Yesterday was the birthday of our now 4-year-old. We were trying to wait until Friday to really celebrate since we’ll have family coming into town. However, Mimi got constant reminders from her big sister and had also received a birthday card the night before. Mimi emerged from her bedroom yesterday morning declaring, “I turned 4 today!” and has been telling anyone who listen to her. So there was no avoiding having some kind of commemoration for her special day. We decided to go out and get some pizza for dinner. Afterward we headed over to Target to purchase a new bike for Mimi. The Dora bike she’s been riding has a flat tire that can’t be repaired due to Daddy running over it last summer. Mimi doesn’t seem to mind, but it’s also quite small for her. We determined that her 4th birthday would be a good time to upgrade. Unfortunately, it’s too dang cold outside for her to enjoy it officially, but she can admire it in the box for the next couple of months.

Grandma and Grandpa Indiana sent gifts, too. Once we got home from our evening out Mimi opened all those presents. She was quite surprised to receive them since I left them in the delivery boxes until opening time.

Grandpa stuck with the princess theme (a hint I gave him). Mimi was pleased.

Grandma also had the princess theme in mind with a cute art set with the Disney Princess theme.

But she also remembered how much Mimi loves babies. Mimi got another baby from our neighbor, too. This was actually good because then Annie and Mimi each have a new baby to play with; Mimi was obliged to share with her big sister.

Annie was very excited for her little sister. She’s such a good big sister.

On Friday we’re going to have cake to officially celebrate Mimi turning 4. Of course, I’ll post pictures of it and of us eating it. Grandma Minnesota, Auntie Sara, and cousins Hayley and Matt will also be here with us to celebrate.

Last night Mimi’s school took part in a fish fry. Each year the Catholic elementary school that Mimi’s preschool is connected to (but not officially affiliated with) has a fish fry fundraiser to help raise funds for the school. Mimi’s school was invited to participate in their program. They sang a few songs such as “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” and “B-I-N-G-O”. Mimi really looked like she was enjoying herself and has quite a rhythm for dancing. I must say, however, that this was the first school-related function that I’ve been to where they offered beer and wine.

It’s been almost a year that Mimi has been potty-trained. {Hooray for her!} She had a lot of accidents in the beginning, especially at nighttime. Many mornings the sheets would be wet, or she’d have a couple of #2’s in her pants. Mimi never seemed to mind. We’d go back to putting the “nighttime panties” on her because I was tired of dealing with washing sheets so often. She did eventually show us she could keep her gear dry for several nights in a row. It’s been several months without any accidents accept for the occasional “she drank too much liquid before bed” dilemma, and we’ll find her sheets wet. However, those really are rare now.

A couple of months ago we started letting Lucy sleep with Mimi on the bottom bunk. Of course, Mimi has been ecstatic about this, but Lucy does sometimes sneak back downstairs after a few minutes. The girls usually wake up plenty early enough for school and then wake me up, so I usually won’t see their bedroom until it’s dressing time. The other morning I noticed that Mimi’s sheets had a large puddle right where her bottom would lay. Before I could say anything about it, Mimi announced, “Look, Lucy peed on my bed last night!” My response was, “Oh, really! Are you sure it was Lucy who did that, Mimi?” After a few seconds of me staring her down Mimi finally confessed, “Ok, it was me.” I can’t believe she had to audacity to blame her accident on Lucy. As much as I’m willing to blame Lucy for something, I just knew I couldn’t let her take the fall for this.

For the past few months we’ve been developing a family tradition each Wednesday night: ice-skating. Since our local fitness center/iceplex offers open-skate and is free for members, we decided it would be a great way for the girls to practice their ice-skating skills. It turns out that the girls were unable to sign up for anymore classes until they are 6 unless they repeat the classes they’ve already taken, so we figured we’d just keep practicing with them each week instead (it’s much cheaper this way anyway). The girls do seem to be making improvements each week. We even let me them skate with each other while Mike and I have couples skating. Too bad they never play REO Speedwagon or Journey.

Every once and a while we split up and each skate with one of the girls. Mike was skating with Annie when he asked her if he should grow a mustache. Her reply, “No, it would be too classy. Like a German.” Mike had been doing so well lately not mentioning or thinking about mustaches, but his lovely sister, Sara, had to go and find this fabric to show him. Now it seems it’s all he can think about. Thanks, Sara! Thank goodness the fabric costs $36/yard which is outrageously expensive, and even Mike knows it’s not worth that much of an investment.

