Jessica's 3rd Birthday Party

Yesterday we celebrated Jessica's 3rd birthday with a big party at home.


She chose confetti cake mix and white frosting. She was so proud to be able to help frost her very own cake.



After lunch we opened presents from family. Here's the birthday girl! She's wearing Katie's flower girl dress from Auntie Mary's wedding, isn't it adorable?



Katie and Megan hovered over her the whole time, always ready to "help." Katie actually did help by reading each of the cards aloud to her.




One of Katie's gifts was this My Little Pony. Katie also made lots of paper art presents - a bookmark, a doorknob hanger, a tiny book, and a bouquet of flowers.




Auntie Erin sent a fabulous outfit with all of the accessories! Here are the fancy sandals.

Jessi loves these shades!

Hair clips from Auntie Erin. We didn't get a good pic of the dress, but know that she loves it! She said she will wear it to preschool!

Jessi loves to give Katie 'monkey hugs' like this one. She basically jumps up on Katie and wraps her legs around her. Katie loves it!

We got her a scooter, since she's always asking to borrow Katie's or Megan's scooter. All day she kept telling people, "I got my very own scooter!" She loves it!

Here is her finished cake! Pretty fancy, huh? She wanted a My Little Pony cake, and I was drawing a blank on how to do that with my rookie cake-decorating skills, so I had the idea to make a plain old cake but put lots of ponies on and around it. I think it turned out great!

We had a big crowd at our party: 13 kids and 11 adults! There were three other kiddos Jessi's age, Kristen, Matthew, and Danny. Their siblings were all invited, too. Here are some of the kids.

Here are more kids.

Another shot of kids. Chris made the most amazing BBQ chicken, and we also had hot dogs, baked beans, garlic bread, sweet corn, salad, fruit salad, and a veggie tray. It took us all day Sunday to prep all of that food!

Here's the birthday girl, ready to sing Happy Birthday to herself!

She blew out all of her candles!

Here's Jessica showing off her present from Danny, Jimmy, and Abby. Danny will be in Jessi's preschool class, and Abby will be in Megan's kindergarten class. Jimmy also goes to Holy Family, but is going into 5th grade.

I meant to take pictures of Jessi with each family, but forgot to take any more than this one. Oh, well!

After the party, Mom & Dad C. drove the three girls down to Ohio - they are keeping the girls all week long!! Mom is posting updates on her blog. I am really enjoying the peace and quiet, and have been busy tackling a big project - transforming Megan's bedroom from an outdated office into a cute little girl's room. Today I stripped the wallpaper, and Chris took down all of the fixtures and the chair rail. Tomorrow I'll wash the last of the glue off the walls, and will spackle. Wednesday is priming and painting day! I hope to get her room painted and re-decorated by Friday morning! That's when we're going to pick the girls up in Ohio, and drive to Wheaton.

If you want to call Jessica tomorrow on her actual birthday (Tues 8/24), call Mom C's cell. Email me if you don't have her number...I don't think I should post it here. Happy Birthday, Jessica!

Higgins Lake trip

This past Monday, I took the girls 'up north' for a few days' vacation with a friend and her kiddos. Our friend Shari's parents have a cottage near Higgins Lake, so we had a nice place to stay, cook, shower, etc. Plus, they have a pontoon boat and took us out on the lake every day!



Here's Jessi driving with Papa Bauer.



Here's Katie tubing with friends Rylen and Evan.



Megan got a long turn to drive the boat. She could actually see over the dash and steer places on purpose!



This is Megan, Evan, and Katie in the tube. Megan wasn't so fond of it. Katie stayed in the tube nearly the whole time we were on the lake!

Here are the kids playing at the North Higgins Lake State Park beach. We anchored the pontoon boat just to the side of the swimming area, where it was waist deep, and walked into shore to enjoy the beach. The kids built dozens of sand castles, drip castles, and swimming pools. We also enjoyed the state park's flush toilets - since Jessi refused to pee in the lake! Hee hee! The quirks of a potty-trained kid...

The Bauers had this contraption they called a water scooter, a little self-propelled dealy. The kids loved it! They could just hold on and float all over the place! Here's Katie trying it out.

