3 years old

you just don't realize how much your child has changed right before your eyes until you compare birthday pictures like this... i was telling brian tonite that i think the biggest change is from 2 years old to 3. after 3, they start looking older and losing that sweet baby fat, but from 2 to 3, amelia went from a baby to a little girl. (oh, i mean a big girl.. excuse me, amelia.) i also forgot about how much i loved that igloo cake.

amelia's actual birthday was sunday, january 22... but we just pretended like saturday was her birthday. her party was that morning at 10:00, so we woke her up around 8:00 by singing happy birthday. she must have been deeeeep in sleep (which is rare for her at 8 am)....
 
amelia just took a second to figure out what was going on, and she was all for the singing and the celebrating.
 
next, we headed to the dining room for her to open a few presents from us. so glad i caught this moment... she is so proud that she can show "3" with her fingers. :) she's been practicing for a while!
 
amelia is crazy about play-doh, and i was so excited to find this adorable "scoops n treats" set for her.

most of the play-doh contraptions for making ice cream, cake, etc. got horrible reviews in regard to little ones being able to operate them without help from an adult.... so those were out. then i disovered this "only at wal-mart" set on one of my two yearly trips to wal-mart... the kids can make ice cream and treats, but there is no machine or complicated contraption. there are cute little cones, a waffle/waffle cone maker (my favorite), and even mint chocolate chip play-doh (that will be gray or black in no time at our house). anyway, i give this little set 5 stars! and so do my kids. they play for a long, long time with this one. (not sure if you can still find it at wal-mart, but it was WAY overpriced when i saw it on amazon recently. i paid less than $12 for it.)

amelia was so excited to open up this little purse (actually a lipstick holder, i think??). caroline has one like it, and ohhh, now amelia has one. :) she has carried this little thing everywhere.

and speaking of what caroline has...

SKATES! amelia now has skates! she has loved playing around in ethan and caroline's skates lately, and i knew this would be the perfect gift for her. these are sweet little skates where you can lock the front wheels at first. so she can clompity-clomp-clomp all over the place and feel like she's skating. on our carpet inside, she can actually skate with the wheels all rolling... so i think she'll be keeping up with her sister in no time.

after presents, we sang to her one more time... you can't sing happy birthday too many times. :)


her little party on saturday was so much fun... those pictures are coming up very soon.

then on sunday morning, her actual birthday, she got to go sunday school for the first time! yay!!! she has been waiting to join her friends. here she is with new and old friends. (her teacher was sad to be out of town and miss her first time in class, but amelia was ok since aunt kristie was substituting!)

i love these two amelia lynns!

it seems like just yesterday these girls were giggly babies...

amelia's party is up next!

rewind to christmas

december began with a horrible cold for me, which set our christmas festivities back a few days. by the time i was out of bed and functioning, it was already a week into advent, and i felt christmas quickly slipping away! i was so looking forward to the "firsts" of celebrating christmas in our new house-- we didn't get to do everything i wanted, and some things that we started didn't really get finished... but it was a great month, and i pray that the significance of christmas and the birth of our Savior was further impressed upon the hearts of my children. oh yeah, and my computer died right after i got over my cold. hence the incredible lack of blogging during december... so here's a little christmas catch-up!

looking back at these pictures, it seems like the kids wore their christmas pajamas for the entire month of december! well.... we do homeschool, so there are lots of days that we stay in our pjs! ha! but good grief, they did get dressed most days. and those pajamas did get washed! :) picking out our tree was my first post-cold outing. i was so happy to be feeling like a normal person! the kids' ornaments this year were their initials that look like peppermints. here is sweet caroline taking in the moment when she put her ornament on the tree.
 
one of the new traditions that i was very excited about starting was truth in the tinsel, which is a little craft each day with a Bible reading centered on a different part of the nativity story. we began this by playing catch-up, which never bodes well. we didn't do this every day in december, but the kids loved the crafts every day that we did them. when we finished, we hung the ornaments in our school room window. here are the kids (on an actual cold day! look at the windows!) working on mary and elizabeth and their pregnant bellies. :)
 
we also continued our favorite jesse tree tradition, but i failed to get a single picture of the kids hanging ornaments on our jesse tree. :(

 one day i went into ethan's room, and i saw this set up in the middle of his floor. it made me smile.
 
