Happy 5th Birthday Kitty!

Saturday, April 17th

For Kitty's 5th birthday, we had a pizza dinner at our house, followed by some playing outside in the nice spring weather and then cake and ice cream. Kitty chose a castle cake which was fun for me to make - it was the first time that I had done flowers and leaves like that. Kay had a hard time trying to understand why all of the presents were for Kitty this time and not for her. And then Blondie had to be next to Kitty at all times whether she was opening her presents or blowing out the candles on her cake...
Kitty got a couple of princess dolls and a Pucci Pup that she has been enjoying playing with (along with her sisters). My parents were able to come over for dinner and cake again. It's nice having them nearby so they can be here to help celebrate the kids' birthdays!

Change of attitude

So a couple of weeks after I posted about Kay's lack of interest in participating in prayers, she all of a sudden decided to start participating. We can even get her to help say them sometimes and she loves the attention she gets afterwards when she has said one. She sits there with a big grin on her face while she repeats the words that I say to her and then afterwards she jumps up and goes around the whole family circle giving everyone a hug and/or kiss. She is also starting to recognize prayers at other times and will occasionally fold her arms when one is being said or say "amen" afterwards.

Zoo trip

Thursday, April 15th
Since the kids are off-track from school right now and the weather has been beautiful, I decided to take them on a trip to the zoo. This was Kay's first trip there where she has been old enough to really notice and be interested in the animals. My parents came along with us which helped out a lot. Kay is at the age where she wants to be very independent and wants to do what she wants to do. I brought the stroller for her to ride in and to carry our lunches and I think Kay rode in it for a total of maybe 5 minutes while we were there.

It turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day. I even had to stop and take some time to put sunscreen on the kids after lunch so they wouldn't get sunburned.

Beautiful colors on this peacock!One of Kay's favorite things to do at the zoo was to climb anything that she could. Fences, rocks, stairs, etc.This baby elephant was by far my favorite animal at the zoo this trip.It is so hard to get 5 kids looking at the camera and smiling at the same time!Kay's favorite part of the zoo was riding on the carousel. She just sat there smiling the whole time the ride was going. When the ride ended and I told her it was time to get down, she started crying and throwing a fit because she wanted to stay on it.This is a fairly new attraction at the Hogle Zoo and it is one of the prettiest carousels I have ever seen. All of the rides are different animals. Kay rode on a bald eagle, Blondie was on a dolphin, M&M was on a peacock, Luke rode on a snow leopard, and Kitty was on a zebra.
My 5 little monkeys!
Playing at the zoo playground before we left.

Sensitive girls!

The other day we watched the movie Enchanted for the first time. Blondie got a little sad and emotional at one point in the movie and then both Blondie and Kitty were scared at the ending so they quickly ran to the couch to get some comfort from their dad!

Blondie quite often gets scared when we're watching a movie or a show - she's definitely got a sensitive side to her!

Baby K turns 2!!

Tuesday, April 6th
Baby K is now 2 years old! I can't believe that she is that old already! So, from now on she will be known as Kay on my blog (instead of Baby K).

She is still obsessed with Sesame Street so I made her an Abby cake (one of the new characters on Sesame Street) for her birthday. It turned out really cute. My parents were able to come over and have cake and ice cream with us on her birthday. One of her favorite gifts was a bouncy ball that she went around the room throwing to everyone - she made sure that everyone was included (even her dad who was running the video camera).After Kay finished with her cake, she immediately got down and went to her grandpa to ask him to throw the ball with her. Then she wanted to include grandma too (who was still finishing her cake). She kept saying, "Come on, Grandma! Come on!"One of Kay's funny quirks lately is that she is always wanting to wear a dress or skirt. The problem is that I have so many other cute outfits that are shorts or capris or pants that I want her to wear but she will throw an absolute fit if I try and put them on her. She also only wants to wear nightgowns to bed. The other day I forcefully put some pants and a long-sleeved shirt on her for bedtime because it was chilly (and she was freezing from having just been playing outside). It took her quite a while to settle down after that... She is definitely going to love summertime when I don't have to worry about dressing her warmly!

Trying to figure out how to work the video camera.
Lately she is having a time going to bed at night. She likes to fall asleep in my bed (usually holding onto my hair). Then DH or I will put her in her crib and some nights she will wake up around 4 or 5 in the morning crying/yelling for me. When I go in to get her she immediately changes to a happy tone of voice and says, "There she is!" or "There's the momma!" I'm hoping we can get this resolved before the new baby comes in just a few short months! I would just let her cry and scream in her bed, but she shares the room with Kitty and Luke's bedroom is just next door...

