Guest Post by Katie!

Hey everybody! I'm Katie. Some of you may recognize me as the queen of my mom's Instagram account. (You know, except for when my pesky brothers get in the way.)

Today I took over my mom's blog because this week was the most important week of the entire year. MY BIRTHDAY! It's really quite important. 

It all began when I woke up on Wednesday morning and discovered that my parents had put streamers on my doorway, and I just HAD to run through them. 

Then I came downstairs to eat pink pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream, and I told my mom that I was officially a big kid. Because after all, I am FOUR now.

My mom said I had to wait for Daddy to come home to open presents, but then they caved and said I could pick one to open early. I picked this really cute tutu from Grammy! Lucky, because I ended up wearing it all day!

The pancakes were delicious! The rest of that day until Dad got home was pretty low key, because it was ridiculously cold and we all had nasty colds. Especially my pesky brothers. Luckily, they were mostly better by the weekend.

After Daddy got home, though, it was party time! We had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, of which I had probably fourths. I can eat spaghetti and meatballs forever. 

Then I got to open presents from my grandmas and mom and dad! It was the coolest birthday ever! I got sparkly shirts, cute new dishes, princesses, and CANDY LAND! What could be better?


Since my mom was making a big 'ole birthday cake for my party on Saturday, she didn't want to make me one for my birthday. But when she asked what I wanted instead, I said, "Ice cream cone!" So we had rainbow-colored ice cream cones!


We just had to blow out the candle and take it out quick so my ice cream wouldn't melt. It looked like a rainbow, but it was really cherry, blue raspberry, lemon, and vanilla flavored. It was awesome!


Oh, and all this happened while I was wearing the birthday crown that I made all by myself! I sure love to pour glitter all over everything.

After dinner and ice cream, I got to talk to my grandmas and Auntie Hannah on the phone and on Skype. I sure do have a lot of awesome people who love me. I was only a little bit distracted playing with my princesses and such. They are pretty cool, you know. 



Then my brothers had to go to bed, because they're still little and they had nasty colds. But my mom said I could stay up a little later to play my new Candy Land game, and we had so much fun! I won the game every time and never landed on Lord Licorice's X squares! My dad told me I was cheating, but I was just having fun.

It was a pretty good birthday. My mom and dad sang to me all the birthday songs we know, and my mom didn't even make me do my chores! They sang to me in primary on Sunday, and at preschool the day after my birthday. It made me really happy.

On Saturday, it was time for my birthday party! I told my mom when she asked what I wanted for my birthday that I wanted a birthday cake, some balloons, and my friends. So that's what I got!



I decided to have a My Little Pony birthday, because I sure love My Little Pony, even though a lot of my friends are boys. But they had fun anyway. My mom made an awesome rainbow My Little Pony cake! It was really tasty. I liked to eat the skittles off first.

The most exciting part was that when she cut the cake open, it was rainbow-y on the inside too! All my friends liked it a lot, but especially Tyler. He really likes cake. 

Besides eating cake, we played a lot of fun games! We played the bean bag toss, pin the tail on Pinkie Pie, and my mom even let us do a pinata! I was so excited. We all tried to break it a bunch of times, even without the blindfold, but then my dad ended up having to break it because it was too strong for us.

We had a lot of fun scooping up all the candy and toys into our bags. I tried to get as many of the whistles as I could because I know how much my mom loves non-distinct, high-pitched noises. She just loves them. I'm so considerate.



After the pinata, we went in the family room to go play, but we ended up all sitting on the couch together looking in our bags of loot from the pinata. Except for one time when Carter accidentally thought my bag was his and tried to eat a piece of my candy, it was good. I sure love my friends. 

The only big problem I had was that I really just wanted to have a picnic for my birthday. I asked my mom almost every day that week if we could pack a picnic and go to the park, but she said no! Why can't I have a birthday in the summer time? Then we could have my pinata outside! It's okay, though. We still get to play in the snow for my birthday when the brothers aren't sick.

Yay for cake!