he didn't move it for days. and then i'm pretty sure a sister knocked it over.

another christmas tradition at our house is getting out the train. daddy has as much fun with this as the kids do. :)


we had fun making christmas cookies with my mom again this year!

the kids loved sneaking cookie dough and icing the most, though....
 
caroline was so excited about having a matching christmas dress with her doll, eva... and when we got to church one sunday, karina had her doll in matching clothes too! i love watching these girls grow up together.
 
we celebrated christmas with my dad and grandma a little early. ethan was just a wee bit thrilled about opening these skates....
 
then we headed to celebrate with brian's aunts, uncles, and granddaddy on christmas eve eve. i love this picture of brian, jeff, and all the kids.
 
this was my favorite present to give this year. :)
 
before we knew it, christmas morning was here! we'd stayed up very very late getting the house ready for christmas dinner, but that did not stop our children from rising at the crack of dawn on christmas morning! here are some christmas hugs for a very tired daddy.
 
man, these kiddos are growing up quickly... love this yearly stocking picture!
 
stars for our ceiling!!! (and ummmm, these still aren't on their ceiling. woops!)

the girls were the joyful recipients of my goodwill jackpot finds. these have been perfect for the 1,278 littlest pet shop figures they now own.

ethan has caught the reading bug, and he was thrilled to get some easy readers for christmas. he is currently on book #4 of these treasure island easy reader classics, and the cliffhangers at the end of the books just make him want more.... i love it.

and then the big surprise...

this one of amelia may be my favorite from this christmas...

scoooooooters! ohhhh, they've been wanting scooters since we moved and they have been the only scooter-less kids on the block.
 
these were also goodwill finds, thanks to aunt kristie and her mama! i was so excited that our big christmas gifts were far from budget-busters! ('cause let's be honest... those new scooters end up looking used in a matter of weeks.)
 
and of course we could not skip singing happy birthday to Jesus!

christmas on a sunday made for a busy day, but oh what a blessing to gather with our brothers and sisters and celebrate the birth of Jesus! here are nana and pappy with all their grands after church. (wardrobes courtesy of nana.)

after church, we all gathered at our house for presents and dinner. cousin love :)

and here they go digging in to the stockings

ethan has been eyeing this star wars lego watch since our trip to legoland!

the best present of the day, in my opinion...

nana scores again with her gift for the guys... there were nerf bullets flying all over my house for the next hour.
 
nana and pappy's big gift for caroline and karina was an awesome melissa and doug easel! i highly recommend it.
 
i didn't get a chance to take very many pictures of our christmas dinner set-up.... this is totally understandable considering that we were still opening presents when we'd planned to be eatin dinner. and we hadn't really started dinner yet. no big deal except that we had some friends joining us for dinner. most of them knew we'd be running late because, well, they know brian's family, but i still hated to be running so late. in the end, we enjoyed a delicious dinner and precious fellowship with family and friends. we loved hosting christmas at our house this year! here's a quick shot i took of the table before we filled it with food.
 
the kids found some cans of fake snow in their stockings from nana, so the girls gave it a try after dinner. i think they had fun with it, but it was not the easiest to clean up.

so christmas is over... way over. it's always such a precious time of the year...

and then it's always so nice to get things back to normal! here we go, 2012!

amelia is 3!

my baby girl is three years old today!
 
we celebrated her birthday yesterday... more on that soon... and today, she got to go to her big girl sunday school class! she has been waiting months and months to join her friends in there!

i know it's been a quiet month here at tenlittletoes, but it has definitely not been quiet around our house!! christmas pictures are around the corner, and then i can't wait to share about amelia's little birthday party. it was a fun one. :)

we love our 3-year old so very much. amelia is still singing christmas carols at the top of her lungs these days. :) she is pretty much potty-trained, and she can't wait to be a big sister in a few months!

happy birthday, amelia lynn!