Four years later, little Lucy isn't so little anymore!

Happy birthday to our sweet, stubborn, sassy, star Lucy!  Her one birthday wish was to go to Utah to celebrate with family.  Because, as she said, "I never get to have my birthday in Utah!  Emma always gets to, Cal always gets to, Covey always gets to.  I never have got to!"  So, we made her wish come true and went to celebrate with the grandparents, {most of the} aunts and uncles and cousins.

Lucy requested a pink pony birthday, so we went with that, and added some teal, white and silver for variety as well with decorations and things.

I made the invites, but Lucy helped cut them out.  It was super fun that she was so into helping.  And Emma came up with some of the game ideas and wrote out a whole agenda for the party.  :)

We celebrated on Valentine's Day, since thta was the only night that worked for everyone.  First, we had dinner.  Lucy wanted pink sandwiches, so wee ate pink cream cheese and strawberry jam sandwiches (the bread was even pink, I just added pink food coloring to the water/yeast mixture), pizza, apples, carrots, and rice krispy treats (haystacks).

Next, the kids made stick horses. I just made up a pattern, had them all cut out and sewn before, then they stuffed and decorated them.  It was so fun to see what the little guys came up with. They were all so unique and individual.  They loved riding them around and racing on them.  That activity was a hit!

Then, we played an apples on a string game, since ponies love to eat apples.  They all giggled and thought that was a fun game.  Some of the kids did pretty well, some just held it with their hands and ate it.  But they all enjoyed it.

We also played Pin the Tail on the Pony.  Of course, standard party game, right?  The boys were all running around by this point and done, but the girls enjoyed it.

Next, it was cake and ice-cream time!  Lucy was so nice to reminded everyone not to touch the cake or blow out her candles or they wouldn't get any (I guess she learned her lesson last year!  Haha!).  We turned off the lights, sang to her, and she blew each individual candle out separately.  She enjoyed her purple ice-cream cone and her pink cake.  It was a strawberry cake with a cream cheese strawberry mousse filling.

We did presents last.  She loved everything she got, everyone nailed it!  She got lots of clothes, stuffed animals, Doc McStuffins, Minnie Mouse, Frozen, and Sophia the First stuff.  The only thing she didn't get that she wanted was a trophy (?).  :)  She was pretty excited, of course, but actually remembered to say thank you a few times without us reminding her.  She is pretty lucky to have some awesome family who love her so much!

On the 19th, Lucy's real birthday, we woke up, everyone wished her a happy birthday, had chocolate waffles, which is what she wanted.  I kept calling her the "birthday girl" and she said "Mom, you don't always have to say that".  She got ready and we took her to preschool, where she enjoyed her usual activities and that they sang "happy birthday" to her.  She really wanted to do a tea party, so we invited a few friends over (most who were going to come were sick that day), and we had a tea party.  Cheese, crackers, meat rolls, veggies and dip, flower shaped watermelons and grapes with purple kool aid is what we had.  Sofi, Danica and Lucy were so cute.  We talked about manners a little bit.  Then I turned it over to them.  It was adorable to listen to their little conversations.  And they did use good manners.  They were all so dainty.  "This is so delicious", "Will you please pass the crackers?"  Then we made some flower bracelets and headbands/necklaces.  The girls liked that and did pretty well, though I pitched in quite a bit.  Then they played a little sugar cube relay game.  After that, they played with little princesses.  Then they decorated and ate cupcakes.

THe girls kept doing a little cheer where they'd put their hands with bracelets on and say "All for one!" and then throw their hands up in the air.  Cutest!

Cal and Emma came home and we played together for a while, and looked at Lucy's scrapbook.  Then, we went to "Old Mac Donalds" for dinner and to play.  After we came home, we watched a My Little Pony episode, opened up presents, and had some of the cupcakes from earlier and ice-cream and sang to her.  She got a doll bunk bed for her main present, which she wanted a doll bed, but was excited to get a bunk bed like she has.  It's been sweet watching her tuck in her dolls and stuffed animals each night.

