My Baby Just Turned Four!

How is this possible? As trite as this sounds, it really does seem like just yesterday that we brought her home from the hospital and she's been our little princess ever since. There are so many things to love about our Brielle --- here's just a few of our favorites....

Brielle is always my number one helper. She adores laundry. She got roped into picking rocks out of the corral on her birthday and kept exclaiming, "This is so great! I love my birthday!" (making the rest of us look really really bad!) She can usually be heard saying "oh, I'll get that for ya" or "just let me do it". Her willingness to serve blesses our lives on a daily basis.

This kid is a snuggler. She is so full of love and usually more than willing to share. Occasionally she runs out of hugs and kisses, but she usually manages to discover a few she's got hidden around the house before we feel their absence too keenly.

I love how vocal she is. She has no idea that she is not actually twenty five and her vocabulary reflects that. Each day brings a new phrase that we can believe we actually heard from her lips. It's constant entertainment.

She adores her siblings and would do almost anything for them. We often discover her cleaning someone else's room so that they'll have time to play with her, and she'd follow her big sister anywhere!

I love how well-rounded she is. She is such a girly-girl -- crazy about cute clothes and make up and anything princess, but she'll get down and dirty outside with her brothers and she adores her dad's motorcycle!

Now, onto partytime! Brielle has been completely determined, for months now, to have a pink and purple princess party. We kicked it off by delivering these little purses to her friends, with invitations inside.

She chose a lavender tablecloth with pink and purple accents. I made these little paper "glass slippers" and filled them with links so that they could make their own necklaces or bracelets while they ate.

Since I SO don't do cake decorating, I printed princess cupcake toppers and stuck them in cupcakes (chocolate of course!) with lavender icing and pink sprinkles.
I think my favorite party decoration were the pom poms I made to hang from the ceiling. If you find them hanging in my home, different colors for every season, don't judge me. They just made me happy!

When her friends arrived, I had a stand waiting with homemade princess scepters and tiaras with their names on them. I also set out a bunch of dress ups in case anyone wanted to add to their princess attire.

First, we played "pin the tiara on the princess". Then we decided to cut right to all the sugar. We had to have the party just before dinnertime, so I kept it fairly simple with cupcakes and princess punch.

The jewels were a huge hit!

Then it was time for pictures and presents.

I love how tiny she looks surrounded by all her friends. She acted completely overwhelmed when she opened each present and LOVED everything she got!

Including this adorable beach umbrella, which the girls promptly begged to try out!

Then we played a princess treasure hung game with clues like "If Sleeping Beauty came to stay at Brielle's house, where would we find her?" I made it up that morning and was astonished by it's success. The "treasure" was the goody bags that Brielle had to give out to her friends. I'm so mad that I forgot to get a picture of that because it was her favorite part of the whole day!

We spent the remainder of the afternoon reading princess stories while they examined their treasure (This is when I discovered that getting kids to sit still while you read to them is simple if you just give them a ring pop!) and coloring in Brielle's new princess coloring kit!

Easter

I know. Easter isn't exactly a recent event anymore, but it's so tough to blog about the pinnacle of spring when it is totally FREEZING outside! Plus, the real kicker is that my children are experts at evading the super sweet-all-the-kids-standing-together-in-their-Easter-clothes-looking-adorable-picture. I even contemplated faking it the next week, but they've eluded me once again and so I must press on ....
We did manage to have some fun painting eggs with our friends... ...we didn't quite have time to pull out my fancy silk ties, but we managed to create several pink and purple eggs, along with a seriously alarming plethora of Bronco inspired eggs.

On Sunday, we rushed home for dinner and the annual egg hunt at a friends' house. Notice the utter lack of formal attire, mere minutes after leaving church! (sigh!)

Because Brielle so admires the camera, and NO ONE else does! I manged to capture this shot of Brielle helping Kutter find more eggs ... can you tell that he is sOOO not amused that little sis is giving him pointers?

That's all for now, because picnik has decided to hate my guts, but I'm on it ---- ok, so I'll probably give up and just post a couple blurry, uncropped pics in a couple days!