Makenna's 3rd birthday bash

Ok, I have to be honest, I LOVE planning birthday parties... maybe it is the years of not getting invited to them because I didn't have kids of my own or the excitement on Makenna's face when she sees all the decorations or maybe just a little bit too much time on Pinterest:)  This year was really fun to plan because it was a unique theme - Brewer/Princess..... Noone else but Daddy's little girl would make such a request.  I was very happy with how everything turned out!  We had a lot of fun with family and friends and of course didn't have nearly enough time to visit with everyone. 

 

The birthday girl had lots of fun, though I must admit she was a little out of sorts at her party - she was unusually shy and not her normal cheerful self.  Brad and I blame the lack of sleep from attempting to share her room with her cousins the night before....ha!  She was very excited at the idea of it but had a hard time falling asleep and then was up at midnight screaming she wanted to come in our bed.  We don't normally let her, but we didn't want her to wake up everyone else so we all had a pretty restless night of sleep with a 3 year old hogging our bed:) 

 

We woke up EARLY Saturday morning and had LOTS of fun with her cousins before they had to head home.  Thankfully she took a good nap in the afternoon and woke up just as her party was about to start! 

 

The invites...

 

Cake, nametag & party favor table

 

For the boys...

For the girls..

I have to laugh at this one.... Great Grandma (aka Cookie Beek) was doing laps around the house to stretch out and she just happened to be walking by as I was taking this so I told her to wave.  Love!

 

Princess Punch

Ryan Braun's Kettle Corn

Ariel's fishy friends

The decorative table - the brewer logo with her initials and princess crown are normally in her room above the crib.  The rest of this stuff was taken from all over our house to decorate:)

I snagged the "Brewer Princess" poem and picture frame that was hanging in Daddy's office at work, too:)

The fireplace decorations

Great Great Grandma's famous sugar cookie recipe - not a party without these!

Chip's chips

The birthday girl, watching for her first guest to arrive!!

The racing sausages even showed up!

Playing in the sandbox with Avery

Love these 2 little sweeties!

This lasted about 5 seconds....glad I was able to snag a quick picture

Love how tight Lexi is hugging Makenna in this one.  They are such sweet friends!

Lexi and Makenna are BOTH gonna have new little brothers this fall!!!

Love this smiley one.... I couldn't decided what to dress her in with the Brewer Princess theme.  I wanted to find a cute girly Brewer tank top but couldn't find one in her size anywhere.  I ended up getting a steal on a tutu leotard at TJMaxx and found this little Brewer shirt at Justice - a few sized too big, but it is a crop top so it looks like it fits.  She LOVED the tutu!

Makenna with her friend Jianna from school - Jianna was out of sorts, too - I don't know if she just wasn't used to seeing Makenna out of school or what but she refused to look at the camera for a pic

And on to dinner....  Papa "Ueke's" Pizza

Hot Dog & Brats (as in the racing sausages) hot dogs & brats

Love how excited she gets when she is the center of attention and everyone is singing happy birthday to her!

I'm pretty sure the wind blew out the candles, but she kept blowing anyway

Happy birthday Kenna girl!!  Mama & Daddy love you SOO much!

mmm mmm

Love the look on her face as she destroys the cake

Did someone say time for presents!!

She opened up presents like she was on a mission...I was a little disappointed since she is usually more excited and more gracious when she gets gifts, but I think she was so excited about what might be in the next gift bag that she just tossed each thing by the side as she got to the next one

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Her chubby thighs were SO adorably cute in this tutu

 

Her favorite gift - Uncle Derek's Mulan (aka "Bulan") dolly

 

Thanks everyone who came!  Thanks everyone that helped us get ready & clean up - Mom & Dad's especially!!

 

It was so good to see everyone!  We are feeling so very blessed to have so many great family & friends!!

 

And Happy 3rd birthday baby girl!!

 

Fun shots from this week...

Being silly at lunch 

 

This one makes me laugh - we went to a piano bar restaurant for Grandma's birthday on Thursday night & she REALLY wanted to play the piano.  The hostess instead offered her this little baby piano to play - what you can't see is that this is a little display piano up on a 4 foot high ledge - I had to take a quick picture then make sure she didn't fall off the ledge!  She loved it, though!

