Little Details

Pumpkin Patch

Yay for the Pumpkin Patch!

There's that sweet girl.

Everything is better together, even waiting in line.

Lily loves her horses.

William was pretty excited about the horses too.

All aboard for the train ride.

"All" being just William in this case.

Sparkly face painting makes any day more fun.

Carl commented that this was by far the scariest display for any woman...a scene from the 1930s.

Another scary scene...and another fun Pumpkin Patch experience!

A few pics from Monkey Joes

Emmy loves that she can finally get in on some of the action instead of always having to watch from the sidelines. She is quite the spirited little monkey.

Mary and William on the superslide.

You're not that big yet, little bits!

Our little monkeys

William's first day of school

William started school the day after his third birthday. He was super-excited to be big like Lily, but was a little disappointed that he didn't get to ride to school in a bus like Lily.

William got a super-cool new dino backpack from Aunt Ingrid for his birthday. So cute!

So, so cute.

Lily was very proud of her little brother and gave him lots of advice and encouraging words. She's just the best.

I can't believe William is a "preschooler". It was so strange to drop him off at the preschool, but he did a fantastic job. All reports were that the day went well. They said that he particularly liked the bathroom and went three times in three hours. William's report included reading a book about turtles, playing a stop and go game (that he apparently thought was funny), and not eating snack but doing a good job throwing it away. I'm looking forward to reports from the upcoming weeks!

More birthday pics

Good morning, birthday boy!

After William's birthday party during the day, we had a family fun dinner at Chuck-E-Cheese, per William's request. We brought along William's official birthday cake for the family celebration.

Meet "Dakota", the newest member of our family. Lily and William are in love with this little guy. He is pretty cute.

After giving the kids their baths, William walked into his room to see his surprise.

He loved it!

Welcome to the family, Dakota, the dinosaur.

William's 3rd birthday party

For those on Facebook, these pictures are not new, but I'm just getting around to posting them here. I'm obviously very behind in posting, but I'm trying to steal moments here and there to get some pictures on here. Monday was William's third birthday. So now he only looks about a year older than his actual age! :) We decided to have a playdate birthday party at my Aunt Chrissy's gym which was just fantastic. We had a great time and were so excited to celebrate with some great little boys (and their younger siblings)!

Obviously, the theme was dinosaurs. Lately William has really gotten into dinosaurs in a big way. I can honestly say that William can identify more dinosaurs than I can. When he recently showed me a Corythasaurus in a book we had not read yet, I knew my dino knowledge was already surpassed by this newly 3-year-old. I can't say that I was disappointed with the new obsession; you can only talk about, read about, watch, and play trains so much, if you know what I mean. Maybe I got a little too into the dinosaur theme for this reason, but it was a fun theme to work with.

Healthy foods are so much more appealing when you make them into fun, themed designs. I tried to tell this to William, but I'm pretty sure he didn't buy it. He did, however, love the volcano cupcake! No surprise there.

Party guests got to take home their dino hats along with dino jars filled with "dino eggs". Did I mention that I love working with a good theme?

Once again, mom was there to save the day and help me with watching Emmy while I carried out all my party schemes. Thanks mom!

And look who was off school that day. Lily threw up around midnight the night before so I decided to keep her home, which meant coming to William's birthday party.

Can't you tell how sick she is?

I love this picture of William. My sweet, sweet boy.

It seems that almost all the little boys we know also have little siblings - future party guests for Emilia's birthday parties!

The boys had lots of fun bouncing, swinging, running, and just being boys. Thank you to Patrick's mom, Molly, for adjusting my camera settings and then taking many of the pictures you see here. They turned out far better than they would have with my extremely limited knowledge of my camera's capabilities!

Poor girl on her sick day

Yes, yes you are, my almost 7-year-old, amazing little girl!

Michael, Hakon, and Patrick are ready to refuel after their active morning. I just love these dino hats. I'm only now beginning to appreciate having all the kids birthdays around Halloween - so many more options readily available for various themes.

Andrew and Brian partaking in some dino juice. Thank you to the makers of V8 for launching their new V8 fusion juices with dino characters just in time for our dino party. I truly can't thank them enough because it really would have bothered me if they did not fit into the theme. You think I jest, but I do not.

Supermom with our little baby Emilia

I just love the magic of birthdays, and I truly hope the kids feel how loved and special they are on this day and always.

I'm pretty sure William's wishes came true that day, considering that his wish was for candy and cake. When going to another birthday party recently, he said, "Mommy, I'm really excited about the cupcake". That's my William.