Today was Pirate Day at Mimi’s school. Even though it seemed like every other kid in her class specifically purchased costumes for this special day, I just found some miscellaneous items from Mimi’s wardrobe and around the house. Surprisingly, she was not pleased about this particular costume. Mimi is definitely going through a girly girl and princess stage. I tried to convince her that she was still wearing mostly pink, but she kept pulling off her bandana to try to replace it with a headband. Silly girl.

Of course, when I take a picture of Mimi Annie must have her picture taken as well. Below is what she dressed up in just for her photo op. Annie had her first play date with a friend from school today. She didn’t have school today, so we decided it would be okay to invite one of her classmates over. Her friend has a lot of spunk and calls Annie on the phone all the time. The couple of times I’ve had to tell this friend that Annie is busy doing something else she told me to get her on the phone anyway. Obviously, I don’t let a 5-year-old order me around, especially one that’s not mine.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that after church yesterday Annie asked us how old she has to be before she can have a boyfriend. Mike and I were so shocked we didn’t really have a response for her. After a few seconds I told her 37. Where in the world is she getting this information from?!?!?

As a scouting event Mike invited the boys over to launch their homemade rockets that they started making a couple of months ago. Since we have the cornfield in the backyard, they thought that would be the perfect launching site. We filled the boys up with a hardy breakfast first of waffles, bacon, sausage, and eggs. Then they were off to see what kind of success they would have. Of course, the girls wanted to participate, but we decided it would be too dangerous for them and too cold (it was around -2 degrees).

The boys are ecstatic to launch their rockets.

Not without gearing up first. It was c-c-c-cold out there.

Here’s round one with “Golden Boy”. One of the other leaders made this beauty. It was painted solid gold and had the name proudly displayed in large, black letters. They had a stall the first time, but the second time was a charm.
[google -2657607949766111133&hl]

Next up was Mike’s rocket. His was painted yellow and black and was officially dubbed “Big Daddy”.

[google 4742871153718758391&hl]

There was a second launching of golden boy that really turned out nicely, but the video was too long to upload here. You could even see the parachute eject and take affect. You’ll just have to take my word for it. The boys seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. A few games of foosball were played, too.

So that’s what I’m making for dinner tonight. Yum! Fortunately, I had a Chef Boy-R-Dee pizza kit in the food storage and some old mozzarella and pepperoni. Hopefully, those last 2 ingredients are too old. Some of us don’t have the luxury of having a Papa John’s Pizza delivery man for a husband. Hrrmph!

Annie got home from school today with 2 bags of popcorn. Every couple of weeks the kids have “Spirit Day” where they wear their school t-shirts and can purchase a bag of popcorn for $.25. Annie requested to eat her bag o’ popcorn while watching a few minutes of t.v. I agreed that she could for 15 minutes. While she was munching away and gluing her eyes to the tube I asked her what she did at school today. She started to tell me, but then got frustrated and declared, “Mom, I will tell you later. I’m too busy right now!” Well, I never! I had to laugh though and just let her be because it’s funny sometimes to see a 5-year-old act like she’s 15. Or should it be scary?!?

Once everyone was awake from their afternoon nap today we decided it would be fun to go sledding, for real this time. Mike spotted a hill close by our house, so we tried it out. It turns out to be quite a popular spot as 4 other families showed up around the same time us as. The girls had a blast. Even Mike took a few rides down. I opted out since I don’t have appropriate gear yet. I may never.

Mimi’s first ride down was probably one of her best. I tried to keep up for as long as I could, but she lost me.
[google 7847449404207351372&hl]

Annie’s not as savvy on the sled but she got the hang of it as time went on.
[google -9066259440979405542&hl]

Daddy rode down with each of the girls.

And the girls attempted a 2 sled stunt.

We stayed out until just before dark. Fortunately, we had made some hot cocoa in a thermos, so it was nice to have when we got home. My toes were a bit numb.

I attended a baby shower yesterday afternoon. This is what I arrived home to. Doesn’t this just melt your heart? That is Annie’s head under the green, patterned pillow. And, yes, the house is a pig sty.

