Yes, Katherine turned three last week!! It doesn't seem possible to us either, but there it was, January 24, 2011. Katherine's third birthday!
Her birthday fell on a Monday, so we had her party on Sunday. This is the rag-a-muffin when she got up Sunday morning.
Aunt Isa was here to join in the festivities (Aunt Isa is always up for festivities!!) and thankfully, she took 100% of the pictures you will see.
We let Katherine open her presents from us in the morning. She got a few Toy Story 3 items. She loves that movie and she and David will actually play out scenes from the movie sometimes. Kind of embarrassing, huh?
I KNOW - don't faint, I'm actually in a couple of these pictures!
Katherine also got some lip gloss. This girl is GIRLY!! She loves the lip gloss...
Flashing her glossed-up smile after she opened up the Barbie/Ken combination from Toy Story 3.
We had her party at a gym close by. It's a really fun place for kids with lots for them to do. It's actually a bit tempting for Mommy to play too. So I did. Until the first guests arrived, and then I tried to act more like a grown-up.
Katherine loves this place - look at that smile!
The kids are sitting in front of a long, trampoline that they can jump off of into a foam pit. You can see the other trampolines behind the kids too. Those are FUN.
Here's the birthday girl taking the running leap into the foam!
They also have a huge 3-person swing that the coaches push the kids in. Katherine is terrified of this swing and won't go near it. Here's most of the guests watching the swing...
Of course, dare-devil-David was way excited about the extreme-swing. The coaches will barely push it for the little kids that are a little intimidated, but David was ready to go HIGH!!
Katherine pulling herself out of the foam pit.
And here is the Dora cake. Shocker that the theme for her 3rd birthday was Dora, right?
And the obligatory J-Street Girls picture with our little piggies!!! You wouldn't believe how many pictures we took to get one-semi-decent one. Even still, you can see Aunt Isa (aka The Photographer) in the mirror behind us.
I hope everyone had a great time at the party - we sure did! Katherine got tons of awesome gifts too - she has such thoughtful friends that actually seem to know what she likes!!
For some reason, blogger has decided that I've over-used my picture capacity and won't let me upload all the pictures I wanted to for this blog entry. This of course makes me very sad, so in the next few days, I'll be going through the oldest blog entries and removing the pictures from then. Look back now if you want them!! I already deleted several, but I'll have to delete more to keep posting new ones!!
This is David's version of Sudoku. Look carefully, he's actually doing it with the colors of the marbles.
So Friday night, Katherine's day-care had a Polar Express party!! We weren't actually planning to go, but then decided to because Santa was making an appearance and we wanted Katherine to get some practice with him and not be scared.
So we were waiting in the lobby (we got there just a little early) and we saw many of Katherine's friends. They ran up to each other and hugged. Isn't that just adorable?!
David waiting in the Santa line...they were SO excited!!
This is Katherine also waiting in line for Santa. They got a golden ticket to ride the polar express, so that's what the ticket is for.
This was right after we saw Santa walk by to go sit down and take pictures. The kids were SO excited when they saw him. One of Katherine's friends was two people in front of us and the second she saw him she burst into tears and started screaming to get away from him!! It was so sad for her! Katherine was trying to help her, but she didn't want anything to do with that line.
And our Santa picture. In their PJ's. David was listing out his requests and when we asked Katherine to tell Santa what she wanted, she froze. She wanted off his lap as soon as she realized that she was supposed to actually *talk* to him!
Here they are waiting in line for the Polar Express!
Katherine on her "train" ride. I didn't get a good picture of David, his conductor was taking him on a special, bumpy, more boy-ish ride!
They also had a snowball toss. Katherine actually did very well!
They made David scoot way back to throw his "snowball" and he still made it through the hole!
They also had "snow" for the kids to play with.
Katherine wanted to stay in that room for a long time. I had a pretty tough time motivating her to get out of there!!
Also this weekend, we made a gingerbread house! Here's ours next to the one on the box. It's not quite as perfect, but I think we did pretty well!!
Only one more week of school before David's on Christmas Break!!!
Boy have we had a busy November!! Haven't we all, right?
I posted it before, but to catch up, David decided that he wanted to become a Cub Scout this year. It's the first thing that he's ever brought up to us (all on his own) saying that he wants to do, so we were thrilled to enable him to do it! He's met with his den (small group) and his pack (big group) a few times now and he's really getting into it. The first big event after he joined was the popcorn sale. Now, to equate to all you former Girl Scouts out there - this is like the cookies. Read: a big deal.
