Maren is 4!!

I can't believe Maren is four! We are a long way from the COLD day in Chicago where she was born, but she is still our sweet, petite, favorite girl.

Maren's birthday lunch on her special dishes and with an animal audience. It was her "special day" at school. We made this poster to share about her family and friends and she got to bring the snack (circus crackers!).

Her birthday party was the Saturday before - here are the pictures:

The kids got to decorate their cupcakes (which were pink) with frosting (pink and/or green) and sprinkles.
They had fun doing it and then I made them wait to eat them so I could take a picture!!
A work of art...

Joel Made the crown for Maren...that was his present to her.

Love this shot.

She got lots of fun presents...including this baby and a ton of furniture that goes with it! Kylie has the exact same set, so now they can have twin babies and two of everything!!

She also got this beautiful dress...which has hardly come off of her since the party. :)

Happy Birthday sweet girl!!

October

October was a fun and eventful month...

We went to Spooner Farms again this year for pumpkins and fall fun...
and Mimi got to join us!
The kids each picked out a small pumpkin...

And climbed all over the huge pumpkins!

Maren even got to pose with a giant spider!

Joel lost his 1st tooth!! The tooth fairy brought him $2!!

Back to the pumpkin patch...this time with Maren's preschool class (and some older siblings).

We got to be dwarfs...hopefully not dopy and grumpy!

And Maren got to pick out another small pumpkin.

She's just over 3 feet tall! Doesn't she look big in this picture?

And the highlight of the day was climbing on the huge red tractor. She would want me to be sure and add that she "climbed all the way up there all by herself!"

Halloween activities started a good two weeks before the actual day...they got to get dressed up and go to the school carnival.

Spiderman and Minnie Mouse to you...

(This pose was all Maren's doing.)

The best part is that they got to go to the carnival with their friends Mario and Pink Minnie Mouse. :) (Thanks Molly & Bobby!!)

Then the next weekend we met up with a couple of witches (aka Julia & Madeline) and went to the Hoot & Howl. This is a halloween event at the NW Trek and it was REALLY fun. (Thanks for inviting us, Farringtons!)

And here are the excited kids on Halloween night. Can you see the excitement?! We just made the rounds of our little neighborhood and then called it a night. It was a good end to a busy month!

September - Part 2

In the middle of September we went down to Portland to help celebrate my grandpa's 90th Birthday! It was a nice small gathering of family at my aunt Ruth's house.

I love this photo that we got of our family with the birthday boy. :)
Greg & Grandpa inspecting an old baseball and mit from when he was a teenager! He didn't quite remember that it was his, but was very interested in it!
Maren enjoyed playing the piano for a few minutes. She has such long graceful fingers...maybe she will be a pianist!
While we were in Portland we went out to Sandy and picked up some furniture that belonged to Connie and is now going to be Maren's! I am going to refinish it, and the big-girl-bed will be her 4th birthday present from us.

Now that Joel is in school full time Maren and I have a little bit of girl time together. It has been so fun to have this time...probably the first time in her life that she has had this much 1:1 with me. On this day we had a date at Starbucks and shared a carmel apple spice. Yummm.

Greg went on a night fishing trip (fished from 8pm-4am) and caught this amazing fish! What I love about this picture is the expression of joy on Greg's face (can you tell I'm not a fisherwoman?!).

Joel was chosen to be the first student of the week in his class. As part of his special priviledges during the week Maren and I got to go have lunch with him. He also got to pick two friends to eat with us. This is Tyrell and Victoria. It was a fun day!

We also went to the Puyallup Fair this year! This is the biggest fair in the state, and over 1 million people visited the fair in 16 days...this is craziness. Puyallup is not a very big place and the traffic is already horrible, but add the fair and all those people and...well, you get the idea.

Normally I avoid things like this, but we got a bunch of free tickets and ride passes, so we dressed the kids in bright colors and headed off...

Not quite tall enough to go on the big rides, but there were plenty of kid rides and slides that she enjoyed.

Hooray for the fair!

They even got to go fishing...

And snowshoeing!

Overall it was a fun day...and the famous scones are definitely worth it! I had three. :)