Spa Treatment

The Gang!

Anna, Sophie, Annamarie, Bella, Gracie

As a child I could only imagine the fun I would have had at a place like this! As I grown-up I would LOVE to be pampered as much as my two beautiful little ladies were on Friday! Why such glamor treatment? Well... this year I decided to take the girls to a place called Sweet and Sassy. It was quite possibly the coolest place we have ever been too. The girls each got to bring a friend and I came prepared with jammies and slippers for all of them (thank you Wal-Mart for your after Thanksgiving sale)! They all looked adorable in their slippers and jammies while they recieved mini-mani's and mini-pedi's. Then they took each girls and fixed her hair, sprinkled them with glitter, and put a sparkle tattoo on their face. I don't think they stopped smiling the ENTIRE time. It was so much fun and SO much better than skating!

Wouldn't YOU love to be pampered this much?

The Big 5!

Pretty as a Princess

The pixie princess has turned 5! That's right - my middleton is now 5 years old. Expressing herself daily in ways that only she knows how! Sophie is our spitfire - the love of our lives the fire that keeps this family burning. lol She is infatuated with horses and loves dancing and she is now totally in love with her brand new doll - which she named Serena. She takes such great care of her and treats her like a living person! She still informs us that one day she will be a vet and take care of animals. Always the one for the funny sayings and always the one to make us laugh so hard we want to pee our pants. She makes us want to kiss her one minute and spank her butt the next - but all in all she is the apple of our eye! Happy Birthday, Sophie!

Sugar Plums

Sometimes we spend a lot of time envisioning how certain things are supposed to happen. We make these grand plans in our heads of how things should be and how everyone should feel. Donald always tells me that I have a sugar plum vision about highlight moments of my children's life. Things such as graduations, outings, vacations, and birthdays. You plan for things to go a certain way and IF you're lucky? - they do. But... most of the time there is a monkey wrench that is thrown into the mix. Now - I'm not complaining. Well - maybe a bit. I can't go into details as that would ruin the suspense of it all - but I had a very busy weekend - planning everything down to the last detail. The girls had their sleepover on Friday - 5 giggling little girls - and they drama that ensues - does all this drama REALLY start at 5 and 7? Really? They're not even PMSing yet!!! I then spent all day on Saturday making the cakes for their family party. It took most of the day and by the end of the day I was hating the Love-A-Lot Bear that I made for Sophie and loving Anna's barbie cake. I will post pics later. I made sure that each of their spaces was decorated just right - and in the end it was a great party. The girls had fun and that was what counts! Right? Well - I left out a section of my story - that's where my sugar plums come into place (everything is just perfect - I am mentally blocking it out.) All and all it was a good time with family. The girls had a blast and I am decompressing as we speak. So I know I let you down - no grizzly details. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and all that jazz, but I HAD to write it down - so even though the sugar plums didn't dance JUST the way I wanted - they DID dance and that's all that matters!!! Confused - me too! :)

Welcome to the family!

As most of you know - we have had some drama in our little family unit over the past few weeks. The drama has revolved around our youngest puppy, Louie. Louie had been very sick and was taken to the vet - where we discovered that she was poisoned with anti-freeze. We were to wait to see if she improved or if she would pass away. After staying with the vet for a week over Thanksgiving - we brought Louie home. It seemed as if she might have tempted fate and had been spared. Sadly that was not the case. After being home with us for about a week, Louie ran off to die. This was horribly traumatic for my little girls. We found Louie when Julie was just an infant herself - such a little squirt. At full grown she looked like a puppy still! The girls were crazy about her and she was such a calm dog. She didn't learn to bark until she was 6 months old! She was a pleasure to have while we did. :(

So... on with the story.

Yesterday we had a neighbor come to our house to ask us if we had lost a beagle puppy. For those of you that know my husband - he loves beagles. Loves, loves, loves them! We told her no and she said that this was the second one she had found dumped in the past two weeks (our road is awful for dumping - we found Louie the same way). She asked us if we wanted it and we said we didn't think so. We ARE still in mourning you know. She did say she would bring it up later so we could take a peek at it.

Needless to say...

it was love at first lick!

Meet Benny! I guess the good Lord new we needed a new member of our family. The second the girls got hold of him their little eyes lit up with such love. They were thrilled! He is such a good little fella. He has been going potty real good outside and we have been kenneling him. While we still miss Louie terribly and we will never forget her - our family needed this new little guy to help heal our hearts. He is NOTHING like our little Louie. He is a tank (just like Sophie). So watch out! Just look at Sophie's little face - my mom said she hoped that this dog was healthier than Louie and hoped he didn't have any problems. Sophie made sure to tell her, "Come on Maw-maw - we just got him today!" Yeah - don't bring us down! :)

So - we welcome Benny into our brood - looks like Donald has some more male back-up!

This...

This...

is what seven looks like. Not three or four or five - not even six - but seven! It's hard to believe that seven years has past since our Anna joined our family. We had such a struggle to have her and such pain before she came into our lives. Who would have thought that seven years later we would have such an independent and thoughtful little girl. She is so very caring and so artistic. Her attention to detail sometimes astounds me. She is reading at an end of 2nd grade - start of 3rd grade reading level and she continues to surprise me. She is also such a ham! My lipstick loving - dress loving - art loving - fairy loving little princess. Her love of pink has now dwindled and her new favorite color is yellow. Barbies and fashion. That's what it's all about. She loves to play the piano and sing. I love having her in my life and I know that she is such a special treasure. Happy Birthday, Anna!

Anna the shark!

Well...

Not really. But did you know that there are things called "shark" teeth? And I'm not talking about the teeth that shark have. That would be too obvious and too easy to explain. What I'm talking about is the teeth that children sometimes get if they do not loose their baby teeth. These teeth are called "shark" teeth. This means that the grown-up teeth come in BEHIND the baby teeth BEFORE the others fall out. About 10% of all children can have these teeth - and by golly - Anna was one of the lucky 10%! Yes indeed - Anna is special! Well -of course we already knew that! So now we have to visit the dentist. Hopefully within the next two weeks those baby teeth will fall out and we won't have to worry with it. Otherwise - it's EXTRACTION TIME! Anna will just LOVE that! So we wait. And for those of you who have never had the privilege of knowing someone with shark teeth - let me enlighten you - here's a photo of Anna and her teeth! It is a striking photo. It such a nice picture of her. I just love looking in her mouth (and up her nose)!! Now you are educated. Don't you just feel so much smarter?

Gross isn't it?

There's no baby like a snow baby!

There's no baby like a snow baby - or three!

Yes - we are those kind of parents. Just throw them in the snow - they'll be fine. Never mind it's like -30 (just kidding) and the wind could burn your face off - at least they're having fun, right??

Julia had such a great 5 minutes in the snow! She thought it was the neatest thing. What IS this strange white stuff? So alas her new word is SNOW! She keeps walking over to the window and saying it and pointing at it. You have to hog tie her when you need to walk outside because she's right there under your feet - just itching to get out in it! Silly girl.

Anna was the sneaky one of the bunch. Just look at that face. Can't you just see the ideas she has plotted in her head behind those beautiful eyes of hers. Yes - she WAS the first one to throw the snowball. Although I don't know where she could have learned that from (uh-hum - daddy)! The big girls faired a bit longer in the cold air than Julia, but it was so very cold that even they couldn't stand it for long.

And let us not forget Sophie and her snow angels! What's a day of playing in the snow without her wonderful snow angels. She loves to make them!

So... they frolicked and played the eskimo way - walking in our winter wonderland!!!