Happy Birthday Calla!

It’s hard to believe it’s been 3 years since Calla was born!  I still feel like she’s my baby, but she assures me she’s big now.  She likes to say, “I’m a big girl now, Mommy, because I eat salad.” 

We had 2 parties.  One with family on Sunday night and one with a few friends today.  She wanted a Thomas Party, which was awesome.  Since we’d done one for Hadden a few years ago, we just repeated most of the same activities! 

There was…

Lots of cousin play on Sunday

  Thomas stories and train tracks with friends

Pin the nose on Thomas

A visit from “Sir Topham Hatt”!  Calla honestly had no idea who was playing Sir Topham Hatt.  She ran over and started hugging my leg in her shy way.  Her friend Eli, who is also very familiar with Chris, ran and hid behind me.  It was honestly hilarious!

Presents

and more presents

and more presents

fun on the swingset afterwards.  (somehow I have no pictures of the decorating of traincar cupcakes.  I believe the reason for this is that all adult hands were wiping frosting from many sticky hands, arms, lets, shirts, etc. while said activity was occurring.)

Playing with all the toys afterwards

A trip to the “zoo” with Grandma

And finally, a “two year old moment.”  Why would anyone ever want to wash their hands?  I guess she wasn’t technically three until 11 p.m., so she had to have one last (ha, ha) tantrum beforehand. 

We are so glad this beautiful, loving girl is part of our family!  Happy Birthday, Calla!

Broken

Poor Calla. She really knows how to do things all the way. On Monday she broke her ankle! She was on the neighbor's trampoline and was instructed to get out if the big girls got in (I realize the irony of me being the "rule" parent with the casted kid). I ran inside for a minute and when I came back out the mom neighbor was telling the big girls to stop jumping so Calla could get out. Apparently they had gotten in and she was making her way out. Well, they didn't wait, one of them did a flip and landed right on/next to Calla. Poor girl! She cried for about an hour and spent the rest of the afternoon at the insta-care. They told us it wasn't broken, but it turns out the radiologist found a break (and some torn ligaments), so off to the orthopaedic we went. She now gets to wear a lovely black walking boot cast for the next six weeks. Poor, poor girl.

Here she is in her splint (they don't actually stock walking boot casts in her size, so we spent a few days with the splint waiting for the cast). By the way, isn't that dress lovely? She insisted on wearing it this day and got lots of comments on it. Thanks Grandma JaDene!
Daddy brought home some very cute balloons with super-long strings so she could sit on the floor and reach them.
To say that Hadden is having a hard time not being the center of attention would be putting it entirely too mildly. Oh, high-energy Hadden!
Here's the boot she got today. It's called a "Wee Walker." Isn't that so depressing! My kids are grounded from trampolines indefinitely. Now I really am the meanest mom on the block!

Moab

Welcome to another episode of backwards family trip!!! Have I mentioned that blogger and I don't get along!!! Well, too bad. Here it is again: We just can't be friends. No matter how hard I try I seem to find a new way to screw it up every time. So, instead of uploading the photos for the 5th time, I'm leaving them backwards. Maybe by the time you're done looking at them our faces will have morphed from the "I'm all done with this family trip business," face back to the, "Wahoo! We're on vacation!" expression. Next time I'll upload them backwards and then maybe I'll get them right! (FYI I also accidentally posted this on the wrong blog! We have a blog for the store with some pictures on it and I checked my post only to find out it was on that blog instead. I have a blogging issue! I'm so glad I could copy and paste it here!)

We did the grand view trail in Canyonlands the last day. It was a very dramatic view, and luckily none of it was too close to the edge, so the kids were pretty safe the whole time.
Here's the view from the end of the Grand View trail.
The second day we did delicate arch. Calla walked almost the whole way down herself. Good girl!
Those two specks under the arch are Hadden and Chris. Now, everytime Hadden notices a Utah license plate with the arch, he says, "I've been there!"

Calla wasn't too big a fan of the dropoff at the top of the trail, but she was cute anyway!
The first day we did the trail at the end of Arches. It passes landscape arch (no picture, sorry) and goes up this steep slickrock portion with a dropoff on each side. This is Hadden at the top of that part. He was proud of himeself, and claims it was his favorite part of hiking.
Here we are at the second arch on that trail, which is partition arch. It was pretty, and we ate lunch there. Notice the winter wear. It was FREEZING the first day. The wind was blowing like mad and we were glad we brought warm clothes. Chris and I were sure the tent trailer would blow over in the night, but luckily it didn't. We'd heard stories about tent trailers in Moab blowing over, so when we pulled in and the visibility was 1/2 mile because of wind and blowing sand, we were a little uneasy.

The first hike of the trip was North and South Windows and another arch whose name I cannot recall right now.

Hadden's Spring Sing

Hadden had his spring choir concert last week, and he did a fabulous job singing (If I do say so myself...). They sang three songs and it was so fun to see how far he has progessed from when he started choir almost 2 years ago. They had their awards and last singing day today and his teacher told them they could continue on next year with the next choir and he turned to me and said, "I am definitely going to do that!" Here are the videos of the concert:

Blogger and I don't get along! Anyone with advice on how to post a longer video???

Fun Website: Size Tracker

A friend of mine has developed a new website that allows you to track your kids' clothing sizes and growth and predict their new clothing sizes for future dates. I hope that made sense! It's a fun tool and it even has shopping links to make your clothing shopping easier. Anyway, I told her I'd spread the word, so if you have a minute, head on over:

http://www.sizetracker.com/main.aspx

More on School Lunch

Just a note to let you know that there is national legislation being proposed to help school lunches become a little bit healthier. I'm not sure it's a total solution, but having read some about it, it seems well founded in my opinion. Here's where you can read more and either sign a petition or send an automated letter to your congressmen:

www.HealthySchoolLunches.org
http://www.facebook.com/PCRMSchoolLunchRevolution

Pretty Please...

Will you do me a favor, please, pretty please, with sugar on top? I changed all my emails and settings and blah blah blah because I got a new phone. My email address hasn't changed for getting emails, but I can't sign into any of your private blogs with my old yahoo address anymore. Could you send me an invite to all your privite blogs at my gmail address? It's jennybeykirchatgmaildotcom. Thanks!