the nutcracker!

a few days before christmas, i took my girls on a date to the nutcracker or as eden likes to call it, the peanutcracker.  we drove to the big city (aka phoenix) and enjoyed some ballet at symphony hall.  the girls watched in amazement at the dancing ballerinas and told me several times throughout the show that they wished they could do that too.  when it was all over we went outside to take a few pictures and the girls just broke out into their own versions of ballet moves right there on the streets of phoenix.  they were quite literally dancing in the street (cue that song...you know which one i'm talking about).  it was pretty great.  i love my girls so much and i look forward to spending more and more mommy-daughter dates with them as they get older. i hope that we will always be the best of friends, i mean BFF's.  gotta use the right lingo here.

eden's princess birthday party.

^^^jack was trying to sneak into the party as a red headed rapunzel. brothers.^^^

^^^a good looking group of princesses.^^^

^^^everyone was so excited to have cinderella as the guest of honor.^^^

^^^she can give some pretty great expressions.^^^

eden had such a fun birthday party thanks to her guest, cinderella.  she kept all the young princesses busy with so many activities. she first taught them some princess etiquette and then read them her story and sang some songs followed by a crowd favorite, face painting.  lastly, she crowned eden as an honorary princess and did pictures and autographs with the girls.  she was a hit and so was eden's party!

it's always a good ending to a party when the birthday girl tells you that she had the best birthday party ever.  it makes all that cleaning and preparation worth it.

eden's birthday!

eden's birthday kind of snuck up on us this year (although i knew it was coming all along...kids seem to remind you of those things like all the time).  but, being that she was born on the first of december and thanksgiving was soooo incredibly late this year, it was all of sudden here and so was december.  and not only was it eden's birthday but it was the first day of the arrival of our elf, charlie red.  he usually leaves her a birthday message along with a note for the other kids.  jack happened to note that our elf's handwriting looks somewhat similar to mine.  hmmmm.

we had a small birthday celebration for her in the afternoon after church.  we were saving most of the birthday fun for her party that she was having later in the week.  i got her some cupcakes which she wasn't very happy about because she said that she wanted a piece of cake instead. okaaaay.  but it was too late for that so she decided that would be alright if she went along with the whole blow out the candles and make a wish thing without her "piece of cake".  we got her some ariel jewelry which went over very well.  as you can see in the last pictures she is decked out in her ariel bling.  a crown, necklace, ring, and charm bracelet. ariel is her favorite these days and that's quite alright with me because she is probably one of my favorite princesses too ;)

happy 5 eden!  you keep us on our toes but we like it (well, sometimes).  you are so independent and confident and are quite funny.  i love watching you dance/twirl in the halls of our house, be so opinionated about the clothes you wear, and your sweet drawings of me and your family that you bring home from preschool almost everyday.  we love you to pieces, eden bear.

graduations.

******

we had a few graduates this year.  eden graduated from her first year of preschool.  she was so excited. like disneyland excited.  she kept asking for days when her graduation was.  she personally invited our favorite neighbor, mia, to come watch her.  and of course mia came because her and eden and have this special little bond that is the cutest little thing.  anyway, eden graduated and i think it was one of her favorite days thus far.

ava graduated from kindergarten.  she and her fellow kindergartners put on a show with end of the year songs that were pretty dang cute.  some of them were even tear jerkers.  then she said her goodbyes to  some of her classmates and to her teacher, miss peluso, who she already misses dearly.  she is a really great teacher and we were so lucky to have her for jack and ava.  ava loved going to school everyday because she knew she was going to get to spend it with this special lady.

okay, enough of school... on to summer!

we have some pretty sweet trips coming up this summer.  we are actually calling this summer the summer of road trips because we will spending a lot of our days traveling in the car to some really cool places :)  stay tuned.

making jam.

i usually wind up making jam once year and being that we are on our last jar of homemade jam, that one time of year was now.  unlike the years past, this year i had a little helper.  when eden saw mama put her apron, she had to have her's on too.  from that point on, she meant business.  she was one tough strawberry smasher.  and she took her job very serious.  thanks eden bear for all your help.  you can be my kitchen wingman any time.

p.s. the jam turned out to be the perfect valentine's gift for the sweet sisters that i visit teach.  double whammy.