a very happy brown birthday

Our sweet little E is three!!!  

Esther is such a sweet blessing to our family.  She has a contagious smile and laugh.  She's our quiet and sensitive one, and she amazes me by how thoughtful and generous she is (most of the time). She loves doing whatever her big sis does, but she also definitely has her own take on life.  She has the funniest expressions and talks with her hands, which is just really cute.  And she surprises us daily it seems with her vocabulary.  She's also proving to be the animal lover in the family.  

Well for several months now, Esther's favorite color has been brown... mostly because she loves chocolate, but also she says because she has brown hair, like Belle has brown hair.  Since I think it's pretty rare for your typical 2 year old to love the color brown, I got a crazy idea and decided to make her birthday all about brown!  So her she is starting her big day... don't you love her wild brown hair!? 

Sporting her new rain boots with a brown monkey on them, "Now I have some of my own."

 Getting ready to enjoy her brown (chocolate) waffle for breakfast!

We spent part of the morning at one of Esther's favorite places, the carousel park.

Riding on, you guessed it, a brown carousel horse.

The second part of the morning was spent making brown banana pops~frozen bananas covered in chocolate and sprinkles!  I didn't get a good shot of the bananas, but I did get one of the two little chefs before we started.  Here they are decked out in their hats and aprons from Publix preschool pals.  

For lunch we had Esther's favorite meal, which happens to be somewhat brown... peanut butter and honey sandwiches.  For dinner, we had her second favorite meal, which also happens to be somewhat brown... chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A... yum!

Back at home on the deck with the brown and pink balloons Daddy came home with for his little E.

Arden took this shot for us!

And the highly anticipated brown cake with a brown horsey and brown ice... I spent the afternoon shaping and decorating the cake with Arden by my side while E and C napped.  Arden gave the horsey 3 names throughout the process...first Thunder, then Lightning and finally, Isabella.  So here's Isabella, the horse!  My favorite part is her mane, which is made out of chocolate twizzlers!  (I got the basic shape and the twizzlers idea from Family Fun and Parenting Magazines online.)  I tried to put Isabella up out of sight, but as soon as Esther woke up from her nap, Arden ran and took Esther to show her the cake saying, "See the beautiful cake we made you!"  So the rest of the afternoon Esther kept reminding me that we would have cake after dinner. :)

Even though you could tell Esther was ready to dig into her cake after she blew out the candles, she took a twizzler off the cake and gave one to each of us before eating one herself. 

besides a brown horsey cake, she also asked for a brown puppy (stuffed of course!) ...her reaction when Woody handed it to her...

Looking at her card from Nonie and Dagan that had a mirror on the front, she says, "Oh, I have chocolate on my face!"

thank you Nonie and Dagan for my new Cinderella dress and duffle bag!

thanks Aunt Hannah, Uncle Michael and Kai!

I'm not sure if it was because of all the sugar and caffeine Esther had that day or if she just didn't want her birthday to end... maybe a combination of both, but when we went to check on her around 9:45 and then again at 10:30 that night, she was lying in bed awake with the biggest grin on her face!  

And probably my favorite part of the day was half way through the day, Esther looked up at me and said, "umm, I think my favorite color is pink!"  Well, she is 3 now, so I guess she can change her mind.

Happy 3rd Birthday Esther, we love you!!!

swimming lessons

We spent the majority of July at the pool.  It was kind of a nice change from going to the beach.  I did not miss having sand in everything AT ALL!!  All the girls took swimming lessons... Arden was in a preschool class and Esther and Chloe were in parent/child classes.  All 3 love the water and had the best time in their classes... 


Arden jumping in...  on the 3rd day of class, right before class ended, Arden actually jumped ON her instructor's head!!  I witnessed the whole thing b/c I was trying to get her picture.  It was her turn to jump, but Miss Mary Catherine was helping the child before Arden to the ladder and had not given Arden the go ahead to jump.  I asked Arden why she didn't wait her turn and she said, "I was just so excited Mama!"  Thankfully Miss MC was fine, but Arden did puncture her bottom lip with her top teeth... since blood was involved we had to fill out an incident report and everything... lovely.  Arden recovered pretty well, but was terribly sad that I wouldn't let her back in the pool that day.  This is a picture of a successful jump! :)

The last day of Arden's class was all about water safety.  To end the class, the kids put on life jackets and were put in a raft in groups of 2 and 3 and were tipped over!  They showed the kids how to grab hold of the raft and climb back in and how to help others get safely back in.  I didn't get any pics of Arden being tipped over because I got the whole thing on video.  (oh yeah, and I was trying to keep 2 other little munchkins out of the water!) 

talking with the kids before getting on the life jackets.

swimming to the ladder after completing the raft drill.

holding her progress report and princess silly band she got for completing the session.

