Aubrey's First Day of Preschool

Aubrey had her first day of 3 year old preschool today and she was so excited!

She attends a little preschool in our neighborhood so she got to ride her tricycle and she was pretty thrilled about that.

Here's her cute little class waiting to be picked up by their parents.  She had a great time!  She told me they sang songs, read books, and played outside.  And they made cute little headbands that said, "You did it!  First day of preschool!"   

Meanwhile, Ella and I got to enjoy spending some quality time with cousin Lizzie.

Dancing and singing along to the radio in the toy house

What a fun day!

Mommy, can I marry you?

The past week was not a terribly exciting one for us, but I do have two funny stories to share.  Last week I was driving home with Aubrey and Ella and Piano Guys' version of "A Thousand Years" came on.  I turned it up, explaining to the girls that it was one of my favorite songs and that Daddy and I had danced to it when we got married.  Aubrey was very interested.  She started asking all sorts of questions, so I explained to her all about marriage.  I thought I had done a pretty good job of explaining, but when I was finished, she asked, "Mommy, when we get home can Mommy and Aubrey dance to this song and get married?"  Hmmm ... so I explained some more about marriage and told her it's something she could do when she was much, much bigger.  She said, "Okay Mommy.  Good thing me eats so I will be big someday.  Me eat lots so I can be very big and get married."

A few days later, Marc was helping Ella say a dinner prayer.  He prompted, "Please bless the food."  Ella looked over at the food and and said, "It's broccoli."  She was clearly displeased.  Marc tried to continue the prayer, but all she would say after that was, "It's broccoli."  Clearly, broccoli does not deserve to be blessed. 

Ah, I love these cute, funny girls!

Bug Party!

Last month a crazy thing happened: our sweet little baby turned 3!

I seriously don't know where the time went (especially since the last time I blogged she was only 3 months old - my bad).  In the weeks leading up to her birthday I started asking her what she wanted as a theme for her birthday.  No princesses for this one - she wanted bugs!  So bugs it was  :)

We had a lot of fun with the decorations and food.  I made her a Happy Birthday banner of leaves and bugs (side note:  I love my Cricut!).  The girls and I decorated balloons to look like bugs and put them up on the walls all over the house.

I decided to serve a full on meal because there were just too many fun bug foods that I came up with!  Here are some of the fun foods we had:

And, of course, we had to have cake!  I decided to make these cute (and easy) ladybug cupcakes.  The M&M ladybugs were definitely Ella's favorite part!  She begged at least 5 ladybugs off of everyone else's cupcakes.

We decided to go on a bug scavenger hunt.  Since we had a family party with lots of adults and a few kids, we split up into teams with one child and 2-3 adults per team.  I hid plastic bugs around the yard (with numbers on the bottom corresponding to prizes), and each of the kids got a little "bug box" with bug grabbers and a little net (thanks Dollar Tree!) to put all of the bugs they found.  In addition, each team got a paper with a list of real bugs to find and I had prizes for the team that found the most.  The kids had lots of fun hunting for bugs, although since it was evening there weren't as many bugs to be found as I had expected.  It was a good thing I'd hidden plastic ones so there was enough excitement!

Aubrey loved opening her presents!  She is definitely a very loved little girl!

We're so glad so many family members were able to celebrate Aubrey's special day with us!