a few times on the floor of our room in the Hilton in the French Quarter, but better there than on the carpet in the house we're trying to sell, right? And I figured my little baby's pee is no worse that what we all know is on that nasty hotel room floor.

How cute is a diaper-less tooshy?


Here is the highly coveted treat...Valentine's Day candy hearts.

I didn't take any pictures of our time in NO, but I did get a cute shot of Juliet sleeping. We pushed through naps the 2 days we were there and one evening after swimming but before we headed to dinner, Juliet fell asleep all snuggled up next to Kylie. Kylie loved it!

Dentist visit

Today was Ava's first official visit to a dentist. She went 6 months ago with Kylie and I to watch and get a feel for what would happen on her next visit, but today she got to sit in the chair and get her chompers cleaned and examined. She did great and got a good report. I didn't get pix of her in the chair since I was in the next room getting my teeth cleaned, but we did get a photo outside the office.

They very much liked the "sticky hands" toy from the toy chest and of course brand new Princess toothbrushes.

Hot Wheels

Today Jonathan told me at breakfast he wanted to teach Ava to ride a bike. I gave him the "she's going to get hurt and cry" over protective mom face, but he went ahead and did it anyway. Its about the same time Kylie learned to ride a bike...just shy of 4 1/2...and Ava did AWESOME! She only fell once and got the hang of it very quickly.

Jonathan did a lot of running this morning pacing Ava as she went up and down our street.

Here's a video of my big girl.