Happy 4th Birthday Neely

Neely is four, as of Monday.  I can not believe that.  She's getting so big, and she's so proud of it.  She talks about how things were when she "was little" all the time.  :) 

Not too long ago, while planning Reed's birthday party, it hit me that I hadn't remembered to celebrate it being Neely's golden birthday last year.  So we made up for it, and the day before her birthday this year, on her last day of being three, we had a golden birthday breakfast for her.  She was a tad confused, but liked the attention.

 and the gold stars on her cinnamon roll.  :)

The next morning she had her real birthday.  She slept in, and then I made some eggs and some chocolate muffins for breakfast.  She opened her first birthday card, from Aunt Mindy and Uncle Randy, and was SO excited that it came with a cute memory game.  We played quite a few rounds of that, and she is REALLY good at it.  She beat me, fair and square, a few times. 

Then she put on a dance show for my mom, Reed, and me.

 She always asks to go to the park "with the wiggly bridge", which is my least favorite because it's always crowded.  So she doesn't get to go to that one as often as she'd like.  Of course on her birthday, we took her.  We met Jess for his lunch break and watched them play.

 She chose the meals for the day, pizza for lunch, and spaghetti for dinner.  She got to open some gifts that night too.  Just a few, the rest are for the party.  My mom gave her a Frozen pajama gown, and a Frozen sleeping bag with sleep mask.  :)  She got to cuddle in our bed and fell asleep in her mask, cuddling her kitty.

She wouldn't take off her gown all the next day.

Even for our trip to Walmart, where she got to pick out a doll she's been wanting for months.

 She's our feisty one, not afraid to let people know what she thinks.  She's also SO sweet and loveable.  She makes us laugh all the time, and will ask me out of nowhere if I know that she loves me.  I'll say yes and ask if she knows I love HER, and she says "Yeah, you don't have to tell me all the time."  Ha!  I can see some of my traits in Paige and Cason, and some of Jess in them too, but so far Neely is ALL Neely.  She is FAR more open with her feelings than either of us.  Everyone who spends any real amount of time with her will get to know her.  She's not a private person, like her parents.  At least not so far.  She has a TON of personality.  We love this girl.  She's adorable, tough, smart and funny, and so many other things I can't put in to words. 

She feels big and all, but she also still likes pretending to be a baby when she wants a little extra lovin'.  It's sweet.  She still adores Reed, and thinks everything he does is the cutest thing in the world.

 

She drew this for me.  Some dinosaurs of course, beneath a crescent moon, sun, and dragon if I'm remembering right.

 

We've started doing an interview with the same questions on their birthdays.  I'm sure most of you have seen this already on instagram, but it's a good little window into who Meewee is.  Love this sweet girl so much.  You make us so proud, and I would do anything for you Neely!  Happy birthday!

Halloween 2014

I love Halloween.  Last year I was busy lying around cuddling a newborn, so this year we tried to do more Halloween stuff with the big kids to make up for it, all month long.  Lots of Halloween movie nights with Halloween cookies, decorating, reading(cute kid's books, but also I'd never read Frankenstein I realized, so I read that over a few days this last week leading up to Halloween) and crafts.  Still didn't get to do nearly as much as I wanted to, but we had fun.

Neely made this paper plate version of her stuffed kitty that she named "Black Cat Green"

She's becoming quite the artist lately.  She did this drawing of Sparky from Frankenweenie all on her own.  

I've had big plans for Bentos this school year, but it turns out I'm not very good at them.  Ha!  So they'll just be happening for special occasions I guess.  I did do one for every day this last week(except Tuesday when they get Redneck's for lunch at school).  I looked online for some ideas, and just modified them to things I thought our kids would like better.  I still had the cape from when I made Paige a banana vampire her Kindergarten year.   Cason got him this time, and Paige had a pumpkin muffin vampire that day.  :)  I found, like decorating desserts, that this is not my "thing", but they turned out decent enough to make the kids happy I guess, because they came home and immediately told me they loved their lunches each day. 

 

 

Halloween was great this year.  I actually finished the costumes I was making BEFORE the party started this time, so I wasn't as stressed.  Ha.  Actually, the day before, I realized that the hooded footie pajamas I'd bought for Reed, and planned to sew the tail and wings to, were too small for him.  I ended up having to just add elastic to the wings and tail. Then I just cut the hood off of the too small pajamas, and added the horns/ears(whatever they are) and a tie for under his chin..  That way he could just wear another pair of black pajamas he (thankfully) has.  He looked pretty dang cute.  

So many people helped with food, I ended up only having to think about drinks and dessert.  So I made some spider-infested chocolate chip cookies, and ghost truffles.  Those ghost truffles would be perfect for one of those "Pinterest Fails" sites.  Haha!  Oh well, the cookies turned out okay.

Anyway, back to the kid's costumes...

Neely has a favorite Halloween book, called "5 Black Cats", though she thinks it's called "5 Black Cats on a Dark, Misty Night" and makes me say the whole thing whenever I mention it.  She wanted to be the cat that has a crescent moon charm hanging from it's collar.  It turned out Aivree wanted to be a black cat too, so since they're best buddies they wanted to match.  So we split up the work-I handled the tails, paws, and two moon charms.  Veronica took care of the ears and collars.  They looked adorable.  

 

Tyra was a black cat too, so we got a picture of the three of them.

While being pulled in the wagon, Neely declared she was the "queen of all cats".

 Paige and Cason wanted to be Aurora and Hiccup, and we bought their costumes. 

Faith was a ballerina..

Alex was a hippie.

Lily was the Queen of Hearts.  She was always on the move, so this is about the only one I got of her, and she didn't have her crown on anymore.

They all looked so cute.  Liam(Ironman), Colin(Thor), and Amelia(cute newborn in Halloween pajamas) joined us halfway through Trick or Treating, but my phone had died by then and I got no pictures with them.  :(  

I was a witch, so I had to get a picture with my black cat.

We all ate, and visited for a while, and waited for Trick or Treaters, but there weren't too many this year.  :(

 Grammy and Reed gave wagon rides to the kitties.

Reed didn't do any real Trick or Treating, but he had a nice little nap in the stroller while the other kids did.  It was a really fun night.  I even fell asleep listening to the wind blowing in a spooky way.  :)

Family Pictures, Finally

We haven't had family pictures done since Neely was Reed's age.  So it was time.  I'd been hoping to have Heidi do them, and knew she'd fill up fast in the fall, so I caught her early and reserved a day in mid-October.  We ended up getting really lucky and picked the perfect weekend.  She said she did someone's pictures in the same place the weekend before and the leaves hadn't changed color yet. 

The kids did really well, considering how awkward we all are in front of the camera.  Lots of stiff poses from Paige, embarrassed faces from Cason, and cheesy fake smiles from Neely.  Then there's me, just plain old awkward.  Haha.  Heidi still got some great pictures.

 The kids all wanted to be the one to hold Reed in the pictures of all four of them.  She ended up letting them each pose for one alone with Reed.  These ended up being my favorites, because they all smiled the most naturally in these, since they were so happy and proud of their baby.  The one of Neely especially makes me happy.  I don't have many pictures of her like this.  She is either totally candid in pictures I take, of her drawing or playing or whatever, or is giving me super fake smiles. 

 Since Cason and Reed together doubled as a boys shot, she got this of the girls.

 We got some of each of them alone too.