Lily turns 5!!!!!

Last week my Lily turned 5!! I know, where does the time go? It seemed like we celebrated all weekend long! It started on Friday, her actual birthday. She wanted to go to the library and play and then we met Don for lunch (at McDonalds, of course!). That evening we let her open her gifts from us. One thing about Lily that has never changed, she LOVES cards. She is still looking at her birthday cards a week later! She has been this way since her 1st birthday. It is so funny.

Here she is peeking over the new Barbie sheets and duvet cover from Mommy and Daddy. We are going to redo her (and Madison's) bedroom for part of their birthday present. It will be repainted light pink with some brown accents and now we have all new bedding to go with it!

Her big gift from us was a Barbie cruise ship. She was so excited about it and Mommy got to spend an hour putting it together and getting all the stickers on for her party the next day!

Another thing about Lily, she loves dolls! I found this outfit at Kohls. They have a whole line of clothes that come with a matching outfit for your doll. Needless to say, we immediately changed into the outfit and then we had to get her doll ready too!

That night after Madison performed at WRHS, we had my parents and my brother and his wife over to give Lily those gifts. Here she is with her new Barbie keyboard and pillow-pet from Nana and Papa. She also got a Barbie drink machine. It makes pretend smoothies, coffee drinks, etc. (Can you sense some kind of theme to most of our gifts?)

The next day we went to YUM Bakery at Fairlawn Plaza and had her birthday party with all of her friends. We brought the cruise ship and all the girls brought a Barbie to play with. Here are some of the decorations for her party.

Here is a picture of the cute cupcakes they made. Each cupcake had a fork in it with a flower at the top that had Lily's name on it. So cute!!

Lily with some of her party friends!!

Lily got some WONDERFUL gifts! She really loved every single one and believe me, they all got opened that night or the next day! What a great group of friends she has!

As their snack at the party, YUM Bakery made something they call "Fairy Mix". Lily got to choose what items went in it and then they top it with powdered sugar. Lily chose Nacho Cheese Doritos, Cheese Balls and popcorn. They took that mix and filled these adorable paper cones with it. Everything looked so cute!!

Here Lily is playing with Don while he is trying to take a picture. It is a little fuzzy, but I just love it!!

Here are the girls all playing with the cruise ship.

Cheese!!!!

Here is one last group shot before we left. What a great party!!

That night we went out to eat at Freddy's (Lily's pick) and then we had the rest of our family over (and a few friends that wouldn't have liked the Barbie party) for cake. Here is a picture of the birthday banner I bought a couple years ago and I never remember to use. I'm so glad we finally used it!!

She got even more gifts that night, a baby doll, cash register and her own real guitar!

Grandma made her cake again this year. Lily wanted an all purple Barbie cake. Pat always does such a great job and Lily loved it!! (Even the cake inside was purple!!)

Two pretty girls!!

Here are all the kids eating on the deck. They always enjoy this and it keeps all the mess outside, which I appreciate!!

After everyone else left, Grandpa sat down and gave both the girls (and Taegan) some guitar lessons.

Taegan doesn't have his own guitar yet, but don't worry, Grandpa says he is going to buy him his own drum set when he turns 5. Oh boy!!! I told Don he has 3 years to find me a house with a sound proof room!

I love this picture of Lily and her Grandpa.

Happy Birthday Lily!! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. You are such a sweet little girl and Mommy and Daddy are so proud of you!!! I love you!!!!

Topeka Railroad Festival

On Saturday we decided to take the kids to the Great Overland Station's Topeka Railroad Festival. We had never been there and Taegan is really into trains right now, so we thought it would be a good family outing. We got there around 12:30 so it was already hot so we headed straight inside. Here are Don and Taegan checking out the model trains. They were quite impressive and Taegan LOVED them. Every time the train would come around again he would yell, "Choo-choo train, choo-choo train!!!"

Here are Madison and Lily getting a good look as well.

There were many stormtroopers walking around inside. This was the first one we came to, so the girls had to have their picture taken with him. (Madison even got to hold his gun!! Apparently that is why she still needed her sunglasses on!)

More trains to look at. Taegan just loved this stuff, which is so exciting to watch. I never knew how much fun it would be to watch your son really get into boy stuff, but it is!

He's still there. He did not want to move!

Here are all 3 getting to take a turn driving the train. They were very excited to be able to push buttons, pull levers and everything else you do to drive a train.

So much fun!!

Taegan saying "cheese"! I don't know why, but I love looking back at pictures and seeing the stage where your kids do this. It really cracks me up.

One of the only things that got Taegan away from the model trains was when the big trains would come through the station. He would just stand there for hours.

