My baby turned 3

This little lady has been talking about her birthday for months.  When it was Christmas and we talked about how we were celebrating Jesus' birthday, she would get a bit upset and say, "Hey!  What about my birthday?"  She is such a fun little girl and has a pretty quick mind.  Her favorites are:

the color pink

chocolate

Bubble Guppies (tv show)

Daddy and Will

ballerinas and anything girlie

Grandma Curtis sent her a package in the mail, she was really excited about the socks and insists on wearing the butterfly socks whenever possible.  She got her favorite pony to do her hair too, thanks Grandma!

Will gave her another pony, which you can see she was happy about.  Sometimes I wish I would have kept my old toys...she would have had a lot of ponies!

We surprised her by filling her room with balloons in the morning, but she was very vocal about getting them out of her room right away and that her floor had to be clean (I think I'll find her eagerness to be tidy helpful later in life).  But she didn't mind getting all wrapped up in crepe paper!

We took her to All Aboard Diner for lunch and she was in heaven.  Even little girlie girls like trains.

And cupcakes

I think Will was just excited to ride the train as Cora, but I don't think she would have done it on her own.

I'm so grateful that we have this special little ray of sunshine in our lives.  She truly is a sweetheart!

Plunging Into a New Year Polar Bear Style!

We were able to have one of our good friends who just moved stay with us for a couple of days while he finished up his last couple days of work.  We spent New Years Eve doing "minute to win it".  The kids loved it, and actually so did we!

The score was close, but Kevin ended up winning Jeremy by 3 points.

Trying to get psyched to jump into the lake.

Cora cried the whole time we were there because she wanted to go swimming.  Poor thing didn't understand how cold the water was.  I was worried she would jump in, but thankfully she didn't.

As it turns out, we should have been worried about this kid getting in.  At least he left his clothes on.

Boys getting ready to jump in and me realizing that our camera was dead.  Thank goodness for phones!

Jeremy and Kevin booking it back.

Nailed it!

And I didn't die either.  I should be able to conquer anything now.

Christmas!

Jeremy was gone for 3 of the last 4 1/2 months, it was rough.  He would be gone for a month, and just when we got into the swing of things he would be able to come home for 3 weeks and we'd have to start the whole process over again.  This was probably one of the roughest few months ever for me and the kiddos, plus during the last time we found out that we would be having 2 of our close friends move away.  Needless to say, I was a little down.  However, Jeremy was able to come home 10 days before Christmas and turned things around.  A couple of days after he'd been home, I looked back at the past few months and it made me so grateful for all of the friends and family that helped us get through it all.  And made me so grateful to have a husband who is so missed when he is gone.  It really put me into the Christmas spirit and made everything seem more magical.  Christmas is magical anyway when you have a 6 and almost 3 year old!

Love these two.

Cora's happy reunion with Dad, and Will's happy reunion with Dad's iPad.

I think Cora ate half the candy. 

And Will ate half the frosting.

We left it down where the kids could get at it and it was pretty much demolished within a couple days.

We also did our traditional trip to the Christkindlemarket downtown.  It was so fun because for some reason it was not crowded at all.

The kids wrote a last letter to Santa at Marshall Fields.

And we got to eat underneath their famous Christmas tree in the Walnut Room.  It was magical.  They had fairies that came and had kids make special wishes.  Cora wouldn't wash off the glitter they put on her for a couple days.  Will wiped it off immediately.

Opening a present Christmas Eve.

Oh, a new blanket!

My mom made these two new blankets for Christmas this year.  It was perfect, they got to snuggle and won't fight over my holy and worn out one my mom made me 13 years ago.

Opening Christmas socks!  We didn't get any more pictures after this...we were too busy having fun!

Later that evening we were able to have a couple of families over for dinner.  Since our kids are older now, they just played while we got to play a competitive game of Ligretto.  It was so fun, and our kids had a blast too.