My Little Prince

While Aunt Kate was taking pictures of Madigan, little brother got a few snapped of him.
He showed off his jumping skills. That consists of squatting down and then straightening his legs up quickly. Feet never leave the ground. It's even more impressive if you squeal when you do it.

Serious face

Happy Face

Sweet Face

Paxton is a bit obsessed with Toy Story and all of the characters that go with it. Here he is with his best buddy, Woody.

And here he is torturing his sister's baby doll. That went over well.

He's definitely all boy. There is nothing too big to climb or too high to jump off of.

But when he looks up at me with those eyes and that smile, he couldn't be sweeter.

No question about it - he will always be my little prince!

5 Years Old

That's right, World. My baby turned 5 years old in August. Where does the time go?
Aunt Kate made a visit the week before Madi turned 5, so she took some pictures for us. As always, they turned out amazing!


Aunt Kate kept the kids that day while Ted and I worked, so she and Madi painted nails, of course. Gotta love the rainbow nails.
We had to make it through several outtakes...
before we finally got one of the two kids being sweet at the same time. :)

I love this smile

but this is the look I get the majority of the time. It's usually accompanied by her saying "seriously?!" Ha!
Since Madi is so into dressing up these days, I asked Kate to take some pictures of the little princess.

Her princess pose

I love them all and think Kate did an amazing job of capturing Madi's personality! Thanks Kate!

One Wicked Party

Wicked as in "cool", of course!

After taking Madi to see Wicked last November, she decided that she wanted her 5 year old party to be "Wicked" themed. Sounded good to me!

First off, a Wicked party had to start out with a room for Glinda and Elphaba. So, we transformed Madi's room. First, a closet...

and then their beds.

The kids had fun dressing up like the characters. Here's Elphaba, Glinda, and... a flying monkey?
We also had a table for Elphaba - a place for her to write on the witch hat notepads with the broom pens that said "Defy Gravity".
And a table for Glinda - with lots of pink and glittery stuff to make wands.
I hate that the only picture I got of the cake had junk in the background. But you can get the idea - Glinda, Elphaba, yellow brick road, and the Emerald City.

The birthday girl blowing out her candles

The girls got to decorate their cupcakes with pink and green icing and sprinkles. Madi's had to be exactly half and half. :)

The sprinkles got a bit out of hand after a while!

After cake, Madi got to open her presents. You know, because we needed a few more girly toys around this house.
And then we went for a swim. See that blue water? Yeah, it was supposed to be green. I bought the tub tablets to make the water green in keeping with the Wicked theme. Didn't exactly work out. Oh well, the girls didn't seem to care!
Did I mention this wicked cool party was also a sleepover?! Madi invited 11 girls to her party. I figured quite a few of them (given their age) wouldn't opt to sleep away from home. Apparently Madi has some brave friends though - 10 of the 11 chose to sleep over! The more, the merrier!!
They actually did amazingly well and no phone calls had to be made home in the middle of the night. It was almost 11:30 before the last girl feel asleep, but whatever! You can see the shape they were in at 7:00 the next morning...
I won't post a picture of what shape I was in the next morning after "sleeping" in the room with them. Apparently 30 year olds are too old for sleepovers. Ha! But Madi had a BLAST and was so grateful to all of her friends who made the party so special. Happy Birthday to my sweet girl!

Finally...West Texas!

Yeah, so it's starting to become apparent that I'm not ever going to catch up from the last few months. So I think I'll just post some quick posts with lots of pictures and then go from there.

In July (yes, July - I told you I was behind), the kids and I flew to West Texas for my dad's family reunion. Paxton was pumped.
Madi was pretty excited too
At the reunion, the kids played with Gee Gee and Pa,
and their 3rd cousins. Paxton figured out how to get the best view.
Thankfully he didn't figure out how to get on the roof.

Love this picture of my granddad and his four kids.

Paxton thought Uncle Steve was a riot,

and used Great Granddad's walker as a jungle gym (which they both thought was great).
I loved watching Granddad play with the kids. Not sure there's a greater feeling.

But by far, this was my favorite picture from the trip.

It was a great trip spent with great people. And I survived my first plane trip with two kids. Happiness all around!