Look who's three!

This little girl is getting big quickly. On the 5th, we celebrated Trinity's 3rd birthday. This year, we are embracing the small, family party for birthdays. We had a blast celebrating her life. On the morning of her birthday, while big sister was at local school, Trinity got to stay in her pajamas and lick the icing off the spoon. BEFORE lunch. I mean, get crazy. You only turn 3 once. We had a fun morning playing together.

All day, Trinity put on her shy face when we sang to her. Usually she also buried her head in a pillow out of embarrassment, but here she faced the music.

Big sister kept a countdown going for Trinity pre-birthday so she could stay up-to-date.

This girl takes her cake seriously. Very seriously.

Afterwards, we went outside and played with bubbles. Can you tell she got some princess-bling for her birthday?

You make me smile, baby girl.

At three years old, Trinity:

• loves to laugh and to make us laugh
• has some crazy good dance moves complete with a new break-dance routine she just invented
• loves to ride her peanut car crazy fast down the hill
• will climb up behind you while you're sitting down and try to wrestle you to the floor by putting her arms around your neck
• plays the ornery little sister role very well
• begins every prayer with, "Dear God, you're so big, thank you for our friends..."
• knows all her alphabet letters
• recently was in childcare for a week where her teachers told us Trinity was a good friend and played the role of "little mama" to the other kids
• brings our family so much joy

Happy birthday, baby girl. We love you and praise the Lord for your life.

while Daddy was away...

When we got back from vacation, Kevin had one whole day to unpack, regroup and repack before he headed out for a long business trip. And since Grace's local school hadn't started back from the holiday break, we had lots of togetherness/girl-time. For me, this meant I needed a P-L-A-N to avoid losing my mind. Fortunately, we had a few reasons to celebrate. First we had a little Valentine's celebration. Any excuse for chocolate cake, right? I love having little parties like this with my girls. It doesn't take much to get them excited. We had a few friends over to eat cake. Waiting for them to arrive proved to be torture for my girls. They literally stared at the cake and willed for 12:30 to come. Two days later was Grace's 100th day of home school. I know schools in the US often have 100 day parties, and thanks to google I copied/looked up ideas to celebrate. We started out the day making 100 day hats and doing some dancing in our pajamas. Because if there is one thing my girls love to do, it's dance. And use the tv as a mirror to watch themselves dance.

Later, during school we did 100 jumping jacks, read a 100th day of school poem, guessed how far we could walk in 100 steps and then walked them, and counted out 100 kernels of popcorn for a snack.

100 kernels, popped

Grace also answered some questions for me in a short interview. Here goes:

1. If I had 100 dollars, I would..."Save the money for buying stuff, not just spend it all in one place."
2. If I had 100 pencils, I would..."not use them all in one day. I would keep sharpening them if they ran out."
3. If I had 100 mosquito bites, I would..."itch a lot because I'm allergic to mosquitoes."
4. If I had 100 friends, I would..."try to love them all."
5. If I had 100 legs, I would..."walk on each of them and it would be kind of weird."
6. If I had 100 eyes, I would..."see all over the place!"
7. If I was 100 years old, I would..."maybe die."
8. If I had 100 bikes, I would..."need to think hard about which one to ride."

And since we were on a roll, I switched from the 100 theme and asked Grace about some of her favorites:

1. Grace, what's your favorite food? "pizza"
2. Favorite thing to do with Daddy? "wrestle"
3. Favorite thing to do with Mommy? "snuggle and read books"
4. Favorite thing to do with sister? "Play with her and with our baby dolls; we like to play with Haley and Bailey."
5. Favorite thing to do as a family? "Go to Old Town and fun restaurants"
6. What do you want to be when you grow up? "A farmer-well-I might want to change my mind but today I want to be a farmer."
7. Why? "Because I think it would be cool to grow things."

Lots of books, trips to the playground, craft projects, and a movie night later, Daddy came home. And we all said "HALLELUJAH!"