A Party for Our Princess

On Raegan's birthday she had school so she got to take treats ( cookie pops!) into school and had a little party then. Then this past weekend we had a party for a few of Raegan's friends. She wanted to have a Princess party this year and she got to invite 4 friends to her party so she chose 3 friends from her new school and one of her best friends from Virginia ( her other best friend from Virginia is a boy so she couldn't invite him!). Raegan was so excited to have her friends come to her new house to celebrate her birthday! When the girls arrived they decorated princess crowns with stickers and LOTS of glitter glue, then we made princess bead bracelets and that had lunch complete with princess crown sandwiches and pink princess punch with princess wand straws and princess popcorn ( yum). We of course finished it off with princess cake! There was no questioning what this party was about and we all had a lot of fun! Raegan enjoyed opening the presents and cards that her thoughtful and generous friends brought to her and the girls dressed up for a bit in princess dresses! The girls were all really well behaved and it was a nice party. Raegan said she had a special day! She is already talking about what next years theme is going to be!

Happy 4th Birthday to Raegan from Mommy!

My Precious Raegan Isabella,

I can't believe today you turned 4 years old! The time seems to just be flying by. It goes by too quickly for me sometimes, I wish I could stop time so I could savor each moment with you just a little longer. But at the same time it is amazing to watch you grow and change as each day, month and year passes. You are growing into such a beautiful little girl, both inside and out. I will never forget the day that I first held you 4 years ago. I fell in love with you the first moment I laid my eyes on you and my love for you has grown every day since!

This past year you finished preschool in Virginia and then we moved to Maryland. I know you miss your friends from our old house but you have done so great at making new friends here. You love school and you keep asking me when you get to go to Kindergarten ( and I am certainly not ready for that yet!). It is so fun to see you come out of the door each time I pick you up with a big smile on your face and hear what you did in school. You still really enjoy painting and you are also getting really good at drawing! You have also started ballet and you are doing really well and enjoying that too! You are a really good big sister to Karis and she absolutely adores you! I know it is still hard sometimes being the big sister but she loves you so much and it really makes me happy to see you loving her and playing nicely with her. I pray that you two will grow up to be not only sisters but also good friends to each other. I think that is going to happen one day!

It is so exciting to see God unfolding His perfect plan for your life. It is so neat to hear you learning how to pray and doing your memory verses. I love to hear you singing along to songs that come on the radio. I am so thankful that it was God's plan for me to be your mommy. Sometimes I still can't believe that God loves me enough that He would bless me with you but I am so thankful that He did. I pray that as you grow older that you will come to know the deep love that God has for you. I thank God every single day for you Raegan Isabella. I love you more than words could ever express and God loves you even more than that.

I hope you felt special today for your birthday because you are very special to me. Happy 4th Birthday to my sweet and precious Raegan Isabella!

Love Always,
Mommy

2 Inches of Snow!

We woke up yesteray morning and found snow on the ground! It was only about 2 inches of snow with freezing rain and ice mixed in but the girls were extremely excited to see "white stuff" when they looked out the window. They kept asking to go outside so later in the morning we dug out the snow clothes and Josh took the girls outside to play. We had two sleds so Josh pulled them both around and they had a blast. Raegan kept asking to build a snowman or make snowballs but it really wasn't that kind of snow. It was good snow for being pulled around on a sled though and we had our whole big backyard to play in this time! They had a blast and Josh got a good workout in the process! I am not really a big fan of snow myself but seeing how much the girls ( and Josh) liked the snow it makes me hope we get at least one more snow ( snow not blizzard!) before the winter ends but I am glad they could enjoy it yesterday!

Christmas of 2011

Karis worn out after opening presents!

What a sweet girl

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. Raegan was excited to wake up on Christmas morning because she knew that there would be presents waiting for her! Karis obviously didn't know what was coming but she enjoyed the presents when she saw them. This year was the year of the "Bargain". The winner this year was the Plasma car! I found it at Costco a while back for $19 and thought it would be fun for Raegan. At the last minute I decided to make it a present for them to share and I am glad I did because Karis hopped right on and started riding around on it. I guess I should have gotten two of them! I found a wooden play kitchen at a consignment sale which was also a hit. And I rounded out the presents with toys that I got online with Plum District coupons! We don't spend a lot on Christmas but we still have a lot of fun!

