Kari Turns FOUR!

Our Kari-belle is FOUR!  And to mark this big event in our little girl's life, we decided to celebrate for a whole week!  (Truthfully, her birthday fell on a Wednesday which is a busy day/night for us and so we had family over on a Sunday evening, opened presents with "just us" on Wednesday night, and then her party the following Saturday.)  But we loved it b/c we love this fancy little girl!

Sunday night, we had the family over for cake and presents.  Kari wanted a Nutcracker cake.  Normally, I would have been brave and attempted to do it myself.  But, with a busy week and lots to do, I decided to delegate the task to a nice baker we have gotten to know at Target.  She did such a great job too!  (I still prefer the taste of a homemade cake, but it sure was a time and sanity saver!)

 Decorations for this evening were pretty simple.  I used some of the decor that we were going to use for her party and then added some pictures of our sweet girl through the years!

Soon it was time for Kari's favorite part, the presents!  She got quite a few cute clothes and jewelry.  She was very excited!

 Once the gifts had been unwrapped it was time for cake.  Make a wish!

 Wednesday came around soon enough (or not soon enough for Kari) and it was THE BIRTHDAY!  Kari donned one of her cute new outfits and soaked up all the attention!

Little sis just had to get in the shot :-)

Look at those little cheeks!  Sooo cute!

 I took the girls to story time at the library where we sang, danced, and they even sang, "Happy Birthday" to Kari!

She was practicing some of her dancing moves!

 Later that evening, the party continued and Kari opened the gifts that we had bought her.

 Emily had even used some of her own money to buy Kari a Rapunzel head that you can style her hair!  So thoughtful :-).

Christian got Kari a soccer ball

It was such a fun birthday for our little Kari.  She's growing up so quickly, it's hard to believe that she's already four!  We love her so much!

Ice Skating

Over break we also went ice skating!  A local ice arena had free skating through January!  SUCH a great deal!  Of course, the whole family wanted to go--Juliana does not like to be left out of anything these days :-).  The big kids got to try out their new ice skates and my mom had found some old strap-on ice skates that we used for Juliana.  She was so excited!

 Grandma was a popular skating partner!

Emily liked practicing her cross-overs

 Christian likes to ham it up!

 Family fun at it's finest!

New Years!

 Oh my goodness!  New Year's Eve was sooo fun!  Cubby and I haven't been out on New Year's Eve since we chaperoned a youth dance all the way back when we were engaged!!  In the years since, we either stayed in with his family, or my family, or we've had babies and just been too dang tired to make the effort.  This year, though, we were determined to get out and I'm so glad we did!  Grandma and Grandpa offered to hold down the fort and played games with the big kids so they had fun too :-).

 Cubby and some of his friends that he plays basketball with actually put the evening together!  No planning on my part=AWESOME.  We went to a restaurant called, "Bravo," which, was delicious!  I think we must have been there for 3 hours!  At long last, we headed to one of our friend's home and kept the party going by firing up the deep fryer and experimented with deep-friend twinkies, candy bars, and oreo cookies.  I was thoroughly grossed out...until I tried one.  Super yummy, but definitely just a once-a-year type of a thing for this girl!

After the fat-frying was done, the boys went downstairs to play ping pong and the girls got to hang out and talk.  The guys did break to come up for their midnight kisses though!

Thanks, guys, for putting together such a fun night!

Happy New Year!

Christmas Day 2013

 Whoa.  Christmas Day.  (And only a month late!)  Christmas Day with small children is more of a whirlwind of wonderful chaos than anything else.  The kids let us sleep until about 6:30 (pretty good, considering we'd be up before 5 when I was a kid!).  Everyone enjoyed seeing what Santa had brought them (Santa doesn't typically wrap his gift to the kids) and then we all loved opening the gifts that we'd gotten for one another!

By the end of the morning, everyone felt like Kari's face in the picture below :-).  Here are a few of the other pictures of Christmas morning:

Juliana showing off her new dress and boots

Now sporting her new headband, dress up shoes, Rapunzel doll, and soccer ball.

The big girls in their new dresses, working on their new Lego sets

Christian, working on his new Legos

We may have over done it with the ornaments this year...

Here are a couple of my favorite pictures...Santa brought Kari this wall-based Polly Pocket world.  At first, she wasn't quite sure what to think of it.  Luckily, big sister Emily came to the rescue and knew exactly what to do and the girls had so much fun playing with it throughout the day.

Later, after naps, we hosted Christmas Day pizza dinner with the rest of the family and even more present unwrapping ensued.  It was a wonderful Christmas and we were so fortunate to have been able to spend it together, all healthy, and with love.

Christmas Break

This Christmas break was a lot of fun!  Cubby was off all but two days and it made the break very enjoyable!  We took the kiddos out to do some fun stuff.

 A few months ago we bought a Groupon deal for "glow in the dark" putt-putt golf.  From an adult's point of view it was pretty lame, but the kids loved it!  Juliana was especially excited to be out and about with all of the "big kids."










Grandma and Grandpa Lindseth also came into town both before and during Christmas break.  They were driving to visit the Lindseths of Utah and Nebraska just happened to be the perfect stopping point!

They were only able to stay for a day on either end, but we love seeing them regardless of how long!

The kids waving good-bye to Gma and Gpa :)

 Another day we met some friends at this huge indoor playground and let the kids run off some of their energy!  They moved so fast that it was tough to get any still shots of them!

Once a month, the planetarium at the local campus has a star show.  We have been wanting to take the kids for months, but something would always come up the weekend of the show.  Finally, the stars aligned (forgive the pun) and we were able to go!  The big kids loved it and found it really interesting.  The little girls?  Well, Kari did okay...got a little antsy, but made it the hour.  Juliana?  Try asking a toddler to sit in the dark and look up at a bunch of "stars" for an hour and listen to someone talk about them.  Hmmm...not so much.  We ended up walking around and looking at the cool science stuff they had there.

One of the displays the kids liked was one of a collection of geodes for sale.  They ranged in price, starting at just .65!  So, next time, we will take the big kids and they can bring along their wallets!

Overall, it was a great break.  (Have I mentioned that having Cubby home for most of it really helped to make it great??)  Love our little family life!