diane turns four!

diane turned four at the end of last month. after the entire month of december being a ramp up to madeleine's birthday, diane was very ready for her own celebration.

i may not do big, showy, birthdays, but one thing that has become a tradition with our kids has been fun balloons on their birthdays. i love balloons and find that they instantly cheer me up, so it's a tradition i can get behind.

diane is obsessed with duplos and with jake and the neverland pirates, so this was a no-brainer present for us. she loves it.

diane wanted a chocolate cake with pink frosting and purple sprinkles, and i even went a little fancy with the sprinkles to make a four (even if i did put it on sideways on accident). i'm grateful that my children have low expectations of me.

 

diane picked this out for a present that she bought with some birthday money she received.

diane is such a fun girl and makes us laugh every day. she is independent and creative and very excited to be four years old. happy birthday, diane.

january in photos

looks like it's still christmas on this blog. time to do some catch up. here are pictures from january:

we started out january by flying to utah on new year's day for my brother, ray's, wedding.

i wasn't at all worried about the girls, who were thrilled for the plane ride, but i was very nervous about how our constant ball of energy and motion would do. he did surprisingly well (a near constant flow of fruit snacks helped) and we all survived the flight.

here are all of the nieces, dressed up in their wedding outfits. i love diane's face.

my mom and ray.

lots of cousin time.

my uncle, charles, came and took some pictures of my whole family and we also got a few shots of just our family. the last time we had any kind of legitimate family photo taken was when jonathan was three weeks old, so we were long overdue. i wish we were more consistent about getting family photos taken. i'm sure randy is just fine with how often we do it.

we don't have a bathtub at our house, so whenever we go to grandparent's houses, we let the kids bathe as often as they want. jonathan is such a water baby and had to be dragged, shivering, out of the tub every night.

after the wedding festivities, randy flew home and i stayed for a few more days at my mom's. unfortunately, everyone but madeleine got sick and we didn't do anything but sit around and recoup for the rest of our trip. at least we had good company.

i was pretty nervous about flying home alone with three small kids, but the flight was very empty and i had almost two full rows for our family (the poor woman who got the sixth seat probably wished she had picked a different row). jonathan having his own seat made a huge difference and once again, we all survived.

here are the girls with their juice. i remember thinking that was the best part of the flight when i was a kid - having your tray down with your own drink - so exciting.

back home. these two love to snuggle up together in the morning. diane brings out her bedding, sets up a bed on the couch, and they curl up together under the covers.

 diane still doesn't do well with the flash. 

this boy loves books and there's nothing i love more than this sight: 

enjoying some rare sunshine:

madeleine's birthday is on christmas, so her class was going to sing to her on the day before christmas break, but it ended up being a snow day and she was devastated. then, we were gone for the first few days of school in january, so i was worried that she wouldn't get sung to. but, the first thing she did when she did when she went back to school was walk up to the teacher and say, "can you sing to me for my birthday today?" and they did. when she got home, she made some crowns for some stuffed animals, too.

this is my view every day when i walk to and from madeleine's school. on this particular morning, diane put her blanket over her head and said, "i'm going to have some diane time." have i mentioned that she's our introvert? jonathan didn't really get that she wanted to be left alone and thought it was a fun game.

saturday afternoon snuggles.

we went on a double date with our friends, the sines (jared and i went to law school together), and test drove a tesla. it was even more amazing than i had anticipated it would be. too bad we'll never get one. we'll be talking about it for a long time to come, though.