A bunch of party animals and our Pinkie Pie game - I helped my mom color it!

So I think I had a good birthday week. The only time it was kinda bad was when I had to get help in the bathroom because the toilet paper launcher was empty. Also, I keep telling my mom that I want a baby sister and she keeps giving me eyebrows. One of these days I'll get to her.

And now, here are some pictures my mom took of me and my hooligan brothers playing outside in the snow.

I told Peter he was in trouble for hitting me so he put himself in time-out.

Winter Begins in Chicago! *Cue foreboding music*

Happy New Year everybody! Sorry I've been so long. Luckily for you, one of my new year's resolutions was to write on my blog every week. Because I really like to write on my blog, but for some reason I never end up doing it. Probably because I'm a slacker or something.

But not anymore! I'm turning things around! New leaf! Blank slate! Open book! Okay, that last one was already true. But I'm going to start off with those Christmas card pictures I said I was going to post. Those of you who were on the short list (it was VERY short) saw this:

But even you lucky short list people didn't get to see the other options. Want to see what was happening while I was trying to get cute pictures from my children? Now, a Christmas-card behind-the-scenes exclusive! (Not really. Just cute ones that didn't get onto the card.)

This one was actually my favorite. AND it was Katie's idea. But after I printed off a few pictures to decide which one looked better, she decided she didn't like it anymore. 

Yeah, I have a bunch of hooligans at my house. And now you can partake of the hooliganism. Anyhow, on to Christmas!

Ninja-bread!

December had a LOT of things that happened in it. Seriously. First, I think between preschool and friends and our gingerbread house, we made about a million and a half gingerbread cookies. But we also made super awesome ones. We had a nativity at preschool, made snow-globes with our faces in them, and ate WAY too much sugar. I'm telling you.

The first week of Christmas break was really busy--on purpose, I think. We went back to the Children's Museum, we made a billion gingerbread cookies, and we had a lot of sleeping issues. Like, as in, Mike and I were so excited about his not having to study that we stayed up WAY too late every night playing nerdy card games. And the hooligans were so excited about Daddy being home and it being Christmas that they still woke up ridiculously early. Not cool, hooligans. Not cool.

Bundled up for the market!

The Friday that Mike got out of school, we went with our awesome friends to the Christkindlmarket in Oak Brook. It's a traditional German market with all kinds of handmade fancy things and delicious food. There's a HUGE one downtown, but we just went to the sample version in the suburbs this year. I think next year we'll try the big one, if I'm feeling brave. It was really cool, and everything smelled delicious! We went into it knowing that we weren't going to be buying anything, especially because my favorite thing there was a Russian doll painted like a panda, but it was like, a billion dollars. But we did end up getting some EXTREMELY AMAZING English toffee. And there were samples of fancy German baked cheese and such. All worth it. Let me tell you.

The Saturday before Christmas was the ward Christmas breakfast at church, which was really fun. There were games, food, cookies, and even Santa! Katie was really excited to see him, but the boys . . . were not.

"My name is Katie and I want a scooter and a pogo stick."

"Do you want to go see Santa like Katie?" "No."

Christmas at our house was quite the affair. And by that I mean we did not make a big deal out of it at all. It was so laid back, it was like . . . Christmas! Christmas Eve we went over to afformentioned awesome friends' house for Christmas carols and cinnamon rolls and we talked about the Christmas story with the kids. It was so fun. And at the end they got their stockings out so I told the hooligans we had to go home and get out our stockings and that got everybody excited, which made leaving slightly easier. Slightly.

Christmas morning . . . happened. I think I got some cute pictures of it. Let me check . . . yep. Cute. I would list all the amazing things my hooligans got for Christmas and thank all of you who spoiled my babies, but that would be a lot of things and a lot of people. We are so spoiled. You grandmas and other family members are so sweet. Also, my hooligans had a really great time. I ended up opening a lot of Peter's presents for him because he'd get so caught up in one present that when it was his turn to open another one he'd just say no and keep playing. So I'd just stick his opened present next to him and he'd quickly get distracted by it until the next one came out. Josh got the hang of this whole "wrapping paper" thing pretty quick and had no trouble opening any and all presents. He's the one we had to hold back so others could have a turn. Katie was definitely the winner, though. I think she's the easiest one to shop for.

