March 26

Dear Harper, Harper-girl, Harper-lo, Lolo, Lowly, Lowly-worms, 

March 26, 2013 you turned FOUR years old!  What a four years it has been, Lolo.  You are such a fun, spirited little girl who is CONSTANTLY keeping us on our toes.  You are finally showing little glimpses of the 'big girl' you are going to be soon (ie, giving us a glimmer of hope that the last of our family's screaming-toddler years are behind us).  

Harper, you are the FUNNEST little one.  No matter where we are, or what we are doing, you can always find something to do.  One of your favorite things to do right now is dig around in the fridge for a snack and sneak it upstairs while mommy is folding laundry.  Some favorite snacks that we have found upstairs with you?  Butter, a jar of grape jelly with a spoon, apples, grapes, entire containers of strawberries, packages of lunchmeat, and lunchbox filled with granola bars and food coloring.  

You go to a new preschool twice a week this year, and you love it!  You know how to spell your name and sign with an 'H'.  You have been, thankfully, fully potty trained for a while now, and still bear a strong resemblance to your mommy and brother Dane-o.  Your best friend in the world is Emerson, and you want to wear a dress every day.  When you're not in your swimsuit, that is.

For your fourth birthday, we kept it pretty low-key this year.  Several weeks before, when we asked you what you wanted for your birthday, you IMMEDIATELY, without hesitation, exclaimed, "Unicorn Stomp-eez!"  Yup.  Those As Seen On TV slippers for kids that feature animals that open their eyes when you walk in them.  Ummm, okay.  You were pretty excited to open your Stomp-eez:

After you blew out candles with your fellow birthday girl 

(birthday Momo was at her house this year)

you opened up the new twirly dress that Daddy and Mommy got for you.  

You love a good twirly dress.

After enjoying cake and present-opening, we headed out with your good friend Reed to Build-A-Bear.  You picked out a pink Hello Kitty animal

And you, Reed, and Emerson had a big time stuffing and cleaning your animals at the drying station.  Aidan and Dane served as Bear Assistants this year.

Happy birthday, my sweet Harper-girl!

Spring Break

Brandon was out of town over Spring Break (such is the glamorous life of youth ministry) and the kids and I were on our own for the whole week.  After the Stomach Bug of 2013 finally left our house on Tuesday of Spring Break, we spent a day at our favorite little park.  The kids (and by 'kids', I mean Harper) are finally at an age where they're a little easier to take out on my own.  For the past several years our brood has been a two-man job, at least for me anyway.

This little girl enjoyed the PERFECT Spring Break weather

Oh, the popped hip.  In almost every picture :)

The ever-present sister picture:

Speaking of The Sister, I apparently have decided that she is at a very photogenic age.  I have quite a few pictures of just her.  On our walk around the little lake, she found something pink and SUPER sparkly on the path:

She was SO excited!  "Mommy!  I found a super sparkly pink worm with no head!"  It was the find of a lifetime.

It was a fishing lure.  In unrelated news, we're in the painful process of growing out her bangs, and pictures like these make me want to trim them again and keep her hair like this forever.

Any guesses as to what motivated all four of my kiddos to sit down in the middle of our walk and stare intently?

Sleeping ducks, of course.

We did other super-fun stuff during our daddy-less Spring Break, but I was too distracted by the stale cigarette/stinky foot smell at the bowling alley to take any pictures.

I Heart February

In a lame attempt to get caught up on blogging (Hi, Dad!), I'm just going to, hopefully, spend this next week dumping pictures on the blog with very thoughtful explanations like "We did backyard camping in February.  It was fun.  It wasn't too cold.  I promise Dane was there too, even though I didn't get any pictures of him.  Because when you're nine years old, you're too cool to think things are super-fun even when they are, and you think mom taking pictures is lame-o."

But I have a couple of kiddos who have never met a camera they didn't like:

And this girl...

Oh, Harper-Lo.

I'm not sure where Emmy got this pose,

but it was soon copied by her best friend in the whole wide world,

And then we roasted weenies in the chimnea, before the girls and I headed inside and the boys spent the whole night sleeping in the tent and peeing by the fence.

Now if I can only remember what we did in March...