Sydney's 4th Birthday Party

This year we decided to let Sydney have her first friend party. She invited 8 of her little friends from preschool for a party. They made crowns and played dress up and needless to say there was A LOT of screeching and squealing and screaming. You gotta love it. Below is Sydney with her cake. She was so excited to be able to pick out a cake out of "the book" at Target and we were happy to let her. I have learned that after 5 years of baking cakes, I am not very good at decorating them so I was more than happy to let Target do the work.

Above are the girls posing, well kind of posing for a picture. It is hard to get 10 girls to look at you all at once! Below are the girls sitting down watching David bring the cake over to the table. I love how excited Sydney was in this picture.

Below are the girls scrapping for candy after the pinata broke. We only had one girl out of ten cry the whole afternoon, so we are thinking those are pretty good odds! All in all it was a fun party, definitely an experience every parent should go through.

HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY SYDNEY!

Sydney's birthday started 3 days early when the mail lady brought her first gift. The girls are always very excited to get mail especially if it's a big box. It was a gift from Grandma and Grandpa Nystrom. At first she wanted me to save the present until Tuesday, her actual birthday. So I put the box away and about an hour later she comes up to me and in this little tiny sweet little voice asks if she could maybe, just maybe open the present that the mail lady brought now instead of waiting. So what the heck...we let her open it and she was SO excited about her new Tinkerbell blanket.

Finally Tuesday came and she could barely sleep she was so excited. She woke up at 5:00 a.m. and said she couldn't sleep any longer. Luckily she fell back to sleep. The day started off with a traditional birthday breakfast of a toaster strudel with candles in it and Sydney kept asking me to put "fire" on top of the candles.

She brought cupcakes to preschool to share with her friends and when we got home from school that day she had a surprise waiting for her. It is kind of hard to see in the picture, but the neighbors wrote "Happy Birthday Sydney" in blue colored water on the snow. She was so amazed, she kept asking "How'd they do that?"

We let Sydney pick where she wanted to go out for dinner for her birthday dinner and her choice................McDonald's of course!

After dinner we came home and Sydney opened her presents from Mommy, Daddy and Lindsey. She among a few smaller things, got a new bike which she was very happy about.

Finally to end the day we had some birthday dessert. Sydney wanted chocolate oreos and ice cream with a candle with fire on the top, so that is what she got along with a left over cupcake from preschool. Happy 4th Birthday Sydney, we love you!!!

Our Little Spitfire

So the girls started a new basketball class this past Wednesday night. Sydney was SUPER excited because this was the first session she was FINALLY old enough to be able to play too. Granted her mommy had to beg them to let her in given the class is for four and five year-olds and the class started 6 days before she turned four, but it was so worth the begging. Both Lindsey and Sydney love the class. The pictures are not very good as the lighting was kind of weird, but you can see Sydney is the youngest and the shortest in the class, but that didn't stop her. The coach was teaching them to "seat belt their ball" meaning the kids all wrap their arms around their ball as seen in the picture above. This way the kids are listening to the coach and not bouncing their balls when he is trying to teach them something. At one point the coach said "seat belt your ball" and all the kids did it but the coach did not. He was holding his ball out while telling them something and all of a sudden we hear Sydney pipe up quite loudly "Hey, you need to seat belt your ball." The coach nodded his head and said "You're right" and proceeded to seat belt his ball. Leave it to Sydney, our little spitfire, who is not afraid to call it as it is.

Grip and Rip

Another fun Christmas has come and gone with only the pictures and memories left...and the gifts of course! We spent Christmas Eve with the Young side and were lucky enough to have Santa (Bob Theis) come again this year. The kids were so excited. Their eyes just lit up when Santa walked into the room and I don't think any of them said a word. They just sat and stared and smiled. It is amazing how they truly believe Santa exists. Even after Santa drove away in a car!

Here is Sydney absolutely thrilled with her new doll.

We spent Christmas Day with the Nystrom side and as always there was plenty of food and presents to go around.

First Snow Fall

Okay so the first snow fall was awhile ago but here are some pictures of the girls happily shoveling the quarter inch of snow. To most of us snow means shoveling and longer commutes, but you just can't help but like the snow a little when you see how much your kids enjoy it.

The day after Thanksgiving we put up the tree. The girls were very anxious to help and actually did a pretty good job. The tree looked pretty sad though this year but we thought it could make it one more year. Last weekend we noticed it was tipping quite a bit and decided it was time to get rid of it before it fell on someone. Luckily Target had just clearanced out their trees and we were able to get a great price on a pre-lit one with 750 lights. Score!

Here is Sydney posing with her cookie. The girls love to bake cut-out cookies but get impatient waiting for everything to be mixed etc, so this year we cheated and did the pre-cut ones. The girls were happy, it was a ton easier for me...life was good.

We have been very busy at our house preparing for Christmas, buying and wrapping gifts. In the midst of wrapping and preparing gifts for the girl's teachers, I asked Lindsey "Which is better, giving gifts or receiving gifts?" and said said "Giving gifts!" What a great answer....

Questions

So we all know that kids have LOTS of questions but as they get older the questions seem to get harder and harder. Last night Lindsey hit me with a couple hard ones. First she asked if we celebrate Hanukkah. That one wasn't so hard to answer. The second was rather intuitive of her. She said "Mom, when do numbers stop?" The third question was by far the best and this one I left up to David to answer. David was telling me that little baby Payne was circumsized yesterday. Lindsey overheard and with a puzzled look said "Mom, what does circumsized mean?" Ahh, the fun has just begun.

Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Pilgrims!! (not sure why Sydney made a boy hat at preschool instead of a girl one, but we'll just have to use our imaginations here....)



Just what Thanksgiving is all about....family love.
Leave it to Sydney to tackle her sister.
Have a great day everyone! And to all those crazy shoppers on Friday morning, is it really worth it??? Seriously, 4 a.m. people?? I love a good deal, but sleep is much more important!!!