Makayla's Birthday

Our little Makayla turned 4 on Oct. 6th! Hard to believe this little girl is getting so big! For her birthday, we just stayed home and had a rainbow themed party with our family, along with presents of course. A week and a half later, she had a princess themed birthday party with some friends from church, where good times were had by all.

Rainbow fruit salad to go with dinner.

More Barbie stuff!

This is the train table that Dad built. Now they have somewhere to play with all their Thomas the Train stuff. I'm sure going to miss yelling at them to pick that junk up. Oh wait, no I'm not.

An outdoor playhouse from Nana, which Kylee screamed over louder than Makayla.

A ballerina dress-up from Grandma Olsen, which I don't think she's removed since her birthday. Rainbow birthday cake! Don't look at the sides too carefully, I only had time to care about the top.

My 3 little princesses

Getting ready for her Princess party The cupcakes

Decorating their crowns

The princesses having a ball!

Makayla blowing out the candles on her cupcake. I thought it was funny that she picked what I considered to be the ugliest cupcake I decorated. It was the last one, and I just didn't care anymore. I guess I didn't have to do anything special after all!

Scenes of Summer

I feel like I don't have very many pictures from this summer, probably because we didn't really do much. Honestly, after Ella was born, the summer seemed to fly by and now it all seems like a blur. I guess that's the result of sleep deprivation. Anyway, here's a couple of pictures from the summer.

The girls at the zoo

Ella's first trip to the zoo. She was probably 2 weeks old. All these clothes are the result of a major fit that Makayla threw one day. She literally emptied the entire dresser of all of hers and Kylee's clothes. That was fun.

Hello caterpillars, did you enjoy your gluttonous feast of my parsley? Oh good, because I planted it just for you, ya know.

Self-portrait, by Kylee

Ella's first hike in the Snuggly.

Self-portrait, by Makayla

We ended up going to King's Island when Brian's mom and sister were here in July. For some reason (probably the sleep deprivation again) I got talked into going. It POURED the entire day. Between the rain and the pain I was still in, I ended up leaving with the baby after lunch. It was miserable. Don't ever let your husband talk you into going to an amusement park a few weeks after you have surgery.

Brian taking the girls on the log ride. Really, they couldn't get more wet.

My parents helped us re-do our tabletop while they were here. It used to be glass, with a monstrous crack in it. This is much better!

Cousin Fun

My sister Jenicca took pity on me and came to see me in August when Brian was in San Diego for several days, thank goodness! She brought her 2 year old little boy, Logan, and those 3 musketeers had tons of fun together. My sister took these pictures of their adventures together.

At Parky's Farm

Wow, she still has such a baby face! (sniff)

Going to the Children's Museum

At the Mt. Healthy pool

Why are always such suckers for these animal-head pictures?

My shrinking violet (there's a reason she's not in too many pictures)

My not-shrinking-at-all violet (there's a reason she's in EVERY picture!)

Logan just loved Kylee, and she loved to pretend to be his mom.

I love this picture because it reminds me of the Hungry Hippos game we used to play as kids. Sadly, one day my mom got quite irritated with us playing it while she was taking a nap, and finally fed up with the noise, she charged out of her room, grabbed the game, opened the front door and chucked it as hard as she could, where it bounced and crashed into a thousand pieces down the front walk. I'm still in therapy over the incident.

Playing on the swing set

My sleepy baby

Ella's Blessing

We had Ella's blessing the first Sunday of September. While I was feeling emotional and sentimental about the fact that we were blessing our last baby, the day seemed strangely uneventful, I think because we didn't have any family members there to share the day with us. Ella did a great job and didn't cry during her blessing, instead saving her screaming for the rest of church. I remember feeling on that day how blessed and lucky we are to have this perfect last baby join our family. I'm so glad the worries we had for her a few months ago, regarding her weight and possible spine problem, are finally over and that we can just enjoy her now. I'm truly loving every second of this little girl's life. Here's a few pics that we took after church. My sister's going to yell at me for not fixing them up, but oh well.

All 3 girls have worn this blessing dress now.