Grauntie Sue sent Katie $10 for her birthday. I had actually just happened to have bought her a toy cell phone that I knew she’d love (her friend has the exact one and Katie accidentally borrowed it before!) so the timing was perfect.
Category Archives: Gifts
She loves her tea set!
Swimsuit model?!
In a new suit from Grannie Lin!
Two new bikes!
We got Katie a real bike with training wheels tonight. She did better on that in the aisle then she ever did on either tricycle! (So now I have two tricycles to sell.) I do feel a smidge of guilt for not getting either the Frozen or Doc McStuffins bikes, but those had a premium price ($20 extra).
She also got a purple ladybug helmet. She wanted the pink cat princess with the crown but it was for ages 5+ and was just too big. 🙂
We also got Owen a 20″ bike (up from a 16″) but we need to buy training wheels. He fit on the 18″ bike but the seat was already all the way up! So we’re hoping to future-proof a little bit!
Since we preferred to save $25 per bike, Daddy gets to put them together this weekend!+
I asked Katie to show me her pretty dress.
More hand-me-downs from a neighbor girl. I cannot tell you how much she loves dresses. 🙂
Let’s try again. 🙂
Owen’s big Easter present…complete.
He loved Lord Business’ Evil Lair—and he would have had it done in one day, but he spent a lot of time playing video games with daddy instead.
Click for a full-size version.
Happy Easter!
We told Owen he had to wait for us to come get him in the morning, otherwise he likely would have found all the eggs before Katie even got out of bed! (We also said it in case we didn’t get around to hiding the eggs before bed and Tom had to do it in the morning.)
Every time Katie opened an M&M, it went straight into her mouth. 🙂
A “fused” photo so I had one without Owen’s tongue sticking out. 🙂
Some fancy twirling in her new tutu. And we have NO idea where Owen got the “I’m going to text my friends” bit. NO IDEA.
Katie has started taking after Owen with the crazy faces when I’m trying to take a picture.
The ears didn’t fit Owen at all so it was only a matter of time before this happened!
Since it’s Easter, I thought I’d pull out a pretty hand-me-down dress from the Beson girls—and of course Katie LOVES it! She kept saying “It’s so BEAUTIFUL! Look at my beautiful dress!” 🙂
And the best two:
And since she was dressed up, and we were actually all getting dressed to go out on errands, we took a family picture!
Same zoo, different grandparents!
Now that Katie was older and would hopefully enjoy it more and maybe even remember it, we wanted to go to the zoo like we did last year. Gramma Jean and Grandpa David had gone earlier with Doug, Marie, Gabrielle, and Robert, so we took Grannie Lin and Papa!
Shortly after she started pulling the wagon…she fell…
And scraped both knees in the process. 🙁 Thankfully it was over quickly and she was back to herself.
She loved the bunnies in the house!
Last year’s jump picture:
And last year’s family picture in front of the same sign (I almost wore that same outfit again accidentally!):
Upon walking up and seeing ALL the birds, Owen says: That looks like a big bird party.
Grannie: What are they talking about?
Owen: Birdseed.
Owen’s wingspan:
The kids were SO excited to ride on the train. Unfortunately, the train before us ran off the tracks so they were trying to get it fixed and we ended up having to wait almost another hour. We had debated getting our money back, but the kids would have been devastated…so we did our shopping first. 🙂
Last year’s mask:
Probably the cutest Katie picture of the whole trip:
Aaaand, zonked out within minutes of getting in the car.
Haircut, Katie, and cool spoons with ice cream!
Okay, a bit of randomness that I didn’t feel like composing separate posts about… 🙂
We decided to give Owen a haircut. We had asked him before we left if he wanted it cut or if he wanted to try and grow it out (with the condition that if he wanted to grow it out, he had to let me put gel in it for school) and he said yes, he wanted to grow it out. Okay, fine. Fast forward a few days and he decided yes, he wanted it short. That was fine by me, so Tom cut it. I didn’t get an actual after picture, but stay tuned until later in this post.
More cool color-changing silverware from Grannie Lin!
And notice the haircut!
And notice Katie in her ballet shoes that she HAD to put on after her bath. 🙂
tecjh
Grannie finds the coolest things!
She found color-changing straws so everyone had ice in their drinks at dinner! If you look closely, you can see Katie’s pink straw is turning purple and Owen’s blue straw is turning purple!
CHEEEESE!!!!
She loves saying cheese!
This is a new 4T outfit from Grannie Lin—the top fits perfect and the pants are too big (she’s swimming in the waste). But oh so cute!
Birthday dinner, cake, and presents!
