Happy Birthday Gigi!

This weekend the girls helped Gigi celebrate her 4th birthday.  It was lots of fun!  Claire was busy as ever running around the Britton's new house and stealing fairies off the birthday cake!  Unfortunately I didn't get any good pics of Claire-Bear but she really did enjoy herself.  She loved the cake, and even told us she wanted chocolate when we were given the choice, and she especially thought the pinata was super cool when Adam let her try to hit it!  We had some teachable moments with Stella when we allowed her to pick out Gigi's birthday presents - she chose markers, bubbles, and Dora pajamas, and when we explained that it was Gigi's special day so she couldn't wear a tiara at the party.  Hopefully we are getting through to her! 

Caring and Sharing

Stella tells us all the time that Gigi is her best friend.  When she tell us "I love you" she often says "do you know who else I love?  I love my sissy and I love Gigi too!".  So needless to say she was super excited to have Gigi and her sister Cambria over for a play date this weekend while their mommy and daddy started moving to their new house.  All the girls had fun but the growing pains of learning how to share was a challenge for Stella the whole day.  She does love Gigi, but not enough to share her dresses, shopping cart, and Princess castle, or to let her choose which show to watch at quiet time!  She got through the tears though and is already looking forward to next weekend when she'll get to see Gigi again.

The last few nights Stella has slept in her own room in her own bed but lately more often than not she asks to sleep in the play yard in the guest room.  She's really too big for it, but she goes to bed so well each night we just go with it! 

Claire is as busy as ever!  She's still getting into everything, trying to race around at church, and demanding our full attention at bed time.  She's a sweet little girl though who loves to cuddle, read books, eat, and go to the playground - she especially loves to swing!  Her curiosity could pay off in the potty training front - she's been asking to go 'potty' a lot lately and while we know at 19 months this probably won't turn into anything we humor her and let her try it out! 

A quick shout out to Aunt Mary Jane for cutting Stella's hair today - thanks so much!  We went with daddy to the salon yesterday, but it was just too long of a wait for everyone.  Turns out it didn't matter because Stella was happy to have MJ do it for her instead!

Mother's Day 2013

Thinking of special moments with Mom Todd

We had a fun weekend at home this week together as a family which hasn't happened in a while.  We took dinner over to Grammie and Pa's today to celebrate Mother's Day.  It was nice having some quiet to just enjoy each others company and not have a lot of plans for a change.

Other news: Randy had a lipoma removed from the back of his head this week.  The surgery went great but it has required that he rest for several days which is hard to do when you have little people to take care of!    Between Claire's fall last week and Randy's surgery half of our family has a head injury - now that's something we'll hopefully never say again!

As the month of May quickly passes us by we are looking forward to the Perrin's visit from Hawaii at the beginning of June.  It's going to be so great for the girls to be with all of their cousins!

Bumps and Bruises

Poor little Claire-Bear fell on Saturday and hit her head.  We had to take her to the ER so they could glue the cut shut.  She was a little trooper nearly the entire time but it was sad to see how easily she can get hurt.  She challenges us in different ways than Stella does and is sometimes hard to keep up with.

Claire resting on daddy after seeing the ER Doc

A huge thanks to Aunt Mary Jane for coming over to get Stella.  A 4-hour ER trip wouldn't have been enjoyable for her and we are so grateful to MJ for dropping what she was doing and helping us out! 

Other news: Claire has learned how to count to ten and tries to sing along to both Twinkle-Twinkle and the ABC's.  We recently ordered a swing set for the girls and are looking forward to when it arrives so we can have lots of fun outdoors this summer!  Both girls visited the golf course with their dad on Friday afternoon and they had a great time - Stella especially loved the golf cart!