Kid talk

Blondie's first comment after throwing up: "Is my shirt dirty?"

She is obsessed with clothes and looking good and only cared if anything got on the new shirt that she was wearing...

Easter 2010

This year I picked out patterns to make my girls Easter dresses over a month in advance. I bought the patterns and fabric when it went on sale and then promptly brought it all home and then didn't do anything with it until about a week ago. I finally cut the fabric out last Saturday and then started the sewing on Monday. The hardest part this year was that all of the patterns I picked out for the girls were tiered dresses/skirts that had a lot of pieces that you had to gather and fit together. So it called for a lot of busy work just to get them together. I finished them all up yesterday and we even had time to make some matching flower barrettes.

This year I also had a helper - M&M. She expressed interest in learning how to sew when she came with me to the fabric store to help pick out the fabrics for the dresses. Thankfully there were a lot of straight lines that needed to be sewn that I was able to let her help on. I even had her do some ironing and a little bit of serging as well. I also had her take out some of the basting stitching and cut stray threads that needed cutting. I think she really enjoyed helping out.

The girls all loved their dresses and I think they turned out rather cute! The only problem I had was with Baby K's dress. Her dress turned out a little too big and when I put it on her it looked like she was a tiered cake. My husband suggested I put some ties on the dress and I thought that sounded like a good idea so I gave it a try. I had enough leftover fabric to cut out some ties for the dress and attached them at the side seams. Once we put it on her it really helped add some shape to the dress. She has been wearing it all day today and loves jumping up and down in it. The fabric for the dresses is kind of stiff so they poof out really easily and the younger girls love twirling around in them.

We have enjoyed watching General Conference this Easter weekend and were looking forward to going to my parents' house for dinner, an Easter egg hunt and birthday cake for my mom, but my mom ended up coming down with a touch of pneumonia so we decided to put it off for a day or two until she is feeling better. We also had snow again this morning so hopefully the weather will be warmer tomorrow for our egg hunt.Blondie and Kitty's dresses were made from the same pattern - just different sizes and a different color fabric.It felt kind of weird not going to church on Easter, so I just had the kids dress up in their Easter outfits for the morning session of conference and then we took a few pictures and let them change if they wanted to. M&M was the only one who ended up changing. I couldn't even get Baby K to take her shoes off for her nap...

And I was reminded by one of the girls that next year I will have to make FIVE dresses...

Decorating eggs 2010

This year Baby K had a lot of fun getting in on the action of decorating the eggs for Easter. She kept saying "pretty eggs" while we were decorating them. When I put the first color dye in front of Baby K, she immediately picked up the boiled egg and dropped it in the dye solution. Luckily I had the table well covered and it only splashed a little. She wanted to help so much and ended up dropping a few eggs that cracked when they hit the table. Once we were finished with the dyeing, Baby K had fun putting lots stickers on the eggs. Blondie didn't want to be done with the dyeing so she just kept dipping the eggs that she had colored into other colors until most of them turned out a weird brown color - and she ended up breaking a few as well. It's nice as the kids get older because they can do most of the decorating without help now.

Fiddler on the Roof

DH, M&M and I went to see a production of Fiddler on the Roof on Wednesday night. This was our first time going to the Hale Center Theatre and it was a lot of fun. It is a pretty small stage, but the theater is round so there is really no front or back to the stage. It was neat seeing how they did the scenes so that everyone in the theatre could see. We were seated on the second row and had a great time. It was fun seeing M&M laugh at the humorous parts in the play. Thanks to my dad who came to our house to watch the younger kids for us. The only downside to the date we picked to go to the play was that there was a big concert going on at the venue just across the street from the theatre so we had quite a bit of traffic getting to and leaving the theatre.

Spring snow - day 2!

On Thursday morning it continued to snow so the kids went out to play after lunch. It actually wasn't too cold so the kids put on their snow pants and boots and gloves and then just wore a jacket on top of that. The sun was super bright! It was a really wet, heavy snow which was perfect for making snowmen. Here are some pictures:

Teamwork!
Blondie and Kitty worked with one of the neighbor girls to make their snowman. They ended up making a short, fat one because they weren't strong enough to lift up the snowball they had made for the middle section. It was pretty cute watching them use their imagination to come up with their design!