It's not the prettiest, but YUM.

After we were done with presents and thought about getting dressed (several in the family nixed the idea entirely), I stuck a ham in the oven and finished decorating a Christmas cake. (Could you really see me not making some kind of fancy baked good for Christmas?) It was milk chocolate with raspberry filling. MMMmmmmmmmm . .. . . . .

One of the big things that happened was that we got to Skype Auntie Sarah! (For those who don't know, my sister is serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Edmonton, Canada.) We totally snuck into her Skype call with my mom. She is so cute! And she's a pretty great missionary. Now she's in the middle of nowhere so I don't know when her Christmas envelope (which isn't that exciting) will get to her from us. But we sure love her.

Dinner was pretty low-key food wise, but it was a big deal because of the boys' most favorite Christmas present--big boy booster seats! With CARS! They were super excited. Although, having them at the table is kind of freaking me out. They are growing up too fast. And they need to stop. Also, I sit next to Josh now and he gets the most affectionate when he's got peanut butter all over his hands. Yuck.

It's cool, though. The boys are now learning table manners because they're sitting at the table and we expect them to be nice. I think it's almost starting to work. Besides Christmas, we didn't do that much. We had a bunch of friends over for play dates the week of New Year's, but we didn't do too much else. We snuggled, we ate food, and we definitely didn't get enough sleep. Oh, and we had a party. 

Josh didn't want to wear a hat or take a selfie this time. He was more focused on the chips. Speaking of which, I had no idea what fiends my children were for chips and 7-layer dip. They LOVE that stuff. When I used to make it when we were newly-weds, or even when it was just us and Katie, it would take us a week or more to eat a whole 9x13 of dip. But it was gone in 2 days. TWO DAYS. My hooligans love chips and dip. And I think "chip" is the word that Joshy has down most articulately. 

One more exciting thing happened this weekend--Katie is in Sunbeams! She has finally graduated after about a billion years of nursery! And boy was she cute. She came with me to primary for the first time after Sacrament, which was funny because this week was kind of a Brittany song-and-dance show. I was playing the organ and got canoodled into playing the cello for a choir number, so I had to gather all of my paraphernalia before primary. By the time we got there all her friends were there and the sunbeam teachers were very enthusiastically welcoming them. It was awesome. She came home with an "I am a Child of God" crown and some beautiful drawings. I think they totally nailed it.

So now we're back into real life. Mike is back in school, going into intense-study mode for boards in May. I'm not supposed to see much of him for a while. But it finally started snowing this weekend, and now it finally looks like winter outside. Unfortunately, it was also accompanied by ridiculously low temperatures, as I suppose I should have expected after last year. Thank you so much, Chicago. Thank you. 

I still got totally wrangled into letting the kids get bundled up and play outside this afternoon, but I put it all on Instagram/Facebook and I'm too lazy to go get my phone cord right now. Let's just say that it didn't last that long, especially because Katie decided to hit both brothers in the face with snowballs very soon after we got outside. But boy, did they get decked out.

And now, for the rest of the pictures I took and can't narrow down. As per usual.

Gingerbread! Katie's masterpiece.

Handsome boys after the Christmas breakfast!

 

This is what our kids do when we're not paying attention in the morning.

Playing with ducks at the Children's Museum

I lost track of how much chocolate Joshy ate from his stocking before I confiscated it.

Peter was stuck on the whacky ball for a long time. Also, he's cute.

Thanks for the super decked-out room Abuelo! 

Peter always wants to be wearing his tie. He even wore it to his nap time.

Joshy is probably the most stylish of all of us. 

Yeah, my kids are adorable. And maybe I'll be good at my new year's resolution and blog again next week. Maybe. If you're lucky.