Birthday Girl

Here's a few more pictures of the birthday girl on her actual birthday.

Opening her great big birthday bag from Grandma

Which contained a big pillow that Grandma made for her and some new crocs and a special bubble blower - all yellow. Can you guess what Rachel's favourite colour is?
Opening her new art supplies from Mommy and Daddy.
Precious Rachel! She gets so excited about everything, the cards, the wrapping paper, the gifts.

Trying out the new baby bottles on her doll.
We had ice cream sundaes for dessert for her birthday dinner because she had already had cupcakes at her party and at pioneer clubs earlier in the day on her birthday.

Rachel loves ice cream . . .
every last drop of it!!

Birthday Party

Monday, the day before Rachel turned 4, we had an under-the-sea, mermaid birthday party at our house!

Here is Ryan decorating with streamers to make waves and seaweed in our living room - what a great Daddy!

Rachel invited 7 friends (for a total of 10 kids including the birthday girl and her siblings).

We did some crafts . . .

played some games . . .

ate some lunch . . .

and some cupcakes . . .

and then Rachel opened her gifts.

And here's Daddy after the party was over! :)

The birthday girl enjoyed herself and so did her guests I think, so I guess that means the party was a success.

Pumpkin Carving Time

Sunday afternoon we carved the kids pumpkins that they had picked when we went to the Apple Barn way back on October 1st. Amazingly, they weren't completely rotten and we had no trouble carving them. They've been sitting out on the front porch swing since we got them and I guess it's been cool enough outside to keep them from decaying.

All three of the kids thoroughly enjoyed putting their hands in the mushy gushy pumpkin guts! They all had ideas of what they wanted their jack-o-lantern faces to look like so they drew them out and Daddy, the master carver, carved them.

Here are the finished products. Evan and Ryan had lots of fun with Evan's hockey player pumpkin! :)

Fall Family Fair

Last Wednesday, instead of pioneer Clubs, there was a Fall Family Fair at the church. Highlights included "crazy hair day" as well as all kinds of games and a ventriloquist! Of course there was also candy, popcorn and caramel apples. It was a blast, though I paid for the late night by having to try and teach tired grumpy kids all day on Thursday! :)

One of the kids' favourites was the putting game that Daddy built.

Precious Four Year Old!

October 30, 2003

October 30, 2007

Oh my, how time has flown by! Our baby girl is four years old. Rachel laughs and calls me silly when I call her my baby but she will always be our baby and it is hard to believe that she has gotten so big.

"Sunshine" is the nickname I often call Rachel and she really is the sunshine in our family. She has been from the time she was a brand new baby. I was feeling very overwhelmed when I became a mother of three but Rachel was a very easy, happy baby and she had a way of bringing joy to all of us. Even middle-of-the-night feedings were, if not completely enjoyable, at the least a very peaceful time for me. I cherished those moments with her because I knew that she would be the last baby I nursed and rocked to sleep.

Though we no longer have midnight feedings, I am still cherishing the "lasts" with Rachel. Recently, Ryan and I were talking about the fact that our "baby" will be in Kindergarten next year. It had snuck up on us and all of a sudden we realized, that yes, Rachel will be old enough to be in Kindergarten, even though she won't yet be 5 years old in September. It made me thankful that we are homeschooling and I don't have to send my little one away just yet. She still seems too little for that.

For all that I still think of Rachel as my little one, she is getting to be so big. Over the last year she has matured in many ways. She loves to print her name and is learning many of her letters. She is a fish at the swimming pool and loves to take swimming lessons. Just this past week, she finally figured out how to pedal her big girl bike (with training wheels) so she doesn't have to ride Cappy (the ride on toy) anymore. She is a big helper to me, unloading the silverware from the dishwasher, putting away her laundry, and tidying her toys, almost always with a smile on her face. :)

She is a precious blessing to Ryan and I and Evan and Grace and to others around her too. We love you sweet Rae-Rae girl! Happy Birthday!!!

Bridges

We have been learning about bridges in our science time over the last few weeks so here are a few pictures of us building bridges.
Here is the truss bridge we built that didn't actually hold anything without falling over - oh well, it's still a learning experience I guess! :)

Then we went outside and built a suspension bridge out of chairs and string and cardboard.

It held quite a few toy cars and then there was a traffic jam and Spiderman came to save the day - hahaha.

A Two-headed Monster!

A strange two-headed monster was spotted at my house last week!

It turns out it was a very studious monster though and it did all of Evan and Grace's Language Arts work.
It's a good thing the Grace half of the monster is left handed and the Evan half is right handed :)

Thanksgiving

Blogger was giving me some stress when I tried to add these pictures but it is finally working so I can post about our Thanksgiving weekend.

On Thanksgiving Sunday, after church, we headed straight to Horseshoe Bay and got on a ferry to go to my Grandma's house in Sechelt.

We enjoyed a nice afternoon walk at the beach with Grandma, while Mom stayed at Grandma's house to watch over the turkey.

Rachel loves her Nana!
Sweet boy
My precious girl
This bench is a memorial to my Grandpa so we always take a picture on Grandpa's bench when we go to Snicket Point.



Rachel loves to find treasures


Here we are enjoying a lovely Thanksgiving dinner.

On Monday morning we had "flipping pancakes" for breakfast. When I was a little girl and I slept over at Grandma's house we always had flipping pancakes for breakfast and Aaron and I got to be quite good at flipping the pancakes (with only a few falling on the floor in the process!)
Then we went for a nice walk on the "troll trail." It's a beautiful trail along the creek and someone has carved a bunch of faces into different tree stumps so the kids had fun watching for the "trolls" as we walked.

Rachel loved collecting the big Maple leaves. She wanted me to take a new picture of her every time she picked up another leaf.


She wanted to take the leaves home but I convinced her that it would be ok to leave them at the park so we spelled her name with them on the ground.

And that's that. We had a nice long wait at the ferry terminal on the way home on Thanksgiving Monday but it was worth it. We enjoyed our visit with Mom and Grandma and it was a nice break for us to get away.