 

Friday morning at the library

 

We were walking out to our car and she wanted to lay down in the grass with me - she decided to use her baby brother as a little pillow - it was soo sweet:)  She didn't want to leave & kept saying - Mama, let's sit in the grass a couple more minutes...... good reminder that I, too, need to slow down and enjoy these precious days with her more often!! 

What a beauty!

A little painting with daddy before church

My favorite pic of the week - showing Great Grandma (aka Cookie Beek) her freshly painted pink fingernails....

 

Brother love

Happy 3rd birthday Makenna!

Dear Makenna,

I cannot believe you are already 3!  Time has gone by so very fast.  You are no longer a toddler and are turning into quite the little girl.  You are a sweet, sassy, beautiful, kind, polite, observant, fun-loving little girl.  You bring me and your daddy so much joy.  We are so very thankful for you and for your little brother that is growing in mommy's tummy.  You love to pat mama's belly and randomly put your head on it and say - "Aww, I love you brother" - it is so very sweet and I know you will make such a great big sister.  We are still working on picking out a name for him - so far you have contributed "boy" and "brewer" to the list.  Ha!  Sometimes you ask if we can call him "girl", too. 

So, what are you up to these days?  Quite a bit!!

You are a busy, busy girl.  Your absolute favorite thing to play is pretend with all your figurines. You have Princesses, Minnie & Mickey, Toy Story and Sesame Street characters that you like to role play with.  Mommy and Daddy got you the Jake and the Neverland Pirates figurines for your birthday and you played with them every chance you got today.  It was so funny to listen to you play with them while I made dinner - "Aargh matey" and "Ahoy" as you acted out different scenes from the show. 

You LOVE school and "graduated" to the caterpillar room this summer.  They only moved 2 kids from the Honeybees to the Caterpillars which I think has you a little sad since you don't see all your old friends in class each morning but you still get to play with them after naptime.  Your best friends at school are Jianna and Lucy.  You are really learning a lot there and have started to sing all sorts of random bible songs that I have no idea what they are.  In Aldi last week you were shouting some song that the only part I could pick out was "Obey God" and you were yelling it pretty loudly.  Ha ha!  You also learned our mealtime prayer song at school and we try to sing it before every meal - "thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus for our lunch, for our lunch.  And our many blessings and our many blessings. A-amen, A-amen.'

Your best friend is still Annakana.  We don't see her as often as we'd like, but you still talk about her on at least a weekly basis and pray for her all the time with your bedtime prayers.  You've really started playing with the neighbor kids a lot so far this summer which is fun to see.  They are a little bit older than you, but you don't mind at all and you really just want to be everyone's friend. 

Your daddy is still pretty head over heels for you.  The way you say "daddy" might be the cutest thing to come out of your mouth.  When you talk to him you always begin or end your sentence with "daddy" and it is really cute.  My favorite (and his too I think) is when you see him and you yell "Daddy!!!" and run over to him and give him a big hug as he lifts you up.  It is so very sweet and I pray you will always have that sweet love for him.  Daddy like to ask you "Who is my baby girl?" and you will shout - "Me!"

The things that come out of your mouth continue to make us laugh.  You tell us "good job" a lot - today Daddy was helping you on the potty and you told him - "Daddy, good job turning on the princess nightlight" as he turned on the nightlight in the bathroom.  Your vocabulary and the clarity in which you talk is amazing.  I can understand just about everything you say the first time. 

Unfortunately, you are hitting that dreaded temper tantrum phase.  It started about a month ago and has been getting progressively worse.  You cry at the drop of a hat and have a hard time getting your emotions under control.  Its funny how quickly you can go from so very sweet to so very upset. 

You are still napping for a few hours a day on most days.  At school if you do fall asleep at naptime, it isn't until the last 15 or 20 minutes of naptime and then they have to wake you up.  At home you've been better lately but today you just sat in your crib and talked, role played with your dollies and sang for 2 hours. 

