Kayda's Fourth Birthday!

Wow.  Sweet Kayda is four years old.  I can't believe how quickly time has gone by.  We actually celebrated her birthday over two days, there was just too much stuff to do it in one!  This year was the big year.  The ear piercing year!  Kayda loves to choose my earrings in the morning and all of her female cousins already have their ears pierced so she KNOWS she wants earrings.  I talked to her and explained how it would feel and what would happen before and after.  She still wanted to go for it.  So yesterday morning Kayda, Auntie Kina and I went down to get her ears pierced!

Choosing her earrings.  (She chose the May birthstone because it was a dark green which is her favorite color.)

 One, two, three...  You could see in her eyes when it happened.  You could tell it hurt a little but she didn't even flinch!  She sat there while they were cleaned again and she was so excited!  I think the way her ears heated up immediately afterward bothered her more than the actual piercing. 

 SO pleased with the earrings!

 Then later that evening we had all the cousins from Daddy's side over.  (9 kids all together) for a pajama/pizza party.  They watched "Toy Story 3" and played and wrestled.  Here's Auntie Kina with the kiddos before the craziness began.

 Here they are!  Except Chase who was in the other room playing)

 All the cousins!

After everyone went home, Ella got to stay and spend the night!  Dillon wanted to sleep in with them too so we had to pull in the crib mattress so he had somewhere to sleep!  They had a great time, though they didn't actually fall asleep until almost 11.

In the morning we had cinnamon rolls because that was Kayda's request.  Then we went down the hill to watch "Tangled" it just started showing this week and we thought it would be fun.  We ended up watching the 3D one which Kayda really thought was cool.  We had both sets of Grandparents, Baba, Ella, Jarrett and Aileena with us.  We took up the majority of a row in the theater!  Afterwards we headed to Red Robin because it's Kayda's favorite restaurant. 

 She loved being sung too!

 Then it was back home for cupcakes and presents! 

She gave everybody hugs after opening her gifts.  I got pictures but most of them you can't see faces!  Thank you everybody for her gifts she said this was "My best birthday EVER!" while enthusiastically jumping up and down!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had snow this Thanksgiving, so it felt more like Christmas.  The kiddos went outside and played with Daddy in the snow while I made some things for dinner.  They had a great time having a snowball fight!

After that we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa H's house to have dinner with everyone.  Though we didn't take any pictures.

A little early but...

Well, I don't think we will ever have our Christmas shopping done early but we decided to get Santa pictures done and taken care of well before the Christmas rush.  So today we all went down to see Santa!  We were able to walk right up and sit on Santa's lap, no lines!  The kids were excited to see him but Dillon still wasn't too excited.  Though this year was way better than last year when Dillon burst into tears!  Kayda loves her "smile" but we couldn't really get Dillon to do anything. 

Afterwards the kiddos got to ride the carousel, and we browsed toy stores to add ideas to the kids "lists".  On the way home Kayda was explaining to Dillon, including hand gestures, that he "have be very good so Santa brings presents".  Then for some reason she decided that "Dillon not being good.  Santa not bring any presents." She then started crying.  We had to explain to her that she and Dillon are both very good all the time so they just need to keep being nice to eachother and doing what Mommy and Daddy ask for Santa to bring presents.  We also made sure that she knew that when they met Santa he was "very impressed" so he would be bringing presents for sure. 

Send off for Aunt Kirsten, Uncle Ranen, Mason and Owen!

Aunt Kirsten, Uncle Ranen, Mason and Owen are going to be leaving for Wisconsin right after Christmas.  Which means the last time we will see them for however long is this week.  Since both Kayda and Dillon's birthdays are in the next month and a half and Christmas is a month away.  We went ahead and celebrated Thanskgiving, Kayda's birthday, Christmas, and Dillon's birthday all in one family bash.  We were missing Uncle Justin unfortunately but we'll see him at Chrismtas time.  Getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner.

Celebrating all the gift giving occasions. 

The four cousins (on my side)

The next day we got a wonderful suprise... SNOW!

Happy Halloween!!!

We had one weekend between Disneyland and Halloween so we figured we'd go to the pumpkin patch then.  The only problem with that is it poured the whole weekend.  We were resigned to the fact that we would have to go to the grocery store to get our pumpkins this year.  Well Wednesday rolled around, it was a nice day and we had time so I asked Kayda if she wanted to go to the store to get her pumpkin.  She told me "No let's go to the pumpkin patch, not the one far away, the one closer."  So I called Daddy and he was fortunately able to take his lunch to go with us to the pumpkin patch just down the road from his office. 

 

 Ready?  LIFT!  Kayda had to have a "giant" pumpkin (she got the largest out of all of us) and Dillon was the exact opposite.  If he couldn't pick the pumpkin up, he didn't want it.

 We've come up with all kinds of excuses to wear our costumes this year.  Thursday both kids got to wear their costumes to their schools.  Friday we put them on again to go visit Daddy at work and then of course Halloween on Sunday.  Dillon chose Buzz Lightyear and of course we had to have the wings, Kayda chose a kitty cat.

 Here's our pumpkin carving.  Kayda was hands on, Dillon did NOT like the gooey insides at all.  I drew different types of eyes, noses and mouths for the kids and they each chose the pieces they wanted on their pumpkins, then Mommy drew it on and Daddy carved it out (both of them want Daddy to do everything right now).

 Going to visit Papa G.

 After Papa G we headed off for dinner with Grandma and Papa H.  Turns out Ella was a kitty cat too, Kayda thought it was fantastic to have someone to "meow" with.

 Here are all the costumes!

Found another cousin!  He's loving Dillon's Buzz wings!

 The eldest cousin, poor guys getting too old to costume up.  Unfortunately for Nathan he still has to be in the blog!

 About to take off for trick or treating!

 Kayda and Dillon's pumpkins. 

 Mommy and Daddy's pumpkins.  Kayda and Dillon chose our pumpkins for us this year, mine wouldn't stand up so I worked with what I had! 

On another note entirely.  IT has definitely been feeling like autumn and we had three days in a row we made a fire for the second half of the day.  We decided one day to make it a fire and a movie afternoon.  The kids loved laying out in front of the fire and watching a movie. 

 Daddy found Dillon and Kayda playing like this in the hall on Friday.  They played together for a couple hours having a grand old time!