Happy birthday, sweetheart!  Oh, how we love you.  It's hard to believe it's been four years!  Here's a look back at these four years.

***Lucy at 4***

Favorite color: Pink and purple

Favorite food: Pizza and anything sweet

Favorite book: "Pinkiliscious", "Ellie's Tea Party", "Minifred", any Mickey Mouse book

Favorite song: "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam"

Favorite show: My Little Pony, Paw Patrol, Minnie Mouse, Sophia the First

Favorite thing to wear: Dresses!  She wants to wear a dress or skirt every day.

Best friends: Her siblings, Danica, Annabeth, Sofi, Stella 

Favorite past time: Play pretend - dressing up or playing with almost anything around the house, she can use her imagination and have fun with it all.
Lucy's got a fun-loving personality, she always makes us smile and laugh and says some funny things.  She is nice most of the time, but can be very stubborn when she makes up her mind.
Enjoys being a Sunbeam at church, but misses Nursery.
Puts up a fight almost every morning about going to preschool, but once she's there, loves it!
Very dramatic.  Cal and Emma call her the Drama Queen.  The way she describes things, or the words she uses, it's hilarious!
When she gets tired, she just bawls.  There's nothing we can do with her, and we can't reason with her.  We just have to throw in her in her bed and let her fall asleep.  Every few days she'll get tired and want to take a nap, but normally she sleeps from 8:30 p,m. until 7 a.m.

Hap-"bee" Valentine's Day!

I love Valentine's Day, it's so sweet!  Even if there's no one "special" in your life, we all have others that need our love.  I love what Mother Teresa (one of my heroes) said:  "Spread love everywhere you go.  Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier."  Though we should try to express our love to others daily, Valentine's is a fun day to make it really special.

The kids and I started out early making Valentine's to send to our loved ones.  Here's what we came up with.  Since I'm so into themes, we had our cards match our theme this year, which was "Bee Mine, Valentine!"

I've been loving my burlap wreath I've been decorating differently each month.  Here's what I came up with this month.  Cute, no?  Won't lie, I'm kind of proud of this one.  And almost more fun than real flowers is decorating our planter box when fresh flowers aren't in season.  The kids had fun helping with this one.  We also made Kiss and Hug peanut butter cookies to give out to others who are having a rough time recently.

We did tons of baking, as it was the Friends of Scouting bake sale here the day before our V-day celebrations, and Dave is in charge of that.  So we made our famous peanut butter bars.  Lucy and Cov enjoyed helping me bake, eat and clean up.  They sold for $25-30 a plate!  Yay!  

Since Valentine's Day was over the weekend and we would be visiting family out of town, we celebrated Valentine's Day a couple of days early.   We started the Thursday off sending the kids off to school with a special heart lunch.  Then we went to Lucy's preschool for her party.  All of the moms stayed, and the kids loved switching stations to play games, exchanging valentines, and eating treats.  I forgot my camera though, doh!  Cov enjoyed getting to stay too, instead of just dropping her off.  This age group is so fun; and Lucy was so selective in which valentine she picked for each of her little friends, it was cute.  Then we went home and ate lunch and finished decorating cupcakes for Cal's class party.  He requested cupid cupcakes (?) so thanks to Google search, I was able to find these bad boys, and they were easy and adorable.  So we picked up a friend whose son is in Cal's class who doesn't drive yet (they recently moved from India) and went to the kindergarten class party together.  It was sweet!  Cal kept getting teased by his sisters that Ashlyn, a little girl in his class, was his valentine.  He would get so defensive, and blush or turn his face so we couldn't see his smile.  Anyways, the kids loved the goodies and the Bingo game they played.  Emma also had a great class party she said.  I wasn't able to go to hers, but know she enjoyed it.  The kids and I read a lot of V-Day books, their favorite this year was "Rotten Ralph's Rotten Valentine".  My sibs and I used to love those books growing up, my mom hated them.  My kids have just discovered them and want to read them over and over!

That afternoon, we got ready for our family Valentine Date.  That's a tradition we started when Emma was probably two.  It's always something for us to look forward to!  As I mentioned, this year we had a bee/beehive/honey theme.

