I'm a Whole Hand Now!

Despite Grandmas who think that she should still look like this:

Abby just turned 5!  (Or, as she's been telling people, "I'm a whole hand now!")  As is our way, we spread the celebration out to cover almost an entire month, beginning with Grandma and Papa when we visited them at Easter.

5 candles in a brownie (that turned into a brownie sundae once the fire was gone - yum!)

Thoroughly enjoying the new Cinderella dancing game - just don't try to teach us the rules. We know what to do.

The next weekend Grandma and Grandpa visited. I don't have any pictures from that visit until Grandma uploads them (hint, hint!) but I can assure you that a great time was had by all. The celebration included a butterfly-themed tea party, chicken fingers and fries at a restaurant full of TVs (always a big draw for Abby) and a Dairy Queen ice cream cake.

The following weekend was Abby's birthday party. Abby and Nora really enjoy the Rainbow Magic Fairy books, so we decided to have a fairy adventure party. We started by having all the girls decorate a pair of fairy wings when they arrived.

Here are all the fairies, getting ready for their adventure

Nora, Evie, Alice, Abby, Julia, and Amelia 

Then Belle the Birthday Fairy showed up!

I helped lead the girls on a an adventure to recover the magical birthday charms that Jack Frost and his goblins had hidden throughout the human world and Fairyland (i.e. the east room, the kitchen, and the basement.) They did a great job solving the riddles I had written and negotiating with the goblin (Adam in a green sweater and a Santa hat) to recover all the magical charms and save all birthdays everywhere.

Saving the worlds' birthdays is hard work, so we moved on to lunch after that. Keeping with the rainbow fairy theme, we had star shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (Abby's suggestion) and a fruit rainbow (Mom's suggestion).

We also had a rainbow cake. Abby and I had a lot of fun looking at different rainbow cake pictures on Pinterest, and she eventually picked this one.

Abby received a lot of nice gifts from her friends, but I was super impressed with the dress from Evie. Her mom MADE that! I'm going to have to up my game when we head to Evie's party next month.

A couple random shots of the decorations:

Rainbow streamers

Tissue paper fairy balls

Jack Frost's ice castle

We have a bit of a birthday breakfast tradition in our family of having plate-sized pancakes, but Adam really outdid himself with Abby's birthday pancakes this year.

We had our last celebration this morning when it was Abby's birthday at school. (For some reason, they always think that her birthday is the 25th instead of the 15th.) She asked if Nora and I would come in to celebrate with her, so after much waiting ("NOW is it time to go to Abby's class and have a cupcake?") we headed in around snacktime.

Abby had asked for cupcake cones as her birthday treat.

So excited!

Blowing out the candle

Nora got to sit with the class - she was excited!

Yum!

Easter 2013

For Easter we continued our tradition of celebrating with the Wilson family. This year we trekked up to the suburbs and had a great time. The girls did a wonderful job on the trip and Dad was thrilled with the time we made. We also got to attend Papa and Grandma's church which was, I believe, the girls first experience with a pipe organ. We also did a little birthday celebrating and enjoyed the first few miscellaneous signs of spring.

That's about it for the non-photo highlights, now on to everyone's favorite part, cute pictures of the girls:

First egg dying, complete with the traditional story of Dad spilling yellow egg dye on Grandma's brand new kitchen chairs many years ago.

As mentioned we started the first of 5 'Happy Birthday Abby' celebrations.

And the girls looked beautiful in their Easter dresses, hard to believe how quickly they grow up.

We had a great time as always, and even got to talk to the girls about how Easter means hope in new life after death. I think this is the first year they've had an inkling that it means more than just candy, which is a special point of fatherly pride for me.

Wedding Dance

Not much to say about this one, I've just been meaning to share the girls preview of their wedding dances.

Snow Day!

It's the 6th day of spring, and Mother Nature decided to celebrate with 13 inches of snow.  Schools around the area were all canceled, and even the university canceled classes for the day.  So we decided to celebrate with a family snow day.

We started with a special pajama pancake breakfast.  The girls came down in their pajamas in the morning (which they thought was great because they usually get dressed before coming downstairs) and helped Dad make pancakes.  They got to pick their own add-ins (raisins for Nora and dehydrated pineapples for Abby) and toppings (whipped cream and syrup - yay!)

After breakfast Adam went out to shovel (because the twice that he shoveled last night wasn't enough - 13 inches is a lot of snow!) and the girls and I went out to play.  Everyone was excited about playing until we got to the snow; then Nora wasn't so sure she really wanted to get into that mess.



We hadn't heard the official total yet, so we decided to find out for ourselves with a yardstick.





We had drifts up to 20 inches in some places, but I think we actually got about 13-14 inches.  Those 20 inch drifts were fun - Abby kept getting stuck, which she found hilarious.

When Adam finished shoveling he came over to play for a little bit.





But by that point Nora was ready to be done, so he graciously offered to take her inside and let Abby and me keep playing for awhile.  I tried to convince her to make a snowman with me, but I couldn't hold her interest that long.  Mostly she liked tromping through the drifts and breaking off the icicles.  (And, consequently, I now have a severe case of snowman envy after seeing all the snowman pictures on Facebook this afternoon.)  But it was all worth it when, while diving headfirst into a snow drift, Abby told me, "This is the best day of my life!"

And of course, no snow day is complete without some hot chocolate when you come inside.



Happy (almost) Easter!