A Birthday Weekend

I’ll save the sappy “my baby is FOUR” stuff for another post, and instead just overload you with cute pictures.

This is Mallory after school on Friday. Rick & his mom picked her up from school and Mallory was SO EXCITED that Grandma was picking her up (but not as excited as she would have been if she’d been picked up at nap time, since that is when Alli’s grandma & grandpa pick her up when they come to visit…)

Saturday was the actual BIG DAY and she woke up to a bunch of balloons outside her door. She came to find me (Rick had already left for work…see previous post) and asked “are those my birthday present?” and “who got those for me?”. She went on to tell me that she LOVED it and that her favorite was the purple one and the pink one and the number four one (which meant she liked all three in the bunch…).

On the BIRTHDAY PARTY TAILGATE! It was FREEZING. Like SO COLD. Argh. We had the heater going but it was still freezing. The kids ate about five donuts each and would have kept wanting more had we not hidden the bags. (Nice that my dad’s bottom is in both of these pictures…)

Our attempt at candid family photo. Mallory was hopped up on sugar, and Carson’s coat was too big but Rick & I look nice!

After the super-exciting game (Wahoo! Bowl eligible!) we came home to celebrate Mallory’s birthday. She got fancy new jewelry (this picture doesn’t do the jewelry justice, but she was flipping the bird in the others so we’ll just show these).

Carson was doing his “ready, set, GOOO!!!” running from one end of the living room to the family room. How cute is that kid?

This was so funny. After pulling off the wrapping paper, she still had the box to open (as opposed to other presents where you pull off the wrapping paper and then it’s just the present), and she said “ooooh! a BOX!”

Then it was cake time. I won’t share the video Rick took of us singing because once I put the cake in front of her, she started to blow out the candles and I had to tell her to wait and then I relit the candles so I could take pictures of her blowing out the candles, and I can’t share it because I sound ridiculous telling her not to blow out the candles until I had my camera ready!

I think she had a good day turning four. She got a pink fish tank with a purple fish (that she named Julia), a Leap reading system thing (with a Fancy Nancy book), some dresses and tights (so she can wear dresses every single day), a computer from Nina & Papa (really it’s a VTech Mobigo thing – has a touch screen and a keypad – she is in heaven), an Ariel Barbie for the bathtub, a big Fancy Nancy sticker book, a learning clock (we’ll see if it helps keep her in bed longer on the weekends), a neat princess wall hanging thing that Grandma made, a pink soccer ball from Rick, and a pottery wheel from Grandpa (sounds like a GREAT project to do at Grandpa’s house…).

We are doing a family birthday party this afternoon at my dad’s since Emily’s birthday was last month, and Gigi’s was on Thursday. We are deep frying a turkey – I can’t wait! I could eat thanksgiving food every day of the year.

Come back soon for a full birthday update!