Even though we went to Red Robin this past weekend to celebrate Owen’s birthday… AND I took him a Five Guys burger on his birthday at school… We still went out to eat for his birthday dinner! 🙂 (Yeah, we like going out to eat.) 🙂 We tried a new pizza place that’s close to us and it wasn’t too bad. I’m actually getting sick of pizza so I had a Stromboli which was pretty good. And Katie was introduced to the Parmesan shaker. 🙂
When we got home we Skyped with Grandma Marsha and Uncle Rob, sang happy birthday, ate cake, and opened presents.
Then I gave Owen his gift certificate for the Magic School Bus monthly experiments. Before he opened it I explained it was from mom and dad, Gramma Jean and Grandpa David, and Papa and Grannie—and I was sure he’d be over the moon!! And of course he couldn’t have cared less, LOL. He just couldn’t understand that it meant 12 new experiments (like the volcano he just did) and kept looking at the paper like Aaaand?! I kept trying to explain it and I think he finally started to get an idea…but he probably won’t fully get it until the packages start arriving (it should be mid-month).
Things never turn out as you expect when kids are involved. 🙂
Owen’s King’s Castle begins
Owen is starting his 996-piece King’s Castle set he bought with birthday money he’s been saving for years. (Well, he technically wasn’t SAVING it so much as we just kept stuffing money he received in his bank. We’ve been trying to teach him about money lately—and how expensive Legos are—so we counted out over half of his savings for this set.)
He is one happy little boy!
Exploding volcanos!
This was a Christmas present from Aunt Beth and Uncle Jim and today we finally decided to do it. Owen was SUPER excited: “This is going to be AMAZING!”
Reading the instructions. We should have done this part before getting Owen involved. 🙂
As you can see, the “test” explosion wasn’t very crazy and the goggles really aren’t warranted. 🙂
The compilation video:
Star Wars Lego set: complete
Crafty Cork Project
Many thanks to my TCF-party-red-wine-drinking friends who helped make it more colorful!
Magformer hats and a wheel!
Just two of the projects we built today—thanks to the expander set Gramma Jean gave Owen for Christmas we can build bigger things now!
Dinosaur Twins
Santa brought Katie Dino PJs to match big brother!
Now we have two dinosaurs with cute little tails! (I tried to get them both to hold them for the picture but after eight shots I gave up.)
Lego Movie T-Shirt Twins
Santa brought both of them the same Lego Movie T-shirt!
Watching from as close as she’s allowed!
Katie didn’t follow the rules earlier so she doesn’t get to play with the new toy. But she’s as close as she can legally get.
Sweatshirt Twins
It was chilly in the house this morning (daddy was back to work so there was no one to turn the heat on in the morning) so I put the kids in their new hoodies from Grannie Lin and Papa! They’re definitely big enough to grow into—for both of them!
Emmet, Benny, and the Minions
Owen picked these new PJ pieces to wear tonight! Thanks, Gramma Jean!
His first complete bead project!
Working hard…
Ta da! An ornament!
Tom and I need practice melting the beads together…it sounds easy but isn’t. We pressed too hard and sealed the center circles which you’re not supposed to do. 🙂
“I like to painting! I need more water!”
His first two Lego projects!
He didn’t get them out until almost lunch!
The Mixel he asked Santa for!
Beads instead of Legos?
Surprisingly he wanted to open the beads first instead of Legos!
Two Darth Vaders
The very last gifts!
There was unmatching wrapping paper under the tree so the kids were curious… Thank you Aunt Beth and Uncle Jim! Both were a huge hit! As Owen was opening his he saw it was a Magic School Bus item right away and commented that “MAGIC SCHOOL BUS IS SOOOO AWESOME!” Tom and I were both like Huh? What? How does he know what that is? (We still don’t know.)
Charlie and the mouse!
Santa wasn’t going to get the cats anything because Charlie is the only one that eats treats and neither one really play with toys…but they had stockings hanging so I had to put something in them…so I got a bag of mice at the dollar store. Katie had to give the mice to Charlie right away—and Charlie actually played with it!
Throughout the day, Katie would randomly bring the mice to Charlie but of course Charlie was done. 🙂
Santa was here! He left bags!
The kids slept in until after 6:30 (normal).
He loved his new shoes—they have FLAMES on them! A size 3 if you can believe it!
Digging into her bag!
A Pirate Lego game!
The Frozen headband had to go on right away!
TUTU PANTS!
She got a Yoda ornament and put it right on the tree. She also got a fragile Princess Sofia ornament and of course wanted to play with that one!
She got her own old iPhone so there are no screaming fights about sharing Owen’s.
Owen was SUPER EXCITED about getting this dollar store skateboard! He had mentioned a skateboard a few times I didn’t pay any attention because I had already bought all his stuff—but I saw it at the dollar store Christmas Eve when I went to pick up a few stocking stuffers so had to get it.
From walking in to the last stocking present opened, it was just under 30 minutes! Phew!