I mentioned “Annie’s Store” the other day. Here’s an example of one of her sale signs. 59 must be a magic number for her because everything was 59% off.

Hope everyone is staying warm and toasty:)

As an activity with the girls Mike thought it would be fun to attempt a 1000-piece puzzle with them. Of course, they lost interest pretty quickly, but Mike was determined to finish it. Mike was home sick a couple of days last week, so he did make some major progress during those days. I helped a little by sorting pieces into groups for him and did spend some time puzzling, too. Today the puzzle had about 20 pieces left until completion, so we got the girls involved and had them put all the pieces in. They were overjoyed to find pieces that actually fit. Now it is done, and now I can have my living room table back.

Apparently, Mike can’t accept the fact that Lucy is not a lap dog.

Due to very cold conditions here in good ol’ Kenosha the kids are out of school today. That means I have the joy of entertaining the girls all day without the option of sending them outside to play. It’s not so bad because they really have become wonderful playmates for each other and will disappear playing in their make believe world. I’ve heard Mimi pretending to be a baby while Annie is the mother. They’ve also played vet where Mimi is the puppy that needs to be nursed back to health. Or store is another favorite. It’s all good to me.

I bought them some educational computer software a few weeks ago (Office Max was offering 20% off a bag full of items). The girls asked if they could play. I more than happy to get them set up for that. As you can see they aren’t letting the cold get to them as they are wearing their summer dresses with sandals even.

I have made some more progress on the Roman shades for our house. I completed both the dining room and den shades. Mike was gracious enough to help me install them one night. However, we ran into a snag. Somehow I made 2 of the dining room shades about 6 inches too wide. GRRRR! Those have not been installed yet, but you can feast your eyes on the den shades. The close-up gives a better idea of color/pattern. It’s hard to get a nice picture of the whole room since the sun is shining so brightly through those windows. I haven’t had the motivation to fix the dining room shades. It’s more about being angry at myself for making such a stupid mistake.

As a Christmas present to myself I bought new bedding for our bed. Our previous bedding was purchased when we first got out of dental school and has gotten quite dingy and faded. Even Mike mentioned a few months ago that we could stand to use some new sheets. Of course, he didn’t realize his comment would be interpreted to mean that we needed all new bedding and new throw pillows. However, I did find some fabulous bargains on all the components paying less than 50% for all the items. Of course, I’m still waiting to install the curtains for the room (yes, you read that right, no Roman shades for this room), so I will refrain from posting pictures yet. Sorry!

Once again Mimi got ahold of the scissors. You may remember the other time she experimented with scissors. This time she was really sneaky about her scissors exploit that we didn’t even notice right away. Mimi came down from her nap right as Mike was getting home and insisting the girls go out to frolic in the snow. The girls were dressed in winter gear and out the door before I knew what had happened. Annie returned from outdoors saying that Mimi had told her that she had cut off Annie’s Barbie’s hair. Immediately, we were in search of the doll and hair. It didn’t take long to find Barbie with her new haircut. Isn’t she lovely?

However, the surprises didn’t end there. Do you notice that there are 2 piles of hair in those pictures above? I spotted that brown pile under Mimi’s bed. At first I tried to recall which Barbie/doll we had with that color hair and then quickly realized it came from a little, 3-year-old head. Upon inspecting my child a little closer we discovered that Mimi was missing quite a bit of her long locks and that they were more shoulder-length now. Mike wanted to make this a traumatizing experience for her so that she’ll not get tempted to do this again. So he told her he was going to cut her hair like Barbie’s. Mimi became hysterical at this point as we were setting up, barber-style, to give her a haircut. Eventually, she calmed down enough so that I could give her a reasonable haircut. Can you believe that child had the nerve to say, “I love my new hair!”? We made her promise that she only uses scissors to cut paper from now on. Mike threatened her with a “daddy-cut” if there’s ever a next time. We are all pretty smitten with her new look though. Have a look.

Here’s me doing the dirty work.

Afterward, I decided to give Annie a quick trim to even out the bottom of her hair. It took a LOT of coaxing because she was afraid I was going to cut it as short as Mimi’s. No pictures of her hair because it really doesn’t look any different. I did remark to Mike later that we never had to deal with the scissor fascination with Annie. Why is that? Or will it come later?!?