You are fully potty trained!!!!!  Yay!!!!!  Eventually I think it just "clicked" and you decided you were ready to be a big girl and we put you in your big girl underpants and you've only had 1 accident in 3 weeks.  Yay!! 

You are still sleeping in your crib.  You really do love it in there and don't try to climb out so we keep saying if it ain't broke don't fix it.  We are debating what we are going to do with you once your brother comes - if we will keep you in your crib, or switch you to a big girl bed and give him your crib.  We'll see.

Your favorite TV shows are Veggie Tales, Sophia the First, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Doc McStuffins and Mickey Mouse.  You really love snuggling up with us on Friday nights and watching movies, too.  We watched Mulan a few weeks ago and you and Daddy watched Mulan II this past weekend. 

You are doing really good with all your letters and numbers and starting to get sounds down, too.  You learned "M for Makenna Mmmm Mmm Mm" in school along with all the letters and sounds of all the kids in your class this year. You sing them all the time and a lot of times when you see a letter, you look at it and say something like L for Liam, Llll, Lll, Ll out of the blue. 

Makenna Lee, we are so very in love with you and have had so much fun watching you learn and grow this past year.  We look forward to what the next year has to bring for our family.  We love you baby, girl!

We had a great day with you today! 

For the third straight year we surprised you in your crib with balloons when you woke up

 

I told you it was your birthday today and you said "right now?"  ha! 

 

Love the screaming look on your face here!

You were sooooooo excited!

Daddy love

We also surprised you with a new princess bike!

Happy birthday sweet girl!!!

Highlight of my day....

I emailed our Texas Fan Club yesterday to let them know we were having a boy.  They sent me back a very sweet email with updates on the boys (they have 2 of them) and ended it with this sweet note:

"Thank you so much for letting us know that we made the best decision to have you both love those two little angels.

The Texas Fan Club!"

 

 

 I can't wait to share this with both Makenna and her little bro someday:) 

 

 

 

 

 

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It's a BOY!

We had our big ultrasound/anatomy scan today and I'm happy to report that  everything looks great!  My blood clot is gone (woot woot!) and baby is healthy!  A special shout out to Great Auntie Sharon for watching Makenna during our ultrasound! 

 

Isn't he precious?

Love me some baby feet

Sweet boy

All snuggled up with mama

 

 

As soon as she started doing the ultrasound, she moved the wand around a little and found this:)  It was as if he was letting us know right away he was all good in there. 

Waving hi!

 

 

And Makenna is all ready.....

 

 

Last day of school....

What we've been up to.....

Life has been a bit crazy around here lately....

 

It seems that once tax season is over, we find ourselves in a different sort of busyness - trying to catch up on house projects and everything else that got put on the back burner during tax season.  Throw a vacation in there and well, we've been busy!  Here's a "dump" of our month so far.....

On May 17th we celebrated our 10 year anniversary!  Daddy surprised me with this pretty little present....a BEAUTIFUL ring! 

It was Grandparent's day at school earlier in the month and Makenna was blessed to have all 4 of her grandparents there.

 

Today we hit the zoo with our friends Bella & Blake - I love her hand gestures here - I wonder what she is telling Bella?

And the conversation continues....

 

It was SUCH a beautiful day!

For Mother's day, we surprised Grandma at her work with some pretty tulips

Watching for the train to come....  notice the cute little butt and the BIG GIRL underpants she is in!!  Whoot Whoot!  We are FINALLY potty trained!!!  After we got back from Disney, we put all her pull ups and diapers in baby's closet and haven't looked back since.  She has done GREAT!  We only wear diapers and night and nap and most times those are dry, too!  Yay!

 

 

I was lucky enough to get not just one but TWO snuggly naps rocking this little sweetie to sleep this month... I can't remember the last time I got to hold her while she slept.

Family walk to pirate park!

My favorite..... Sunday morning breakfast with my tinkerbell & Daddy on the front porch before churchy

Her school picnic 

And of course.... she picked the "Brewergame" face painting:)

 

And finally, a protruding baby bump..... This shot is from 17 weeks. 

Pat pat....

Giving baby a little pat pat.... oh and tonight she decided she was going to name him Brewer:)