Gloria's (Almost) Two!

On Sunday, our precious Baby Girl will be TWO!!!! She's no longer a baby, and if you asked her... she thinks she's a big kid like the older two attempting to do whatever they do.  It's hard to believe how much she's changed in just a year.  Our laid back baby, bloomed with TONS of personality and spunkiness!  She's a clown and loves to be silly and make us all laugh, which is often.  She's feisty and can definitely hold her own with Maddie and Rivers.  She's got a strong will and mind and knows exactly when she wants and how she wants it, and now that she's talking practically in sentences she doesn't mind letting you know.  The sweet side is still there too though, she loves giving out big kisses and hugs.  

She still loves playing with her many babies.  There is almost always one nearby and she spends much of the day feeding them, rocking them, putting them to bed, etc.  One of my favorite things to catch her doing is rocking one of them in the little rocking chairs we have in the living room.  She'll be snuggling them close and singing Jesus Loves Me, Holy, Holy, Holy, or another favorite hymn.  It makes me just smile at the sweetness she has with them.  She loves real babies too, pointing them out and wanting to be near one whenever a baby is around. This gives me hope that she'll adjust to being a big sister well!

Other Favorites 

Favorite Food: Spaghetti or macaroni (a pasta lover after her mama's heart!)

Favorite snack: Fruit and cheese

Favorite things to play: babies, cooking, dress up, coloring, or outside in the dirt!

Favorite "characters": Elmo, Pooh

Favorite songs: Holy, Holy, Holy, Amazing Grace, Jesus Loves Me

Favorite place: the Park, or church with lots of friends :)

Here's a little video of Gloria singing Gloria singing from Mariah Frantz on Vimeo.

 How thankful we are for our Sweet and Spicy Gloria!  She brings so much laughter, joy, and adventure into our home!  

Happy 2nd Birthday Baby Girl! 

What a joy it is to be your mommy!

First Ballet Recital

Last Saturday Madeline had her first ballet recital.  It was the first time the seminary has offered ballet and I'm so grateful she had the opportunity to participate.  She absolutely loved it and learned a lot in the 10 weeks!  Here's some pics and the video from the special day... 

She was so excited!

The performance to Swan Lake

With Ella, one of Maddie's sweet friends after the show with their flowers

Some friends from her class

Easter Week

I had hoped to get some things together and start a bit earlier than we did celebrating and talking about Easter, but just didn't get my act together :) However, we did have a great week leading up to Resurrection Sunday celebrating Jesus' death for our sins and defeating the grave!  Hallelujah!

One of the books we found at the library the kids really loved.  It only used the good  ole KJV to tell the Easter story, but did a great job covering Easter week through Christ's ascension.  It had pretty stained glass illustrations, so we made our own stained glass art by drawing on a skillet pan which melts the crayons.  The kids thought it was a blast... only under adult supervision, of course.

 We also had a Easter egg lunch, an idea I got from Pinterest.

 Later that day we went to a Resurrection Party at the Seminary.  It was a blast, and we got to see many friends there!  They had bouncy houses, crafts, face painting, games, candy, and dinner!  It was a fun time as a family.

We planted a Resurrection Garden... which my dirt loving children really got into.  I had seen them on several blogs last year and I think it will become a regular tradition each year.  Maybe next year I'll actually get a pot to put it in!

Rivers found a stick that looked like a tree.

Maddie of course concentrated on making it "pretty" with flowers.

We "rolled the stone away" Sunday morning at breakfast and found an empty tomb!

Sunday morning we also had our traditional Easter basket hunt

Definitely had a hard time getting a good pic of all three.

 Our church has an annual Easter egg hunt after lunch too, and this year there was some confusion about who was in charge of the eggs... so we ended up hiding somewhere around 900 indoors because it was wet outside.  For our little congregation that meant A LOT of eggs for every kid! No one was complaining :)

Little miss waiting to go "hunt" her eggs

That was probably half of what he alone brought home

My sweet family... so Blessed!  

Ballet

Madeline started Ballet a few weeks ago, and it is an understatement to say it is the highlight of her week.  

Her friend Ella on their first day

Practicing some of her moves

My Beautiful Ballerina

Tiny Tea Parties

Lately, this is Baby Girl's favorite thing to do, along with taking care of her many babies.  I remember when Maddie used to do it every morning :)  It's so sweet and fun to watch her set up her little tea parties (almost always in the mornings).  She has different "guests" each day, and she loves placing them in their seat and serving them tea and treats.

A Lovely Valentine's Day

We've never been much on celebrating Valentines Day, but Maddie is all about holidays right now.  She's been anticipating Valentines Day since Christmas basically!  So we made the day special by making some home made Valentines, decorations, and yummy goodies.  It was a really fun day, and I think a memorable one with some new traditions started.

We started out with a breakfast of "heart" pancakes...
or panny cakes as they are known around here!

Then we went downstairs to make some decorations and
special Valentines for Daddy and friends.

We made heart shaped pizzas for lunch

The were a big hit!

And we just couldn't waste the dough that was left over from cutting
out the hearts,so we made beneit bites with them.

We used some of our broken crayons to make heart shaped crayons to give friends.

Chocolate Sugar cookies for Daddy

Our decorations... The banner had a heart for each kiddo with the things they "loved".
We will add to it each year. 

On it Madeline wrote 1 John 4:7 "let us love one another, for love is from God." Along with all the Valentines activities I tried to make this the theme of our day.  We talked about the only way we know what true love is, is because God has loved us so much! We talked about God loving us enough to send Jesus to die and pay for our sins, and because he has loved us like this, we should love others by laying down our lives for them.  Trying to explain and demonstrate this to a 4, 3, and almost 2 year old took some creativity.  We tried... and are still carrying on teaching moments from that day... to teach them sacrificial love where it hits them the most.  Giving up a toy that another wants to play with, or letting the other pick out the video that we watch is a BIG deal right now to my precious little sinners' hearts :)!  It's in these small (but Big to them) ways, I pray God is starting to reveal to them the depth of love he has for them by making the greatest sacrifice of all.