So, David was *hard core* on the selling. He wanted to go to every house on our street, we had to track who was home and who wasn't so we could go back later, and he asked just about every night if he could go out selling. John and I both took the form to work - John was a big more, how should I put this? Aggressive. With the form than I was. He was in sales after all. Anyway, we helped him out a little bit.
But, David sold the 2nd most in his pack!! No one in his den was even close to him. When we went to his den leader's house to pick up his popcorn, it was stacked outside and we thought it was the whole den's order!! They said they separated the den's apart from David's because he had so much!
Here he is posing with his order & forms:
Also in November, I went on a scrapbooking trip one weekend. I've made a somewhat questionable choice to switch from what is referred to as "traditional scrapbooking" to "digital scrapbooking." John tells me this is right up my alley as it allows my face to be stuck to a screen even MORE! I think it actually might end up being less expensive and just as cool for the kids to have later. I'll still do the traditional scrapbook from time to time - especially for the pictures that I don't have digitally (you know, the ones taken before the millinium!!).
So here is what I did that weekend! (It's a movie and each page is 5 seconds long. My software does all that...why did I ever do that traditional scrapbooking again?!?!?)
I was about to tell you about Thanksgiving, but I just realized that I totally skipped talking about Halloween on the blog! YIKES!! It is in the scrapbook you just watched, so there's not much more to say. David was a clown and Katherine was Dora. The costume might have been a hair too big for her this year, so if she loves Dora as much next year as she does right now, we're all set!
John also took David to the World Series!! They went to Game 5, which of course the Rangers lost, giving the San Francisco Giants the Championship, but seriously, this is the first time EVER that the Rangers were in the World Series, so it was kind of a big deal.
I'm so glad the two of them got to share that memory. I told John that he had to take David so that when David is taking HIS son to the SECOND time the Rangers ever play in the World Series, he can tell him that his dad took him "way back in the year twenty-ten!!"
This was also in the scrapbook, but Katherine's hair is finally long enough for a ponytail in the back! Wow - I thought this girl would never have hair. It's not very thick, but it's getting so long.
She tells me she doesn't want to cut it all the time.
With his $40 gift certificate to Wal-Mart that he won for selling all that popcorn, David bought a few games. One of them was "Gone Fishin'". I'm not sure if David or Katherine likes that one more!
For the Ferguson Four, this is our first house that actually has enough trees that drop enough leaves that we can build a pile to jump in! I guess we weren't ever the Ferguson Four before this house, but you get the idea. Anyway, we do now have PLENTY of leaves to jump in, and David LOVES it! He's been asking us for weeks if there were enough to rake and build a pile, so in November, we finally took the plunge (wink, wink).
The first jump of 2010!!
Katherine wasn't quite a sure as David was...
But she warmed up to the idea eventually.
And yes, they are in their pajamas!! Is there any other way to jump in the fall leaves!?!?
For Thanksgiving, the Ferguson Four loaded up and headed to Oklahoma City, OK. John's dad, grandmother, uncle (etc) live there and his sister and her family met us up there for the festivities. As usual, John's dad is an A.MAZE.ING. chef extraordinaire and he did not disappoint this time either.
I don't even like turkey people and I was going back for 2nds!!! It was so yummy!!
His daughter-in-law brought some kind of sweet potato heaven that I couldn't get enough of too. Wow - very nice Thanksgiving.
We took some pictures of the family while we were there too...FUN!
Getting Katherine warmed up for the big "all cousins" picture to come...
John & Josh patiently waiting for the girly cousin to fully beautify her hair.
Turns out we prepared the wrong kid. David was the one that *refused* to smile.
I have a bunch of pictures of the cousins and I might try to get the ONE that David has a half-decent look on his face and another one where everyone else looks good (like the one above) and stitch them together. So far, I haven't taken the time to do that yet.
And here is the Ferguson Four! Of course, this is after David was "disciplined" into smiling appropriately for the camera.
John's cousins:
The one on the far left was the flower girl in our wedding. Isn't that CRAZY!?!? The one on the right sat at the book signing table. The one in the middle was a bit young to have a job...or we would have hired her too. Hard to believe!
Lounging after some serious food eating:
It was a GREAT Thanksgiving and of course, we have so much to be thankful for!!