The kids floated around on these mats, using the scooter to float all around. We stayed at the beach from about 10am-5pm every day. We had a cooler each for food and for drinks. We reapplied sunscreen but the girls still got a little burned, esp Katie.

Here are all five kiddos, winding down before bedtime, watching Ice Age 3. The garage at the cottage was set-up as a kind of mother-in-law suite, with a futon couch, a huge flatscreen TV with DVD player and Wii, a bathroom with a shower, tables for scrapbooking (Shari & her mom worked on their scrapbooks), two fridges, and two bunk beds. A huge screen covered the garage door, so there were no bugs at all. We slept out in the garage and had everything we needed!

Megan and I got another turn to drive. Katie is tubing behind us.

This is what it looked like every day when we drove back to the dock...Jessi and Megan passed out on me! It was so cute! Katie is actually awake, her eyes are just closed in this pic.




Here's a pic from today, with Megan on the tagalong behind Chris. She was really scared of it at first, since it doesn't have training wheels. But as soon as she took just one little spin around the block, she LOVED it! We did a ton of biking tonight, and as soon as we got home, she asked if we can go on a bike ride every single night!

July fun

I found tons of pics from last month that I forgot to post...so enjoy!



One night Chris got ambitious and made us sushi for dinner! Everyone thought his California rolls were great, except for Megan. See her pouting?



We've had lots of fun playdates with friends this summer. The girls got particularly chalk-covered on this day! They made "paint" by mixing water and sidewalk chalk, then painted their hands and feet, and made prints everywhere. It took a few rains to get this mess off!



Twice this summer I took the girls to the city's Wet & Wild Wednesdays at Van Hoosen Museum. Here are Jessica and Katie going down the big slip-n-slide together.



Wet kids at the bottom of the slip-n-slide.

Katie and Jessica tried it head-first on their next trip down!

Megan went down feet-first.

After a while, we migrated over to the fire hose. It looks like mist, but this water was coming down HARD! We were drenched!

Then we started playing in Stoney Creek. The girls were posing like crazy, so I got lots of pics of the little sweethearts. Here are Megan and Jessica.

Here's Katie with Jessica.

And here are the three beautiful girls!

Mostly they played around in the river, wading, moving rocks, sliding down the little waterfalls, finding crayfish, etc etc. here are Megan and Jessica being "mermaids" in the water.

Another day I took the girls to the Cranbrook Science Institute. Here they are with the Stegosaurus outside the museum.

Look what I found in this geode! A Megan!

Here's Katie with some cool crystals.

And Jessi with a random rock. The girls really loved the rocks and minerals section of the museum this time. They kept saying, "This one is my favorite! No, this one is my favorite! Mom, you've GOT to see this one!" We spent most of our time there!

Then we went to the special exhibit on dinosaurs. Uncle Justin would have loved it there! Here is Jessi standing next to a dinosaur leg bone.

Megan in front of an Allosaurus (Katie's favorite dinosaur).

Megan in front of a cool fossil of dinosaurs fighting! See it?

Megan by a dinosaur like the one she saw on "Dinosaur Train" (PBS TV show) earlier in the week.

Katie in front of yet another dinosaur. There were so many, and we could get so close to them!

Later that day, we had family movie night (Pinocchio) since it was raining. Suddenly it got really sunny while raining, so we raced outside to find the rainbow. Lucky us, we saw a double rainbow! The girls played outside in the light rain for a while, enjoying the rare and beautiful view.

One night, on our walk home from DQ, Jessi took a spill on the street. Her face was unscathed except for her forehead! Poor baby! This is from the next morning, when the goose egg had gone down.

Jessica is jealous of Katie's new chore - vacuuming. So we let her take a turn with the vacuum cleaner sometimes.

At the end of the month, Chris bought a fancy used mountain bike. We've been biking a ton as a family ever since then! Katie and Megan ride their own bikes, and Jessi rides in a seat behind me. The rides are only as fast as the smallest legs, though, so today we bought a tagalong off Craigslist so Megan can have a seat and pedal behind Chris. We're off to test it out right now! Pics coming soon.