Celebrating Four

we had a full day of birthday celebration on wednesday! here are the highlights:

jake and i wanted to do something special to celebrate Bella’s big day, so we decided to take her to get her ears pierced!! she was thrilled!

she picked out some little pearls…

and the sweet ladies at the jewelers went to work!

i had told Bella that it would pinch just for a minute….

she was just so excited! but i think the pinch surprised her anyway. these following pictures kinda break my heart:

but she recovered quickly, and soon fell in love with her new look!

we were all very happy with our decision!

we then took her to her favorite yogurt shop:

where she entertained us with a little birthday dance:

we picked up Bubba from school, and she was so excited to show off her new earrings.

i think she likes them!

she went to her ballet class, where we shared cookies as she was serenaded by her fellow ballerinas:

then the fam went to a special dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. once again, the crazies provided us with some lovely dinner entertainment. this time it was a duet with s&p shaker microphones:

Bella had her fair share of treats for her b-day, and was brought a very special mini ice cream sundae by the waitstaff:

before coming home to her much requested strawberry cupcakes.

i tried this recipe for the first time, making a few changes. in my opinion, not the best, but i had a few people disagree with me! the recipe is here if you are interested. (i used cake flour instead of all purpose, and i cooked down the puree over low heat until thickened to intensify the flavors. i also doubled the amount of puree i used.)

the Big Four Year Old:

it was a fun day, full of celebration! we’ll continue tomorrow with her Bug Party, and i’ll be sure to come back with all the details!!

on a side note, Canaan Boy was in his first play at school yesterday. it was adorable…and i hope i get to experience many many more plays like it! there’s nothing quite like a bunch of sweet kiddos voices, unashamedly belting out songs about the jungle!

of course, what’s a performance without a little treat afterwards? (pretty sure my kids have been on a sugar overload the past few days!)

and…you must’ve guessed, but March Madness is in full swing around these parts. this was our set up last night as we hosted a bunch of friends…big screen, IPad, and IPhone. glad my friends have cool technology toys so that we could enjoy 3 games at once!

GO GATORS!!!

can’t wait to show you Bug Party details, so check back!