My parents came over in the morning for a little while to see the kids and exchange presents. It was so nice not having to leave our house in the morning! Have I mentioned lately how much I love being back in Baltimore!?

We went to my brothers house for a nice dinner and Christmas with our whole family. We missed seeing my brother Scott and his family but it was good seeing them at Thanksgiving and were glad that they got to enjoy their Christmas sans traveling too! We really enjoyed being able to see a lot of my family that we hadn't seen in a while.

On saturday we will go to Josh's parents/Grandmother's house to visit it with them for Christmas so we are looking forward to seeing them too.

It was a nice quiet Christmas with our little family!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Digging in to find out what's inside!

"Happy Birthday Baby Jesus!"

Eating a cupcake while dressed in a smock to keep clean for church!

Sitting in church with Mommy and Daddy!

This year Raegan has been very excited about Christmas. She is getting old enough now that she remembers that she gets presents. We tried to talk to her about the true meaning of Christmas last year but every year she "gets it" a little bit more. When Raegan was little we decided not to do Santa Clause with her. She kind of made our decision for us when she was terrified of Santa. I mean it wasn't even that we put her on Santa's lap at the mall and she freaked out ( like most kids do). She did not like to even go near a Santa when she saw them at our church's Trunk or Treat for Halloween at church. And last year when people asked her if Santa was coming to her house she would say "no" emphatically like she was scared about the idea of a strange man sneaking into her house even if he was going to bring her presents. She knows that she will get presents from mommy and daddy and that is fine with her. So again this year we had a great time celebrating Jesus' birthday. On Christmas Eve the last two years we have a birthday party for Jesus. This year we celebrated with red velvet cupcakes! The girls enjoyed singing Happy Birthday to Jesus and eating cupcakes before we headed to church for Christmas Eve. I asked Raegan what she thought Jesus would like for his birthday and she said " to be kind". I think He would be happy with that! The girls got to open one present ( new Christmas PJ's to put on after church) and then we headed to church. Raegan got to come into the service with us which was really special. And our church had a really awesome church service. The girls were excited to continue Jesus' birthday celebration on Christmas morning with more presents!

Holiday Food Fun

This year Raegan was really able to start enjoying some fun Christmas traditions. Last year she helped me make applesauce ornaments for the tree and some Christmas cookies but last year was also a bit more challenging with a 4 month old. This year I managed to plan a few more fun "food" activities for Raegan to do for the holidays. In the beginning of the month we had Raegan's cousin Tyler over to make gingerbread houses. He had been asking to make one and Raegan really wanted to have her cousin visit so we planned a day and Grandma brought Tyler over. I found a really cool gingerbread house mold that made making the pieces for the house much easier ( and super cute!). We bought lots of different candy for decorations. The kids loved decorating their houses and they both turned out really well! Karis enjoyed playing chase with her big cousin and she also enjoyed sneaking candy off of the table when the big kids weren't looking. Maybe next year I will be brave enough to let Karis decorate a house of her own.

We also made lots of yummy Christmas cookies and this year I let Raegan be in charge of all of the sprinkles for the Spritz cookies. She decided to use all of the colors so we had very colorful ( and yummy) cookies this year.

It's really fun to be able to include Raegan ( and soon Karis) in our fun holiday traditions. And we are glad to be close to family this year so we can include them in our fun too!

Family Tree

Last year I started what now I believe has become a tradition. I wanted to do a themed Christmas tree for our living room ( big) tree. Our random/nostalgic ornaments go on our smaller tree but I like for our bigger tree to be a certain theme. Last year I decided to make our tree into a scrapbook theme by printing out pictures of the year and putting all of our names on the tree. I liked how it turned out and so this year I decided to do the same thing with this years pictures and memories. I wrote on the back of each picture and have decided that every year I will put the "ornaments" in a box and the tree can kind of be a scrapbook as well that we can look back on. The day that I decorated the tree the girls were so excited after waking up from their nap to see their pictures all over the tree. Another nice thing about this theme is that I don't have to worry about ornaments being broken ( we put our smaller tree with all of the breakable ornmanets up high so Karis couldn't reach it!). I am looking forward to carrying on this tradition from year to year!