Taite's 6th Birthday

I can't believe Taite is SIX! Every year sounds older & older! She had a great birthday this year. Her birthday fell on a Saturday, so Mrs. Vermeer gave her the birthday crown & ribbon on the Friday before. That same day, Lewis surprised Taite & brought her lunch at school. That was fun.

Saturday morning, Taite woke up to a GIANT present in the living room. Check out what she got....Her very own BARBIE house. Now her 40+ Barbies have a place to hang out! It fit just perfectly into her room. She & Lewis (who shares her birthday!) also got Guitar Hero from Paige & I.
Saturday afternoon was the big birthday party. This year, she wanted to have her party at a "jumping place" (you know, where they have rooms full of giant bounce-houses, slides, etc.). We also decided to invite her whole class to the party. She ended up having 16 kids from her class, along with her long-time friends & all together, there were over 30 kids at the party!! It was a little bit crazy, but LOTS of fun for the kids. The kids were all really good. It was the perfect place to have a party with 30 kids!

Taite & all of her friends really enjoyed all of the jumping. Just watching them made a lot of us adults tired!

I love this picture (although it's blurry) of Taite airborne on the bouncy slide. And, notice Paige in the background...

We also had a lot of fun watching Paige "hang" with the "big" kids. She got right to it. She was right in there with all of them and nothing slowed her down. One of her favorites was this 'rock wall' that had a slide at the top.....
After the kids jumped, they went into the party room for cake and gifts. Many of you know that I ALWAYS make the girls cakes for their party. This year, Taite wanted a Strawberry Shortcake cake. We bought a really cute, personalized icing cake topper on ebay for her cake. It was really easy. BUT, I forgot to take a picture of it! So, you can kind of (barely) see it in her picture as she was blowing out candles....

I wanted to include a picture of the kids eating cake. This is a little over half of the kids who were there. There are other kids sitting at another table in the background. Really - the kids were great overall & it was fun to have them all there!

And, I had to include a picture of Lewis (the birthday "boy") sitting on the inflatable thrown. This is where Taite sat to open her gifts!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TAITE & LEWIS!!!

Christmas

We had a great Christmas. I can't believe it's almost time to get back to reality!!

We went to Lewis' parents' house, north of Dallas for Christmas. I should've taken a picture of our "Grizwald" vehicle that we took up to their house. We had our "turtle-top" carrier on top of the Tahoe, a platform on the back, and the entire back was full. We left a few gifts for other family members, but we definitely came back with more stuff!

It was fun to see the girls' reactions to their gifts. Wii was our big "family" present. We've been having lots of fun with that. Some of Taite's favorite gifts were a fashion drawing table, a Lego set, board games, arts & crafts kits, the cupcake maker, & a Barbie computer. I'm probably forgetting something, but that is enough! :) Paige was so cute and was SO excited to FINALLY open presents. She just enjoyed the whole day. She got a little dollhouse, the Little People town, Elmo Live, and lots of other fun little toys.

We still haven't done Christmas with my parents yet. That comes tomorrow. So, I'll probably have more to add later.

Other than that, we enjoyed New Year's Eve. Taite, Lewis & I stayed up playing Wii. Taite made it until 11:15, then said, "wake me up when it's my turn" and she was OUT on the chair. We couldn't even wake her up at midnight. She was DONE. 11:15 was LATE, LATE for her, though. I was impressed with her stamina. Oh, I didn't mention that Paige rang in the new year with a nebulizer treatment! We haven't done the neb. in a LONG time...inhaler, yes, but not the neb. She has been coughing like crazy & the treatments are definitely helping!

ANYWAY.....I suppose that's all for now. I could write a book. The long & short of it is that we had a a great Christmas. I'm kind of sad to see it go!