She Is Five

Last week my first little girl celebrated her 5th birthday. Wow, I have a 5 year old, wow I have 3 kids, but that is a whole other blog post! Anyhow, since things have been a little, well, busy around here we decided to keep both of the kid's birthdays low key and celebrate with just us. We started the day off for her with the infamous huge balloon and presents of course. It was a pretty low key day, she went on a nature hike with her Daddy where she climbed over fallen trees, jumped off logs, swung from vines and in general had an all out fabulous time. Neal said they probably walked for over a mile in the woods at the end of our cul-de-sac and she was sad they had to come home. She took along her camera so she could snap some photos of all the nature she saw and Daddy even entrusted her with his camera which she actually got some really good shots with. She is definitely following in Daddy's footsteps there with her love for photography. All her birthday dreams came true when after lunch we revealed to her the Silvermist (one of the fairy's from Tinkerbell) cake that she had been talking about for days. All in all even though there was no huge party this year with all her friends, we did our best to make her feel special and make the day all about her. We will make up for it next year when we will certainly have our work cut out for us when we celebrate 3 birthdays all within 3 weeks......stay tuned for that one!











Painting her toes the day before her birthday, a gift from Gigi and Papa Slimick, she was so proud of herself that she painted her toes all on her own.

Croup is no fun on your birthday....

On Monday, Halloween, we knew Jonah had croup due to the tell tale "barking seal" cough, we just wouldn't find out how bad it would get until the following day, his birthday, when he woke from his nap.

He was most certainly not himself Monday, and rightfully so, with a fever (controlled by Motrin) and a very violent sounding cough all he wanted to do was sleep. The next day, on his birthday, he woke relatively ok and came downstairs to his huge Thomas the Train balloon, of which he adored. We played and had a relatively uneventful morning just trying to keep him from overdoing it. After lunch we celebrated with a Thomas the Train cake, which naturally he was super excited about, but as you can probably see from the pictures he just had "sick eyes" and wasn't really himself, poor guy. Nonetheless he blew out his candles with a smile on his face and happily ate artificially dyed blue frosting, as did we all :) We planned on opening his presents after he and Sophie woke from their naps, however that is not how the afternoon played out. I was in the nursery nursing Maisie and Neal was in keeping me company when we heard Jonah barking/coughing over the monitor, something inside told Neal he needed to go check on him and good thing he did, because he walked in to find Jonah sitting up in his bed gasping for air, unable to get any. Neal said Jonah had a look of pure terror on his face as he looked to Neal for help. His chest was going in and out, unnaturally so, but no air was getting to his lungs. Neal took action and got Jonah into the bathroom with the shower on full blast hot to get some steam to help open up his airway, which come to find out afterwards cold air, i.e. the freezer is best, but the steam did the trick this time, enough so that Jonah could get some air. From there we got Jonah to the doctor ASAP where he had a breathing treatment and a daily dose of steroids for the next 4 days. A scary little start to our week, but it ended well and our little guy is slowly getting back to himself. We did make sure that he got to open his presents the very next morning. He was still a little pitiful, but he enjoyed his presents.

Celebrating Sophie

Sophie's birthday was celebrated over the course of several days and two parties, well three actually if you count the trip to the Tea Room! My grandmother, who Sophie is named for, my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Chris came for a visit and timed it perfectly to celebrate both of the children's birthdays! My aunt and my grandmother LOVE the Tea Room, so we have to go when they come and Sophie is very much into tea these days so we all got dressed up for tea complete with hats and went there on Sophie's birthday, it was lots of fun. Then she had a party with 4 of her friends where they dressed as their favorite princess, colored their own tea cups, and frosted and decorated their own cupcakes, just two words for that one.... SUGAR OVERLOAD literally, but it was fun. Then we ended the birthday celebrations with a nice family party with Neal's parents, my parents and Uncle Joe. All in all let's just say that November is a pretty busy month for us, with birthdays right in the beginning and then followed up by Thanksgiving and then we dive right into Christmas! Come January I'm going to need a really long nap!!!

Posing with her presents on birthday morning.

So excited about the color your own Kid Robot cupcake

Another Kid Robot figure, this one is a Bunny Pirate, named Clutter. They are little figures that vary depending on the artist who designed them, Neal and Sophie collect them together and are fans of Kid Robot's designs.

Ready for the Tea Room.

I had to get her a little cake for the actual day of her birthday, you can't go with out cake on your birthday!


Auntie Nancy, Uncle Chris and Great Grammy Sophie.


Princess Sophie


Princess Claire


Princess Madison


Princess Morgan


That mountain of blue and green on top of her cupcake??? Yeah that's sprinkles.

Loving her Toy Story cake.

I am now the proud Mama of a 4 and 1 year old! Man time flies!