Saturday morning we had dance class right before Luke's birthday party at Paradise Pond. Which meant that after dance, we had to hurry and change clothes and hustle from the studio in Frisco to Paradise Pond in Grapevine. In my efforts to quickly get Gabby changed in the dance studio's bathroom, I dropped her little balled up socks RIGHT INTO THE TOILET (clean bowl, luckily). I knew you had to wear socks at the party, and couldn't remember if they kept extra socks to loan out, so here is how we drove to Grapevine...
It actually was pretty effective...the socks were totally dry by the time we got there. Gross, but dry.
This time I got roped into being the one to climb up with Gabby.
Gabby made a new friend, and no longer wanted me to go down the slide with her. She and her friend went down the slide at least a half dozen times together.
My first time down the super speed slide of death...LOVELY.
Three pals
Here Gabby, you want some of my juice?
Now I will have a taste of your milk.
Birthday boy Luke and his cupcake.
Chalna and me at Safari Park...it is becoming a new tradition for us to meet up for playdates anytime I have a school holiday.
Gabby and Colin and their phones...they had serious business matters to attend to.
Later that week we went to Melody's house to play with Luke and Haydn. Gabby had so much fun playing with all of Luke's toys, not to mention his super-cool games (we are going to have to go shopping to buy some of those games...Melody had some great games for little kids). For the most part Gabby and Luke were able to play nicely together, so Melody and I actually had a bit of time to catch up. Melody and I also have a long standing tradition of getting together during all of my school holidays.
Gabby decided to host story time for Luke, who sat nicely to hear her story. It was ADORABLE.
Gabby decided to host story time for Luke, who sat nicely to hear her story. It was ADORABLE.
We went to Freebird's for lunch. Melody bought a brownie for all of us to share, and as soon as she broke it out to split it up, all of the kids swarmed.
I didn't get any other pics of Haydn...which is too bad because that baby is C-U-T-E. She has the brightest smile, and she is one of the ONLY babies who gives me baby-fever. She just has the chubbiest little cheeks, long eyelashes, and that perpetually surprised look...those are all things that I loved about Gabby's little baby face.
Olivia celebrated her 3rd birthday and her party was at a big bounce place. At the beginning of the party, Gabby wanted NOTHING to do with ANY of the slides or bounce houses...they were a little on the big side, and she was not in a particularly daring mood. She spent the first 30 minutes of the party sliding on this TINY little random slide that was no longer than the length of Gabby's body.
I was beginning to wonder how I was going to keep her entertained for another hour, and then they shuttled the group into a second room. That room had all new bounce houses and slides, and Gabby was immediately taken by a MASSIVE slide...it was bigger than all the ones she was scared of in the first room. And suddenly, my child who was too chicken to do anything all morning was leaving me in her dust to go climb up the 40 foot slide. She went down that slide without stopping for at least 45 minutes.
Gabby was cracking all the parents up with her "princessy" behavior. To ride the slide, kids needed to sit on a little canvas mat. The mats were kind of cumbersome to carry, especially for the little 3 year olds...hard to climb up those slippery inflated ladder rungs with a big canvas mat. Gabby immediately decided there was no point in doing work when she could find someone else to do it for her. When she reached the bottom of the slide, she would wait at the side with her mat until another kid came down...and she would just ask the next kid if they would carry her mat up for her. Most of the time she was approaching big kids who were happy to help, but a few times she wound up asking other confused looking 3 year olds who had no idea why they were being asked to carry this random child's mat.
Olivia had a Dora cake to match her Dora outfit.
All of the little girls were requesting chocolate cupcakes with pink icing...luckily there were enough of those to go around! Gabby was quite pleased.
Sean and Christina invited us over for fish tacos one night. While I was definitely excited to get together with our friends, I was exceptionally pumped to finally have a reason to make Pioneer Woman's tres leches cake. Tres leches is probably my all time favorite dessert...I salivated when I first read her recipe online, and then drooled up all over again when Chalna posted about it on her cooking blog. It did not disappoint, and was the perfect ending to our latin-inspired meal.
The whole evening was fun, and with a few particularly funny moments. Finley has a plastic cake with candles in it, and Gabby kept designating it as different people's birthdays. The girls would come out of the playroom holding the cake on the platter, and Gabby would announce..."It's DAVID'S birthday!" or, "It's CHRISTINA'S birthday!" And we would stop our conversations and take a moment to all sing happy birthday, blow out candles, pretend to serve up and eat some cake, and celebrate. Then they would go back to the playroom and we would go back to our conversations. Finley as usual was quite taken with David, and was constantly holding his hand, sitting in his lap, or asking him to pick her up and swing her around. Towards the end of the evening as we were trying to pack up to go, we all wound up with all 6 of us in the kitchen. Somehow this resulted in the girls grabbing some of our hands to hold, and then asking ALL of us to hold hands. Then they wanted to jump and dance...so at 9:30 in the evening, four grownups and two little girls were all standing in the middle of the kitchen holding hands in a big circle, jumping up and down, wiggling, and singing. What a sight. It was one of those scenes that I would have NEVER envisioned prior to having kids.
Finley got a horse for her birthday...and you can actually ride it around the house! The girls had fun trotting around (and bumping into walls and staircases).
They made little window seats so they could sit next to each other to eat cake. My little bird-eater is WOLFING it down.
We had a pizza night! Gabby loves helping make pizza. Her absolute favorite is what she calls "green pizza"...we make it with pesto, mozzarella, and dollops of goat cheese. Everytime we make pizza we always have to make one of them "green". Our non green pizza was caramelized onions, italian sausage, and sundried tomatoes.
One night we met my friend Jenny for dinner at Grand Lux Cafe. Jenny had a belated birthday gift for Gabby, and it was FULL of stuff that she loves...a Hello Kitty backpack charm, coloring book, and notepad, and a thumbprinting art book. Gabby loves Jenny...we were originally planning to meet up several weeks ago but Jenny had to cancel and Gabby was SO bummed out. I love that it is an exciting thing for her to go out to dinner with me and one of my friends.
She spied the gift early on in the evening and couldn't wait to open it up.
Dark and blurry, but I love that cute little smile!
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