Emma helped a little with the decorating and getting everything ready for the party.  And Lucy helped make the applesauce and biscuits.  First, we ate dinner.  We had honey chicken, honey mustard roasted potatoes, heart biscuits with honey butter, honeyed pink applesauce and spinach salad. The chicken and potatoes were new recipes, and luckily, they were a hit! During dinner, we had a paper and we went around and had to write one reason we thought the person to our right was sweet.  Then we shared what we wrote.  The kids were very thoughtful in their responses.  It was adorable.

Then we played games.  First was buzzing bee balloon races.  We blew up our balloons, lined up and saw how far they went.  We did lots of rounds, no one wanted to stop that game.  Everyone was laughing so hard.  Daddy gets so into it every time, too!  Covey thought it was great and wanted to join in also,"ba-oon!" he kept saying.  Next, we did pin the bee on the hive.  The kids all did well, since they could feel the outline of the beehive, oops!  Then we did a pollination seek and find game.  One person was the bee and they hid somewhere with a fake bouquet of flowers.  Then when someone found them, they had to quietly hide with them until everyone found that "bee".  The last thing we did was making these little door hanger crafts.  It was good times!

Finally, we gave each other our gifts.  We gave the kids all little boxes of chocolates and some socks.  Cov enjoyed eating his chocolate, Cal was excited to see the Ninja Turtles chocolates he wanted, Lucy was so happy and hugged her socks, and Emma quickly said "thank you!" and gave us hugs.  For Dave, I gave him a card that said "I Love You With All 5 Senses" and something for each sense - a Google Play gift card for sound, Reeses hearts and beef jerky for taste, etc.  He liked it.  He gave me a cute card and some XO chocolates!  I always tell him I just want a thoughtful card from him, it's true.  He also brought the girls and I home flowers that week.  He always has something fun up his sleeve!

That week was also crazy with getting ready for Valentine's Day with my merchandising job, which is the largest holiday.  But I survived and it was a successful year, according to my boss.  It's been really fun, I've enjoyed it!

On Saturday, we were at Grandma and Grandpa Ryerse's house, which was the real Valentine's Day, we had a cousins sleepover the night before.  We woke up and the girls helped me make pink heart pancakes.  Then we played a ton, played "tip toe tag" (one I made up quick since they were all running and being noisy and giving everyone a headache), and made Valentines.  Later that afternoon, we took them to a retirement center in town.  The kids loved the fish there.  Cal, Brody and Lucy had no problem going up and giving out valentines and sharing hugs with others.  Brody was quick to tell someone when they had something in their nose...haha!  And Lucy loved telling them all about her.  The girls were a little less out-going and quite shy, but still gave them out and said "Happy Valentine's Day".  It was nice to be able to do this and I think it helped our kids think about others besides themselves.  The residents were so thankful and loved visiting with the kids and their cute valentines they made.  The ones the girls did were hilarious.  "You make my heart on fire!" and "You + Me = Love forever".

 Early afternoon, we went to the school park to play and to try to shoot off our rocket we got for Christmas.  Dave and the kids put it together a few weeks ago.  But it didn't work, no!  So we need to go get a different part.  We still had fun playing though.  The weather was perfect, mid to upper-50's!  Flowers and trees were even budding and the grass was turning green.  Thank you February, for this nice spring break!  I know a giant snow storm will hit us back to reality like a ton of bricks soon though, so I'm not getting too used to it.  We are enjoying it while we can though.

Then we met our good friends, the Millers, at Hill Air Force Base to see the planes and each other.  They had some fun events going on for Valentine's day.  It was a nice day there, and so great to see them!  We also ran into someone we know from here back home.  The mom subs in the schools, and their son who is Emma's age is a boy who Emma and her friend chase at recess because they like him.  He he!  Emma had to text her cute little friend to tell her.

Then we got ready for Lucy's party, more about that in the next blog post.

We're lucky we got to spread out the love over a couple of days!  Love good times together, love the giggles and laughs, love my family and friends!  I know I say this a lot, but they are all the best!