VIP

Today, Nina was the VIP (Very Important Preschooler) in her class. She was sent home with a green dinosaur to cut out and some pieces of information to include about herself. Here is the poster she created (you can click on the picture to see it bigger). In her class today, she got to stand up in front of everyone and talk about herself. She was very excited to be the VIP!

(The poster came home with the "N" for Nina and "E" for Grace missing, but they were there when she took it in.) :)

Date Night

Tonight was a date night for Nina and I. We've been talking a lot lately about being grateful for the things we have, so I was trying to think of something to do tonight that would support those conversations. We have a local homeless shelter here in Loudoun County, and I was really hoping we could do something like help serve dinner tonight, but since that wasn't available, I decided we would take some donations over instead. It was good because we got to talk about what it means to be homeless and how we're fortunate to have more than we need which enables us to give some things away. Nina really seemed to understand, and she was a good helper loading our items from the car to the shelter.

After that, we went to the library to pick out some good books, then we met Mark and Lyla out for burgers at Fuddruckers. Within just the past month, Nina started eating red meat (well, she'll eat a burger now). It's taken years of trying, but she finally eats them now and realizes she likes them. So, we all enjoyed burgers, and the girls didn't have any problem polishing off the milkshake they shared after dinner!

(Sorry the picture is a little grainy - I took it with my phone.)

Family Weekend in Hartfield

We just came back from a great family weekend at Hartfield. To see the pictures and read the captions, click HERE.

Birthday Day

Lyla's morning started off really well. When the girls came down this morning, Lyla was very happy to find her long-awaited bike there. She wanted to get right on it and try it out. She rode through the house on her bike for the first half of the day. She just did continuous laps around the middle level and had a blast!
She even liked her new helmet.

They got their favorite breakfast of chocolate donuts with sprinkles. Definitely a good birthday treat!

Lyla really liked Larry the Cucumber that Nina bought for her.

She got some nice birthday calls from family...

...and she and Nina tried on their new Veggie Tales shirts.

Lyla got lots of birthday hugs and kisses from Nina.

For dinner, we went to Chick Fil-A (a Lyla favorite) then came home for some cake and ice cream. Since we'll have her real birthday cake on Saturday, I just made her something small for tonight.

After going strong all day, Lyla was exhausted tonight. The "paci fairy" came last night and took the pacifiers away (she has still been sleeping with them at night), so I wondered if tonight would be a sad night for her, but I think she was too tired to care if the pacis were there or not. There wasn't any crying about it. One funny thing happened this morning when she woke up and saw the note from the paci fairy and the $3 the paci fairy left. We read her the note that said the paci fairy was taking her pacis to give to little boys and girls who don't have pacis, and that the paci fairy left her with $3 instead. She said, "Awww. That's nice." Not ten minutes later, she was looking at the note again and said, "I don't want the $3. I want my pacis back." We got a laugh out of that one.

Happy Birthday, Lyla Rose!

Lyla turns three today! Mark asked me last night if it feels like a long time or a short time since she was born, and I felt it was kind of both. In some ways, it's hard to believe three years has past since she was born, and in other ways, it seems like she's just always been a part of the family. She is always ready with a good hug, she loves to be silly and make us laugh, and she loves her family. We're actually doing her little family party on Saturday so we can celebrate with the Williams family at Hartfield, so today we'll just do some fun little things to make her day special.

This is a collage of some of our favorite Lyla pictures in year two. You can click on the collage to see it bigger.

Birthday Dinner

Yesterday evening we headed over to my parents' house for a little birthday dinner. There are four March birthdays in ten days in our family, so my mom made a great dinner, and we got to do a little pre-birthday celebrating.

As most of you know, Lyla and Bo were born on the same day. That was the best smile I could get out of her, but she was happy to give Uncle Bo a big hug.

We even had Mother Mouse serenade us with her guitar skills...that's all I'll say about that! :)

Mini Road Trip

On Friday, Mary and I did a mini road trip to NJ to visit P and Kristin. Even though we were only there Friday through Saturday afternoon, we had such a great time. We made the most of our girl time by talking and laughing late into the night on Friday, having fun food and wine, more talking and a long walk Saturday morning, then more good food for lunch Saturday with more talking and laughing. There seems to be a theme here... Anyway, we had such a fun little visit as always and enjoyed seeing little Abby too!!

To celebrate our birthday (Kristin, Mary, and I all have March birthdays), P got us a little cake and actually sang Happy Birthday to us!