Happy 4th Birthday Annelise!

The day she's been waiting for and talked about for at least six months finally arrived. Today we celebrated Annelise's 4th birthday. I decided to go ahead and plan a birthday party for her this year since she basically talked about it every day for as long as I can remember. We had it on Saturday and celebrated with her friend who also turned four a few days earlier. The party had a "fish" theme and most of it we held outside. Here is a picture of my "pin the fin on the fish" game. I took this picture before Nathan destroyed it a few hours later.
I have pretty much had my fill of cupcakes and birthday celebration for awhile, but not Annelise. She's always thinking about birthdays and ages. Tonight in her prayers she prayed that she would turn 5 soon and start elementary school. Happy Birthday Annelise-we love you and are happy to have such a fun girl in our family.

First Smile

I love it when my babies first learn to smile. I love it even more when I manage to capture one of these early smiles on camera. Today I finally did it. Annelise was talking to Lily while I prepared dinner and got her to smile like this.

Lily's Blessing Day

Today Brian blessed Lily at church. It was a beautiful blessing and a really nice Sunday. I put in a picture of Lily with each of her parents on this special day because we both love her so much.

Happy 4th of July!

We had a fun holiday this year and worked on teaching Annelise that Texas and all the other states where family members live are part of the United States of America. We also enjoyed another year of flag cake. Yummy!

Big Boy Bed

I'm getting to the point where I'd really like to have the crib ready to go for Lily soon, so yesterday we bought Nathan a mattress. We tried to make it exciting for him and kept telling him that he has a big boy bed now. He loved the idea during the day, but decided he liked the crib better last night. As I write this though, he is in his room on the mattress crying himself to sleep. It sounds mean, but sometimes he just cries before he falls asleep so this is not unusual. I am mostly surprised that he hasn't tried to leave the room because he could open the door if he wanted to. I really hope this works out.