on saturday we had a fun little princess party for Kyla. we were going to have her party in september but we had to postpone it because of the hurricane.
the girls came dressed as princesses. they looked so beautiful! for one of the activities they decorated foam princess crowns.
we played lots of fun princess games. ring pops were the prize. (that's what kyla has in her mouth)
she loved her princess party!
even though it doesn't feel much like fall around here, i am so ready for it. i can't wait for the cooler weather of fall. i picked up some little pumpkins at target to decorate with. i love pumpkins! lately i have been craving anything pumpkin: pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake, pumpkin muffins... so today i made some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. yum. kyla was my little kitchen helper. here she is waiting for the muffins to finish baking
a peek of the chocolate chips inside
the best thing about the hurricane aftermath was that we had lots of free time to potty train avery. i was trying to potty train her for months but wasn't very consistent. the day before the storm came, i only had 4 diapers left. i decided not to buy anymore so that i would be forced to get serious about it. within 3 days she was completely potty trained and would come and tell us when she needed to go. we are so proud of her! she even stays dry at night. so now she wears her big girl panties all the time.i am sooo happy that i don't have to buy diapers anymore! (and yes, she drew all over her arms with markers)
our cute little munchkin turned 5 during all the hurricane mess. this is the second time in three years that her birthday has been interrupted by a hurricane. we had a fun little family party at grammy and grandpa's house. she got so many nice gifts from all the family. we are still planning on having her "princess party" for her friends to come to. she reminds me about it every day :) we are so thankful for sweet little kyla. she is growing up so fast and i just wish we could keep her little forever.
things are finally starting to get back to normal now that we have our electricity back. i restocked the fridge and freezer and did some cleaning around the house. now i finally have a few minutes to blog about ike. what a storm! dan and i stayed up all night on the night that it made landfall. we watched our poor little pine trees being whipped around by the tremendous wind. and we could hear shingles from our roof and our neighbors roofs being torn off and thrown against the house. then in the early morning hours we could hear drip, drip, drip coming from our ceiling in the master bedroom. luckily it was just a small leak in the roof and we didn't have the ceiling collapse on us!
the next day my dad came over to put a "louisiana blue patch" on our roof. we are so grateful for the help, with dan not being able to do much with his broken foot.
most of our fence was either leaning at an angle or completely knocked over.
after about the second day with no power, we headed over to my parents home. they bought a generator before the hurricane. so that meant they had refrigeration and cold water and ice!!! what a huge difference that made. they were even able to plug in a good number of fans and the tv with the generator. we are so thankful for my family! the girls had a blast and spent most of the week hanging out with aunt jessica. she did fun little crafts with them everyday and painted their fingernails and toe nails. here's one of their cute little crafts they made.
i really wish i got a picture of mom (grammy) reading Little House on the Prarie to the girls each night by lantern. it was so cute. i have to admit i kind of miss the meals by lantern, the hum of all the generators and the cool breeze that blew through the windows each night. but boy am i grateful to have electricity back!
after 10 long days, we finally got our electricity restored! we are safe after the hurricane and only sustained minimal damage to our house. i will be posting lots more about our hurricane ike adventures within the next few days.
i had an ultrasound today. everything looks really good.
and look what we found out...
it's a BOY!!!!! we had no idea we would be finding out the sex today. we thought it was still too early, but that's the first thing the technician saw while doing the ultrasound. dan is sooo happy to finally have his boy, and the girls are just thrilled to be having a baby brother!! we told the technician that we had 3 girls and she wrote "finally broke the mold" on the photo :)
this past week dan's sister grace and her husband travis and baby calvin visited us. we had a great time hanging out and playing. we went to moody gardens-rainforest pyramid, rainforest cafe, took the kids to the splash park and did a little shopping. we love ya'll! thanks so much for coming! here's a few pics from moody gardens. it was elayna's first day of school so she didn't get to come :(
dan got to ride around like an old man in a wheel chair because of his broken foot.
the kids loved watching these huge fish from the amazon!
elayna was baptized on her birthday august 23rd. what a special day! the baptism was beautiful. we are so thankful for all the family that came and for those who participated in the program. afterwards we had a little family birthday party for elayna. she is such a sweet girl and we are so proud of her and her decision to be baptized. we love you!
we finally did it! we desperately needed something bigger, especially with baby #4 on the way. we are absolutely loving our new odyssey. it is so much fun and has so much room! i went to my first doctor's appointment today and i am about 12 weeks along and due on the 5th of March. but my doctor said she will for sure induce me early so that i won't risk having another 11 pound baby!
the color is called nimbus grey metallic- i know it looks black in this photo
she is so happy to have her own seat and not be smashed up against 2 baby carseats any more.
i love everything about the oympics- the stories behind the athletes, the national anthems, the opening ceremony. we have been glued to the tv every night. our favorite event so far was the mens swimming 4x100. wow! that was so good. and we loved watching men's gymnastics last night. in other news, dan broke his foot playing soccer on saturday. so he has been hobbling around on cruthces with a big cast on his foot. he'll be like this for about 8 weeks! other than that, we are super busy getting ready for elayna's baptism and birthday. i asked her to make a gift list and here's what she put together. haha. i want $100,000 for my birthday too!
that last item says mummy books- she loves stuff like that.
...reading this. i had a really hard time putting it down and finished in two days. it was pretty good, but i was a little disappointed in a few things. but i don't want to give anything away to those of you who haven't read it.
we spent the weekend with my sister emily and her family. the girls had so much fun playing with their cousins. we had a fun pool party complete with popsicles and watermelon. then we took the kids to chuck e. cheese and they had a blast. the four oldest cousins stayed up waaay too late talking and laughing in the bunk beds. we watched a cute little movie called penelope after the kids were in bed. emily made her delicious seven layer dip and we had root beer floats and lots of candy to go with the movie. yum! thanks for the fun weekend emily and brian. we should do it more often.
cute little aiden. he didn't get to swim much because of the stitches in his head
avery and ava. avery loved the froggy float and stayed in it almost the whole time.
