Anna's Princess Party

We celebrated Anna's fourth birthday this weekend with lots of fun, girly things! For her party, she had three friends join her at the nail salon for manicures and pedicures. A couple of the other girls were a little unsure of things here, but Anna kept saying, "This is so fun! Thank you, Mommy!" Needless to say, she loved it! Each of the girls chose one color for their hands and a different one for their toes. Anna's colors are so bright they almost glow in the dark!

After all the princesses enjoyed a little pampering, we all walked across the parking lot to Bruster's for the rest of the party. The girls got to make a batch of ice cream in any color they wanted - they chose pink. Once it was ready, they had access to an unlimited sundae bar and got to load their pink ice cream full of goodies. Out of all the toppings available, the silly gummy worms were the biggest hit! Anna had a great time with her friends and loved her "girls only" birthday party (we talked that aspect up a lot because her brothers stayed home with Grandy and Pop).

After the party we all came home and had lunch and celebrated with more gifts and a Belle cake. I think it's safe to say that our little princess had a wonderful day!

Choosing her colors at the salon.

Finley decided upon two different shades of purple.

Olivia, Anna, and Finley holding onto their colors waiting for Claire.

Grammy helped Claire pick out which colors she wanted.

Every princess needs her own tiara, so we crowned each of the girls while they got pampered.

Princess Claire

Princess Anna with Grammy & Ninny

Olivia was a little unsure of the pampering and in the end decided that she wasn't quite ready for a "professional" pedicure. She declared that her toes were already purple (previously painted by her Mommy) so she didn't need anything else!

We ended up with matching Belle's at this princess party.

The end result

Walking to Bruster's for ice cream.

Learning all about the ice cream machine.

I can't remember why Anna is raising her hand, but I thought it was cute!

Birthday girl pushing the button to start the churning.

Checking out the rest of the ice cream while waiting on our pink ice cream to be ready.

Pink ice cream is ready!

Happy birthday, baby!

Olivia going after that gummy worm!

It was a fun, fun party for the girls! After lunch at home, Anna got to enjoy some family gifts and a Belle cake that she was thrilled about!

Showing off her pinkalicious gloves and purse - thank you, Ellie!

Before all the grandparents hit the road, we tried to get a picture with each of them. Here's everyone with Pop & Grammy.

With Ninny & Grandy. Can you tell it's game day?

After all the festivities were over, Anna had to change into a new shirt and skirt (that plays music) and do a little twirling around!

Eating dinner with one pink glove and a purse on her arm!

Not to be left out, princess Lucy.

Not too thrilled about the tiara at this point!

My Little Project

So I've had a project swimming around in my head for a while now, but I finally just decided to go for it. We've had a picture hanging over the couch ever since we moved in, and while it's a nice picture, it's not really super meaningful to us and it wasn't quite the right shape for that space. I've wanted to do a picture collage on that wall for a long time but I know frames can get expensive (even when buying on sale) and you know my kids aren't very cooperative when it comes to picture taking. After our little photo shoot last week I decided just to go full steam ahead with my project. We went to Hobby Lobby Friday morning and ended up not buying anything. I decided I could probably make it work with whatever I had on hand. I came home, took stock of what I already had, printed some pictures (with a coupon for 40 % off), and by Saturday afternoon I decided I was ready to start hanging.

I screwed the first screw into the wall and it went about halfway before getting stuck on something. I asked Marshall to help, and since he's stronger than me, he punched it in harder. And then we heard a pop, and could tell something was leaking. He unscrewed the screw and stream came blasting out of the hole in the wall along with a really loud spewing sound! To make a long (and frustrating) story short, we punctured the freon line to our upstairs unit. So we had to call the AC people (remember we just had our downstairs unit replaced this summer so we should have them on speed dial) and the on call guy came out to fix it. He had to cut a hole in our wall, patch the leak, and then recharge the system. All while we were trying to keep small children out of his way and watch football at the same time!

