Welcome 2016! It's going to be an amazing year for us, I can already tell ;-0 Obviously we are anticipating the arrival of baby boy Segool in April, but we are also in the midst of a spectacularly fun stage with Lilly!
January track out is long and it can be hard to keep ourselves occupied when the weather isn't cooperating. Luckily, we had some great things going on and the best friends in the world to share so many wonderful memories with.
We started the month with Addie and Drew's birthday party. It was a little chilly, but an overall nice day so the kids went out to play for a little while. Addie and Allie are 8 and Lilly is 3, yet they still are so great at including her and playing with her. From the time she was just an infant, the older kids have been just amazing with Lilly and we are so grateful. I am also so happy that she has these amazing young ladies as her role models because they are the sweetest girls ever.
Lilly was in heaven because dessert was an ice cream sundae bar! Lilly loves ice cream (just like her mama!) so this was a huge treat for her.
After ice cream, the girls sat around the table and painted each other's nails with Addie's new nail set and then Lilly and Kristin were playing together. I missed most of this in the video, but they cuddled up on the recliner together and Lilly "read" a book to Kristin. We could hear her from the kitchen, but by the time I started recording, the moment was ending. Oh well!
There are times that Darren feels like Lilly favors me over him. I think all kids go through stages where they want one parent more than the other, but I know this would be hard for me if the situation were reversed. When Lilly and Darren are spending time together, she is always having the absolute time of her life. No one can make her laugh quite like Daddy!
Track out would not be complete without a trip to Marbles! We were excited to meet Amber, Grace, Jace and baby Braxton out at Marbles for a special play date! Lilly was SO happy! She loves Marbles and was on cloud 9 to be there with her friends. We spent quite a bit of time taking care of all of the animals in the money room. Lilly lined up bowls of food for all of the dogs and cats and took care of them. It was so cute to watch!
Lilly was very proud of herself for climbing across these cylinders all by herself! She had me hold her hand the first time and then was ready to do it on her own. She went back and forth at least 10 times!
When we went downstairs, Amber and I could hardly keep up with how many different stations they were getting into. Lilly practiced her future career as a doctor ;-)
The girls tried on about 10 costumes each and then got ready to put on a show for us. They were absolutely loving it! A few other kids joined in the show and I was so proud of all of them for working together, sharing and just being kind and sweet.
The day that Lilly can actually take over the grocery shopping will be amazing!
How cute are these two little doctors-in-the-making?? They each made sure they had a baby to take care of and they were so sweet and gentle with the dolls. Then they took turns "calling" 911 on the pretend phone.
We were so excited that Uncle Dan came to visit! Living far away from our families is hard, so we are so thankful when they come to visit. This was Dan's first visit to our house in NC, so it was very special. I absolutely LOVED watching he and Lilly play! She warmed up to him quickly and had a great time showing him her toys, drawing pictures with him and reading stories. It was also great for Darren and I to get to spend time with Dan as well.
We took Dan to one of our favorite local restaurants, The Meeting Corner, and introduced him to Puerto Rican food. Lilly isn't always great in restaurants, but she did great! Dan even managed to snap this picture of our little peanut :-)
Dan brought Lilly some new play doh to go along with the play doh he got her for Christmas. She was over-the-moon excited! Her favorite thing was to use the press and make "spaghetti" to serve to all of us. We all got in the fun :-)
We had such an amazing time with Uncle Dan! We were sad to see him go but know we'll see him again soon.
Kari, Kelly and I took Lilly, Addy, Zoey and Miles to Defying Gravity to bounce for a while. Lilly really likes the regular trampolines and to climb up the trampoline slide,but she wasn't too keen on the foam pits or obstacle courses. At one point she slipped and got a trampoline burn, but once we got a band-aid (it's amazing the healing powers of a band aid!) she was fine and jumping again. :-) We treated the kids to Chick-fil-A at the mall afterward and then took them to the indoor play place there as well.
While we were away, Darren was very productive and repainted the downstairs bathroom! Yay! No more neon green walls :-)
We had Antonia, Matt, Joey and Christopher over for brunch on Sunday, which was so much fun! We hadn't seen them in so long and it was great to catch up! Lilly was a little standoffish with Joey at first, but they warmed up and had fun playing. After we ate the kids all watched a little of a movie while the adults talked and cleaned up. It was so great to see them!
My heart gets so full when I watch Lilly playing with her baby dolls now. I just picture her with her baby brother and think about how amazing she is going to be with him. Lilly was taking time to check out her baby and make sure she was healthy and then rocked her in her arms and told her she would be ok. I could have been a puddle on the floor!
I took Lilly and Zoey to BounceU for a fun play date! I forgot that it was a day off for traditional schools. so it was pretty crowded, but the girls had a good time. Lilly was a little uncertain of the big slide, but went down it a couple of times with Zoey. They had the best time running through the obstacle course and then going down the smaller slide though. I forgot that the admission is for 2 hours (which is hindsight is a little long for 3 year old), so we took a snack break in between before we went to the second room.
I don't know why this was so funny to me, but I loved how Lilly was "dancing" while she was bouncing on the little horsey :-)
The girls got in line to try jumping across the big balls, but neither of them made it very far. I was impressed that they tried though!
Lilly and I were going to try to draw faces on balloons. The project didn't work very well, but watching her try to blow up the balloons was very entertaining!
When we were walking out of Harris Teeter, Lilly thought Daddy might be cold, so she shared her hood with him! How cute is she??
Lilly and Kristin playing dress up!
When the power went out during the ice storm, Michelle and Chad took us in since they had a generator and a fire place. We had a blast as usual! One of the funniest parts of the night was when Lilly started feeding Kristin so she could finish her dinner and get down :-)
We ventured out the next day to play in the snow. Lilly isn't usually interested in the cold, but since all of her friends were out, she wanted to play. We ended up at the Englanders house. Zoey and Lilly had a great time breaking the icicles off the playground and eating them :-)
Lilly even tried going down the hill on the sled! She seemed to like it, but when we asked her to go again, she only wanted to if I went too. I figured, why not? So I got on and had Lilly and Zoey sit in front of me. We went down and the sled spun around and then tipped over! Unfortunately, the ground was really wet from the ice melting and I got soaked! Oh well. It was fun :-)
The day before we tracked back in, we brought Lilly to school and ventured out to go car shopping. We were in the market for a mini van! I am the negotiator of the family, so once we knew what we wanted, I didn't back down until we got the price I wanted too! We were down to the last $500 and the salesman wanted me to back down. I told him, "Look, I am an Italian New Yorker...you're not going to win this one," and at that, he reached out and shook my hand and made the deal :-) I had to commemorate our drive home and Darren's first time driving the new Mini van!
I am usually the one who takes Lilly to bed, and quite often she is holding several blankets, loveys or stuffed animals, so when she reaches for me, she has tiny little arms. So her and I started calling this, "Tyrannosaurus Rex baby" with her tiny little arms reaching up at me :-) I had to take a picture so I would remember this sweet little tradition we have.
Lilly wanted to show off her special Princess Sophia nightgown that she got from Aunt Michelle, Uncle Chad, Allie, Ryan and Kristin for Christmas! She absolutely loves it!
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