Bye Bye Pacifiers

Better late than never. Madelyn finally kicked the bad habbit! We've been working on her for months and it finally paid off. We let her cut them off herself, so it hopefully would feel more like she chose to do this herself. Good job Maddie, now we just need to work on Barack's bad habbit!

Birthday Girl

So here is my special little birthday girl. She turned 6 last Friday. Everybody always talks about how time flies when they're referring to their children-it's very true. 6 years ago I gave birth to the most beautiful baby girl I had ever seen. She was perfect! Olivia has had a tough year and persevered and she is conquering all. I'm so proud of her. Here are many, many pictures of her day. Observe that I am using this also as a type of journal for my children's future reference, so there will be pictures you might not think are relevant or interesting, but I think someday Olivia would like to see them all.
The three amigas wearing their valentine clothes from Grandma Kathy

Olivia and Maddie made most of the decorations for the party. Here she is cutting out the hearts that will be taped to the kitchen cupboards.

This is the birthday cake. The theme of Liv's party was "pretend slumber party" I found this idea online and thought it was pretty cute. So thank you cake decorating tips and a big thanks to Fondant.

Here are the sock/slippers we made for all the girls at the party.

These are some of the party favors we made. It's a crayon holder that rolls up with ribbon. Olivia chose to make these, she really wanted to give these to all her friends.

These pictures are a little out of order-but here are all the girls crowding around watching Olivia open her presents. We had to break through the girls to even get this picture.

Here she is blowing out the six birthday candles

Decorating their journals-this is what girls do at real slumber parties, right?

This was hilarious! We played musical sleeping bags and the girls were so funny. They fought for those spots like we were giving away money.

Relaxing in the bags. It was such a fun party for Olivia. She told Trent and I several times that she felt like she was in a dream. That night she thanked me for her party and told me it was everything she could have ever hoped for. What a sweet thing for a six year old to say. Hey I get to brag at least once a year for each of my children. Today was your day Olivia. I love you!

Beautiful Pennsylvania

This is our backyard after a big ice storm came through. Even though the storms are very dangerous, I think the after affects of the ice are beautiful. That is all ice on the trees, it might look like snow-but it's definitely ice. When the wind blows it sounds like there are a bunch of wind chimes in the trees. I could quite be the only one calling this ice storm beautiful.