On Friday, March 4th, the birthday girl woke up and put this outfit on... thank you Mimi! Maggie was taking Kael to jump at Airfix and invited LeaAnn to go along :) To say she was excited was an understatement!
That night we headed over to Grammy & Papa Jim's for a birthday dinner and cake! Sweet, sweet sisters <3 (I SO WISH I had emoji's on here ;)
Games and more games...
THIS was really funny b/c Lydia really beat him! :D
Love it, Linds ;)
Love this just as much! LeaAnn really looks like she knows what she's doing ;)
Pretty 5-year old... I can't believe she's 5.
Still at it ;)
We had inside out pizza per King Dad's the birthday girls' request... ;) but she did request a monkey cake!
Happy birthday LeaAnn Claire!
Couldn't go without trying to 'get' dad ;)
This is seriously how it went down - ahahaha!
Love that pouty lip Ms. Lydia :D
Whew! It was all I could do to keep my mouth closed! :)
And then Grandpa had a scavenger hunt for the girls! They each had their own clues to find individual money bags - lucky girls ;)
These two are quite the pair :)
She doesn't take after her father or anything ;)
Super fun evening... we even ended with a game of 500! It's been a while... super fun night :) thank you Grammy & Papa!
I was tired of sweating at night, so I bought a quilt from Walmart :) and I love it. And Lydia loves Kirsten! She loves dressing her up :)
Finally got my Milestone 2 reward in the mail... I've been waiting for this one! :D Love it!!
This same day... we also received this letter... the Kindergarten letter for this little girl... King Dad and I went to our tax appointment in CR this night and ate at the Butcher Block, super yummy!
And on THIS day... Wednesday, 3/2 - Lola brought over the birthday girls' gifts! Thursday is the actual 'day', but Thursdays are also THE 'dance day' for this year... not a great day to do anything else ;) The cherry pie Ms. LeaAnn requested :)
A princess piggy bank for Lydia
And a monkey piggy bank for LeaAnn ;)
And what else could possibly happen on this evening? Well big sister Lauren would help little ms. 4-yr-old LeaAnn pull out her top front tooth!! The going rate for the tooth fairy on a birthday is the age apparently ;) she received a $5 for that puppy!
The next morning... guess who woke up at 5am?? She told us later it's "of course b/c I'm 5!!" :)
Didn't think she would put on the outfit... but she did! How adorable :D
She looked big then and she still looks big now!! She was a big baby!!
Really just surreal... that 5-years passed... and SO MUCH happened in those 5-years... quite possibly more happened in the last 5 than in the 5 before that... which seems insane b/c 3 other kids were born in the previous 5!!
LeaAnn was born and our world was rocked. Complete and udder chaos... I was begging to go back to work in the fall... which had never happened up to that point ;) Our girls' started into the school system, we changed daycare's, I started blogging, I started exercising, which turned into running, Chris ended his jobs at Agri King and B&B and started with New Balance, (HUGE) we bought a camper and started camping (which is a lot of work!! ;) fun, but work), finally got out of pigs, made a game plan to get out of our current house which started with taking Dave Ramsey classes....
The girls kept getting older, at the time LeaAnn was born, we had a Kindergartner, PreK, 16-month old and a newborn.
Now we have a 5th grade, 3rd grade, Kindergarten and PreK... that's INSANE!
It's kind of hard to wrap my brain around all of the changes. By far the biggest change was the job switch (well and having 4 kids ;) It's been for the best, but most definitely not without trials and tribulations...Always re-evaluating, thinking, changing, all good things... just mentally exhausting ;) and there really just is NOT time to be mentally exhausted. But it happens. And we manage, and here we are. 5. years. later.
Back to March 3, 2016... She couldn't wait to open her 'big' present when she came downstairs... so we let her open it :)
And before she left for school, she opened the card from Lola and arranged everything just so :) <3 sweet, sweet girl...
Present opening in the afternoon before going to dance :) Thank you Mimi!!
Mom & Dad's final present - Happy birthday to the biggest 5-yr-old we know!! :D
More birthday posts to come... this girl celebrated all week! :D
Thursday, 2/24/16 - Mom FINALLY cleaned the little girls room! Whew... it was becoming "Where the Wild Things Are"... literally. Books and stuffed animals and stuff, were growing up the walls becoming trees and vines... :) yikes... it was out of control.
So! Finally tamed that down... you could actually SEE their floor enough to clean it, laid a new carpet down and you would have thought they had moved into a brand new room :) Ecstatic would be the right word for it... LeaAnn sat her baby monkeys up so they could read at night, too!
Saturday, 2/27 - Volleyball game in Alburnette! Girls did an awesome job!
Lauren serving
Lauren serving again
That night, Dad went to Sean's annual card party, so mom packed up the kids and they all stayed at Maggie's, while we went downtown to watch the Iowa State basketball game! Notice LeaAnn's shirt? :) the new one we exchanged for at Target. And when we got to Maggie's house, we got to meet this adorable baby boy, Dean!!
Sunday, 2/28 - the girls went to Jim & Jeanette's for the afternoon so Chris and I could get ready for our tax appointment, pick up the house, and make sure we were there while the DISH cable guy came to our house to install Cable TV + Internet!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! That's how the girls and I felt about it :) And Jeanette showed me how to do this with our clothes! Love it :D
And what appeared on our television Monday, 2/29... an Iowa State Basketball game!!! Seriously, there were no words for how excited I/we were (again, the girls and I)... we were truly giddy. That feeling you get when you truly appreciate something? That's the way I felt...
I realize that we could have done this at anytime... but it made it all the more worth it that we WAITED until we could truly justify it.
