Sydney and Payne

Sydney was so proud to finally hold our godson, Payne the other weekend. Every time we see Payne I ask Sydney if she wants to hold him and every time, she says no, no, no. Finally she said yes and I think she was happy she did! Can you tell by the huge smile on her face!

On a completely different note, I have to tell this story. Anyone who knows Sydney knows that she has quite the spunky personality. Usually she is a happy go lucky child, but she also has her dramatic meltdowns over the silliest things like what color bowl she is going to eat out of. Anyways, the other day she said to me "Mom, I love you past the clouds, WAAAAAAAY up to Jesus and back" and her arms were spread apart as far as possible. It was about the sweetest thing ever. All it takes is one of those moments, and for all I care that girl can have any color bowl she wants!

HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY LINDSEY!

It is hard to believe my baby is 6 already!!! I told her "That is it, you cannot get any older!!" She just laughed and said in a matter of fact tone "Soon I will be 7 Mom."

Lindsey's birthday started out with the traditional toaster strudel with candles on it. I am not sure when that started but now for every birthday both girls insist on a toaster strudel with "fire" on it for their birthday breakfast. After school she wanted me to be sure to pick her up right at 4:30 so we would have time to pick up McDonald's for dinner, open her presents AND get to family fun night at school by 6. Family fun night was very crowded but Lindsey had a blast with all of her kindergarten friends. Here is her doing the locomotion on the dance floor. What happened to my once shy preschooler???

The next day we had a friend party for Lindsey at our house. We had 13 crazy girls running around, literally! Lindsey wanted to invite all of the girls from her kindergarten class, which made sense so no one felt left out, but who knew they would all be able to come! We made the most out of it and spent lots of time outside!

The girls decorated crowns, had an egg hunt, and just enjoyed being with each other. Lindsey really got lucky and has a good group of girls in her class! What a relief as a parent to see your child making and maintaining friendships, as friends are definately one of the most important things in life. Happy Birthday Lindsey!!!!

Our Disney Vacation

We just got back from an absolute awesome time at Disney. The best part had to be the weather. Just being able to be outside without the hats, mittens, snow pants, etc. was unbelievably nice especially after all that snow we got the day before we left. The first day we were there it was 85 which was quite a shock to these MN bodies, but it was great. The rest of the week was in the 70's but still felt amazing and was perfect for park hopping. Above is a picture of the condo we stayed at and you can see the beautiful blue van the girls picked out the the right. We let them pick the color and for some reason they wanted blue. The positive part of that was we could easily find our car in the parking lot at the parks. Below is a picture of the community pool at the condo unit. We also had a private splash pool behind our condo unit.

Our first stop on our first day in Florida was unfortunately the minute clinic. We suspected Lindsey had strep the night before we left and she did end up having it, BUT she was such a trooper. An hour after we were at the doctor, we were at Magic Kingdom taking pictures in front of the castle. Nothing was going to stop that girl from seeing the castle and the princesses.

We spent part of Saturday at Magic Kingdom and part of it swimming since it was so nice. Sunday we had breakfast with the princesses at the castle. The girls LOVED meeting Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine and Cinderella. Monday we went to Animal Kingdom and Tuesday we went to Epcot where we had dinner with the princesses. Needless to say at this point in the trip David was getting a little princessed out and had to go find himself a margarita in Mexico!

Wednesday we went to Hollywood Studios and Thursday we spent the morning at Magic Kingdom and the afternoon swimming. The girls absolutely LOVED swimming. They must have jumped in and out of the splash pool 50 times.

We took over 600 pictures, so if anyone wants to see more, let me know!! :) We would highly recommend this trip to anyone, especially if you have little princesses.

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.