Happy 4th Birthday Tegan!!

Our baby girls is FOUR YEARS OLD! How in the heck did that happen?? Tegan has just been counting down the days until her birthday. She is so darn cute . . she says "I'm gonna be fouw and I'm almost as big as Faif!" (I tried to spell it how she says it). While yes she is now four years old she is definatley NOT as big as Faith! Tegan is our little peanut . . . or as Aaron likes to call her, chicken. It's so surprising to me how small she is! Hailee was our premie baby yet Tegan is 2 inches shorter than Hailee was when Hailee turned 3! She is just now fitting in size 3T clothes and I'm not sure he feet have grown at all in the past year. Don't get me wrong, I do love it because I can continue to pretend she is still my little baby . . . even if she is slowly turning into a "big girl".

Since we like to do big parties for the girl every 5 years this year we left it up to Tegan on what fun thing she would like to do as a family. She chose to go ice skating! So the day before her birthday we invited a few families to join us and we headed to the ice rink. All of the girls just LOVE to ice skate so they were busy for hours having a blast with their cousins and friends.

On her actual birthday I had bible study so she wanted to bring some donughts to her class to share with all her friends. For dinner we also let the girls choose what they would like - they can choose to go out to eat or I will make them whatever they want (and when I say whatever . . . I mean WHATEVER!). Tegan chose pasta at home. This girl can eat her weight in pasta! So we made her a birthday cake and a pasta dinner. Tegan had many packages from all her grandparents arrive by mail and she had lots of wonderful gifts to make the day extra special. She is one lucky 4 year old!

Gilroy Gardens

Hailee and Daddy on the train!


Choo choo . . . all aboard!

Tegan on the fishy ride.

Hailee next to one of the many cool woven trees!

Hey lady . . . pay attention to the road!!

and . . . . . she's off!

silly face Hailee driving her daddy around!

Back in the summer we got tickets to go to Gilroy Gardens. We were supposed to go with Poppy, Grammy, Kaleb and Izzy but when we went down to San Jose I ended up getting really sick. So, we have been waiting quite awhile to use up these tickets! Thankfully they were open after Thanksgiving and since we were in San Jose for Thanksgiving it created the perfect opportunity to go!

I had heard from lots of people that while obviously Gilroy Gardens is no Disneyland, it is a great place to take kids that are the girls age. It was such a perfect day! The weather was PERFECT, not too hot and not too cold, blue skies and there weren't many people there either. As soon as we got into the park we decided to map it out by hopping on the train. We took the train ride around the park and when we got off the girls wanted to ride the roller coaster. While Aaron took Hailee and Faith on the coaster I took Tegan on some kiddie rides.

We wandered around the park, had a yummy lunch by the lake and then rode more rides. Tegan was a little bummed that she couldn't go on the bigger roller coasters but they still offered a lot for her to do. I think one of her favorite rides was the cars because got to drive all by herself! It was such a great fall day that we all enjoyed very much.

a visit from Wyoming

me and Michelle . . . don't mind the cabinets - the doors are being painted. ;)

silly sisters!!

all of us (minus Aaron - he was at church playing the drums).

Well, here I am in a new year playing catch up. Better late than never. Life seems to just be running away from me these days and to take a moment out of the day to blog seems hard to do. I'm fortunate in that today I have some extra time to do some updating.

Back in November we were SO happy to have Michelle and Kevin up for a visit. It had been WAY too long since I've seen my Mishka and it seems that over the past few years only sad circumstances have brought us together. Well FINALLY we were able to have a happy wonderful visit . . . although it was way too short. The girls just LOVE their Auntie Mishka and since she lives so far away, they were super excited to be able to spend some time with her.

While they were here we mostly just lounged around talking and catching up on life. We did venture out to Old Folsom to do some shopping and I made a yummy "Pioneer Woman" dinner when we returned. The night ended with us all taking some silly pictures and laughing until we almost wet ourself!

It still is so weird that my baby sister - who was our flower girl in our wedding is now a married woman. Time just has flown. When once upon a time she was just my baby sister who was way too young to understand "life" she is now such a beautiful, intelligent wife who has become one of my very best friends.

end of October

Mommy & Tater-tot

it's a Tegan size pumpkin!

Tegan and her best buds Joelle and Stella. :)

Tegan and her class!

I love this girl!

peek a boo!

Wow, here we are in December and I'm realizing that I'm 2 months behind in my blogging!! Guess that means we've been up to a lot of fun! I'm dipping back into my memory now so I hope I haven't lost a lot of details.

Back in October we of course went up to apple hill and we had all the fun halloween outtings. This year Tegan went on her very first class field trip to Zittel Farms. She had a blast with all of her friends and it was such a cute small pumpkin farm - just the right size for her. :) The girls had a blast at their class parties at school which I helped organized since I took on the job as room mom in both Hailee and Faith's class rooms. For Halloween night we went over to our good friends house Corey & Amanda and we took the kids trick-or-treating. Such a huge difference trick-or-treating in Granite Bay vs. Citrus Heights . . . the girls were super excited to get king size candy bars at a few houses!! Even though Halloween is not my favorite "holiday" we all had a blast.