A fun pretend train to play in.

What adorable kids!!!

When we got upstairs R2D2 was there to greet us. The girls were all excited. Taegan was very intrigued with it, but wasn't sure about actually getting his picture taken. Or maybe it was the tall guy all in black with the gun standing beside him!

Upstairs they had a Star Wars exhibit you could walk through. The girls favorite part of the exhibit was the little miniature figurines that you could play with.

Don and Taegan checking out all the memorabilia. Don is probably a little more interested than Taegan. He says that will change after Taegan sees the movies!!

Right when we were getting ready to leave, all the characters assembled in the room so you could have your picture taken with them. Lily wanted to and Madison decided at the last minute she would to. Taegan - he was hiding behind Don and I no where close to the freaky looking people!

After we were done inside we stopped for a few minutes and watched this guy do some yo-yo tricks. The kids really loved it!

That's when the day went downhill... fast! The one thing our kids asked for over and over and OVER, was to ride the train. Don and I promised that we would make sure we did. When we made it to the train "station" the line was pretty long, so I stood in line while Don took the kids around to look at more stuff. 30 minutes later I was still in line (in the heat with no shade!) but we were getting closer. We waited some more, and finally got to the front of the line just as the train filled up. The kids were disappointed, but we only had to wait for the train to go around once and it was our turn!!!! We could handle this... right? That's when Don noticed that the train wasn't starting. Ugh... Yep, the train's battery died, right then, with us at the front of the line, finally. But don't worry, they MIGHT have a spare battery in some shed somewhere! Okay!! So we wait in line some more while some guy walked ridiculously slow to somewhere that had to have been 50 miles away, only to come back with nothing. Ugh... So they get on the phone again and figure out the moron (I mean kind train operator) didn't look in the right spot for the battery. So, they both leave this time and again it takes forever! Why you may ask are we still waiting and haven't given up? Because by this time I had waited over an hour in this crazy line and I wasn't leaving it until my kids got to ride this train!!! They both eventually came back and they were carrying a battery!!!! YAY!!! We waited some more while they took the old battery off - breaking their ONLY wrench in the process, and tried to get the new battery on. At some point during this process they finally figured out that the battery was a side mount battery and they needed a top mount. Yeah I have no idea what all that means, but what it meant for us is that we could not, after waiting for about an hour and a half, ride the train. Talk about disappointment!! And the kids were pretty upset too! ;-) I just kept hearing, "But I wanted to ride the train!" and "I ride choo-choo?". It was so sad. Before we left, the kids at least wanted to sit in the crazy train that caused all the problems - here they are.

I normally try and reason things like this out in my mind. For example if I'm caught in horrid traffic then maybe God is protecting me from some accident somewhere. I always try and think that there has to be a reason for everything, right? But what could really have happened? A horrid accident with a mini train going 3 miles an hour around a parking lot? Who knows! I guess we will never know.

Before we left, the kids took one last look at the big trains, just wishing they could have ridden one. So, so sad...

First Day of School!!

I can't believe my little girl is starting 2nd grade! It just seems like time is flying by faster and faster. She had quite a rough year last year, so she wasn't that excited about summer ending or starting a new school year, but I know this year will be better! I prayed all summer long for God to give her the teacher that would be the best for her, not just one particular teacher that she or I wanted.

The first day of school was red day, so we tried to find an outfit that we would both like that had at least a little red in it. This is what we came up with. I think she looks so cute!!

Here she is posing in our driveway. We were waiting on Don to move his car. We always take her picture in front of this one particular tree at our house and we couldn't do that because his car was in the way. ;-)

Here she is with her backpack she picked out. She is getting so grown up!

Waiting at the corner for the school bus. She is the only kid picked up at our stop, so it can be lonely.

Getting on the bus, ready for her first day... I love you Madison and I pray that you have a fantastic year!!! You deserve it!!!

My 2nd Grader!!!

I can't believe Madison is starting 2nd grade!! It seems like just yesterday we counted down all summer until her first day of kindergarten! She was so excited. Looking back now she looks so young... my baby is growing up!

Last year we were just as excited - even with the rain! We ended up having a rough year, but I'm hoping we both learned a lot from it and that this year will be even better because of it!

Fast forward to this year. Thursday night was Meet the Teacher night. We found out on Wednesday that her teacher this year is Mrs. Scott. She was so excited to see who all was in her class! It is amazing to see how far she has come and how fast she is growing. Don took this picture and I love it! It is very interesting and she is so darn cute!

Here she is with her teacher, Mrs. Scott that night. I'm so excited for her to have a new experience this year. She is such a sweet little girl and I can't wait to see where we go this year!!!