Once I start a project I like to see it finished quickly, so despite the fact that we have a hole in our wall and peeling paint from the freon leaking down the wall, I hung my pictures anyway! We will eventually fix the hole and repaint the whole room, but until then our wall will show some battle scars for a while. The ironic thing is that I was so proud of myself for making what we already had on hand work and not spending a lot of money. But in the end, my really inexpensive project ended up costing us over $500! Ahhhh! The joys of home ownership!

Here's a picture of the punctured line.

Our square hole in the wall. You can see the drip lines running all the way down the wall.

But here's what it looks like now!

A close up of our peeling paint. I'm just pretending that it adds character!

Pictures at the Gardens

I was feeling extra patient this afternoon, so I took the kids over to the Gardens to try and get a picture or two. They remembered the above pose from last time and actually requested to do it again! I posted it first so you can compare it to the blog header.

Eight Months

My baby is 8 months old today. Wow! I'm not even really sure what to write here other than she is just so much fun! She loves to smile and has the cutest little laugh, especially when you kiss her neck. It's really a toss up at this point as to who makes her smile the most - it's either her Daddy or the dog - she really seems to love them both! She has six teeth and one more is just about ready to break through. I've been a little slow to give her table food, I know she's ready, but I honestly just keep forgetting until the meal is already over (I know, poor pitiful fourth baby)! She does love puffs, though, as well as most baby food. She does not seem to like pears, but will eat pretty much anything else. She's not crawling yet, but will sometimes scoot just a little to get what she wants. Mostly she just rolls until she captures whatever it was she had her eye on. One other new thing is the tongue curl. When she smiles she usually flips her tongue so that it's vertical inside her mouth. I have no idea why but she does it all. the. time. If you look closely at the next picture you can see what I'm talking about.

Happy 8 months, Lucy Lu! We love you to pieces!

Game Time

Thanks so much to Pop and Grammy for coming down to keep the kids so that Marshall and I could take Jack to the Carolina game yesterday. We met up with Lottie and her mom, Charlotte and had so much fun tailgating with them. The weather was perfect (much colder than I was expecting), and while the game was far from perfect, we got the win and that's what matters in the end! I think Jack had a lot of fun just because he was with us and his siblings weren't!

Before we left for the game we tried to snap a few pics of us in our gamecock gear. Even Hank got in on this one.

Hanging out after our tailgate.

Charlotte and Lottie

The view from our seats.

Sisters

Go Gamecocks!

It's game day and we are super excited about cheering on our Gamecocks this evening! The kids wore some of their gamecock gear to school yesterday and I just had to take a few pictures.

"Raise your hand if you want the Gamecocks to win!"

Here's the crew again today.

GO GAMECOCKS!!!

Curious George

We had a visit from Curious George this week and boy was it exciting! George lives in Jack's classroom and comes home with each student at some point during the year. Jack was beyond giddy when it was his turn to bring George home with him. He took George everywhere (even to the lobby of the dance studio where we waited while Anna had class), and he slept with him that night. Apparently since George is so curious, he tends to get into trouble at each house he visits. That was the part that Jack talked on and on about and Marshall kept telling Jack that George could do anything as long as he didn't touch the playstation, which Jack thought was hilarious. The point of having George here was to read an alphabet story and then choose a letter and draw a picture of something starting with that letter. We already had a few letters ruled out from previous students' work, so Jack ended up picking the letter C and he wanted to draw a picture of crayons. I think he did a pretty good job!

Here's Curious George and the bag he came home in.

Here's a picture of Jack's crayons.
He started out with just one and then drew another so he had to add the "s" at the end. He insisted that he did not want to color them in. However, while waiting for the car line to move during drop off the next morning, he suddenly wanted to color them so the finished product looks a tad more colorful than this.

When Jack woke up the next morning Curious George wasn't in his bed anymore so after doing a little searching, Jack found him sitting in Marshall's recliner holding the playstation remote! :)