Woody and I took turns taking classes with Esther and Chloe.  Having the one-on-one time with them was great!   It was also really neat being in class with each of them since they were on opposite ends age/skill wise in the class.  Chloe was one of the youngest in her class and it was fun getting to do the basic things with her.  She loved chasing after toys in the water and splashing to songs.  Esther was one of the oldest and mastered pretty much everything we did in the class.  It was nice because the instructors gave us additional things to do with her.  (as a side note, if we'd waited to the end of August, Esther could have taken a preschool class like Arden, but since she's still 2, we could only do the parent/child class for now.) 

playing "Humpty Dumpty" with Daddy

kick and dig...

Chloe learning to kick on her back.  She usually ended up with her toes in her mouth though!

splash! with the cousins

The week after the 4th, the girls and I went up and spent a few days with my family.  One of our days was spent at a water park in town with my sister and her kids.  The girls had a blast to say the least and still talk about all the fun we had at Splash!  All of these pictures are courtesy of Jenni-thank you! 

I think Arden went down these slides a bazillion times-she couldn't get enough!

  

a happy 4th

The 4th of July has become one of my favorite times of year since living here.  Our church has a cookout and then we all head over to the fort for fun and games before the fireworks begin.  This year we got to be a part of the scouting team with Brittany and her family to go ahead of everyone and reserve our spot-such fun!  We stayed right up until the fireworks began and decided to head out since we weren't sure how Chloe would handle things and because Esther did NOT like the stray fireworks that were going off over the water.  She kept crying, "I want to get in the car and be safe!"  We did manage to see a little bit of the show on our walk back to the car, and all in all, we had a terrific time!

the girls

the annual cake

Katie and Chloe

Esther had just finished a blue pop ice...look at all those teeth!

Arden on the run

Chloe had fun pulling up on whatever she could.

chasing bubbles

our view

At one point in the evening, Esther climbed in our wagon and curled up like she was going to fall asleep!  Woody got her playing peek-a-boo.

what can brown do for you?

Our sweet Esther will be three next month.   A couple of weeks ago, she announced that she wanted a "brown cake with a brown horsey and brown ice" for her birthday.  I'm not sure where the horsey came from, but I do know that her favorite color is brown.  She colors with brown crayons, chooses brown construction paper and she will tell you that her favorite color is brown.  It took a while for all this to click, but one day I realized that the reason she loves brown is because she loves CHOCOLATE!  She calls chocolate ice cream, "brown ice cream" and so you get the picture... she wants an all chocolate cake for her birthday!  I thought surely she won't remember what she's told me, but almost everyday since she first announced her dream cake, she has reminded me that she wants a "brown cake with a brown horsey and brown ice."  Here's hoping I can come up with something to meet her expectations!

Also, since this post is about Esther, I thought I'd write a couple of other things down that she's done lately so I won't forget them.  She loves to play "Mary" as in Mary, the mother of Jesus.  She wraps blankets around her head and calls her baby dolls, Jesus, and Arden usually ends up being Joseph.  She does normal, everyday kind of stuff like going to Publix and CVS. :)  It's really funny to watch her and really sweet too.

Esther is also really into princesses, with her favorite being Cinderella.  A few weeks ago she told us..."Daddy is gonna dance with me and he's gonna be the prince and don't forget my  swippers (slippers) and don't forget my dress and don't forget my crown!"     

nine months

Chloe at nine months...

... is still itty bitty.  She weighs 15 lbs. 3 oz. (3rd percentile) and is 26 1/2 inches long (25th percentile).

... has 6 teeth and has started eating some table food and devoured the first wagon wheel we gave her. 

... LOVES water.  She has the best time at the pool and when we're at the beach.  I think she enjoys splash park and the ocean as much as her sisters do.  She loves bath time and will cackle and crawl as fast as she can to the bathtub when she hears the water running.  And the downside to her love of water is that her favorite place to sneak off to is the toilet.  I've found her splashing in the potty way more times than I'd like to count!!  

... no longer does the army crawl.  She had gotten so fast with it and seemed to prefer it to traditional crawling, but in the last few weeks she only crawls with her belly off the floor.

... has gotten really good at pulling up and standing.  She likes to "walk" holding on to your hands and I'm sure before I know it, she'll be cruising around.

... claps her hands, waves, says "dada," "mama," and "baba"... so sweet!

... LOVES her sisters.  She squeals with delight when she sees them.

... still loves her Mama (yay!) and went a week where she would scream if I left the room (aahh!), but now she's also really bonded with her Daddy, so it's nice to get a break once in a while.

... right now has roseola, although if you didn't notice the rash all over her body (which would be pretty hard to do!), you would never know she'd had a fever most of the week because she has been the sweetest sick baby.

These last two were taken last weekend when we were in SC for my cousin's wedding.  It's the first time we've used a crib in a hotel instead of the pack-n-play.