Faust Favorites

June 25, 2012

Whoa, five

What just happened?

Our baby turned five.

How did that happen?

We blinked.

Moral of the story? Don't let your little kids become big kids. Or don't blink.

June 24, 2012

... and growing up too fast.

We've argued with her to stay four, but she won't. We've asked her, begged her, to stay little but she just yells back "NOOOOO!" I'm going to admit right now that I will most likely lie and say I still have a four year old.

When we tell friends Kayla is turning five we get a long, low "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Five. Wow. Yeah, that's a big deal"; a weighted sentence loaded with sympathy or slow shaking of the head. We get its a big deal. We feel it. Five just sounds so.... so not little anymore. We never thought we would have a five year old!

Kayla and I made a construction paper chain of links at the beginning of June to start her birthday countdown. Ours had over 20 links on it, with Kayla writing the date on each link. Every morning without fail she rememberd to tear a link off and tell us how many days were left until June 25. With about two weeks to go I was hit with panic realizing I had better get on with planning her party!!! Yikes! So, we did just that, the theme was decided, and invitations went out. Then with less than a week to go, it truly sunk in that my girl was literally reaching the end of being four - FOREVER! The chain was taunting me, "Five more days, five more days until your girl is no longer four ever again". That darn chain! Fun for Kayla, not fun for me!

Sure enough, June 25th came and Kayla was so excited to be five! She showed us that she could jump even higher now that she was 5! She also announced that, because it was her birthday, she could do whatever she wanted. We smiled at her cleverness, and agreed to her wish. You're only five once! We enjoyed a special birthday breakfast outing as a family on the morning of her birthday - a tradition I hope we keep forever.

June 25 - Birthday morning
Opening gifts

A birthday dinner dessert - daddy's extra-loaded ice-cream sundae!

Seeing Brave at the movie theater kicked of Kayla's birthday weekend celebration, and she invited Addison along. In the days leading up to seeing Brave, she recieved a little Brave-themed present each morning in her room - a story book, a coloring book, movie tickets. Of course she was already sleeping with her Merida doll she received as a gift from Amy earlier. On Friday, Aaron, I, the girls and Missy went to see Brave; we all loved it, it was SO good!

At the theater (with Kayla pouting).
The girls got to pick out whatever they wanted to wear from their closets for this special Friday night occasion. They chose their most favorite Sunday-best dresses, of course! Who wouldn't?

Post-movie bonfire with marshmallow roasting

The birthday party celebration continued with the girl's first sleepover at our house. We roasted marshmallows at the fire and the girls crashed in bed at 10:30pm.

Sunday brought more birthday celebration, this time with the grandparents. What does a kid love more than going out to eat at a restaurant and getting something fun to eat? And what do parents love more than not having to cook at home? Brilliant - we'll go to the mall to ride the merry-go-round and have dinner. We went to Garfield's (where kids eat free on Sunday, yippee!), opened presents, and Kayla got a ice-cream sundae and birthday song from the waitstaff.

Listening to the waitstaff sing their Happy Birthday song; it made Kayla so shy!

Oops! The mall closed and so did the merry-go-round! No worries, we made a spontaneous trip to the park instead.

Nothing like playing at the park in your "clicky shoes"!

June 20, 2012

14 months

Our never-stopping, joke-playing, little instigator, happy girl!

You are an eating machine. You open your mouth for anything, anytime; rarely do you reject something and spit it back out. A few of the things you're wearing in your closet are 2T!

You love to play on the stairs, mostly because you know you're not supposed to, but you like to hide on the stairs around the corner just barely peeking out to catch our attention and then laugh because you think it's soooooo funny.

You like to slide down on the stairs on your bottom, bouncing as you go. The bigger the bounce, the better. This gives me a heart attack.

When you grab something you know you're not supposed to have, you laugh and run away from us.

You love to be chased.

If you know that pulling your sister's hair is not nice and bothers her, you laugh and keep doing it.

You entertain yourself well.

You love to play outside. You scream to go outside. You scream when we come inside. Dirt doesn't phase you.

You love wagon rides.

You go to bed so easily and fall asleep on your own. You have started this new thing that when we go to lay you down you grab our necks really tight and hold on while whining that we don't let you go. It kind of works on us!

You've been giving lots of hugs and kisses out lately!

You still LOVE to scream, mostly your frustration with not being able to go outside when you want. Watch out if the doors isn't locked! You're out the door, close it behind you, and run to the stairs. You will finally sign "please" which helps (slightly) with the screaming.

You have added All Done, Ball, and Bird to your vocabulary.

You have discovered that airplanes exist and love to wave to them, as well as every bird in the air and duck in the water that we encounter.

You keep us amazed Khloe Jean! We can't keep up with you so we just look at you, smile and shake our heads at the funny crazy things you do all day long! Keep it up girl!

Our newspaper delivery girl

June 18, 2012

Father's Day gift

Kayla and Khloe gave Aaron a homemade art project in which they added their painted hand prints to a tree with the words Happy Father's Day, Kayla and Khloe, 2012 at the bottom. I forgot to take a picture of the final framed project before it headed off to Aaron's office, but the "project in progress" photos are cute!

June 17, 2012

A family weekend

It was a blur of a weekend, all spent with family... and more family! Matt and Amy came into town for several days, we traveled to Lansing for a cousin's wedding, and we ended it with Father's Day. There were a lot of late nights, no naps, boating, catch-up conversations with cousins, and time spent relaxing on our deck... and early birthday presents! Here's a hodge podge of our weekend's events.