November 29th......what a special day for our family!

I love this girl!!

Daddy's girl.Grammie and Grandpa

A 1-year-old and a 4-year old! (for about 6 more weeks)

She loved all the birthday calls from the many family/friends who love her.

Danielle said her favorite things about her birthday were "being 4 now, decorating her birthday cake, the singing and blowing out the candles, eating cake and opening presents". She also enjoyed calling her birthday buddies (twins - Sadie & James who were friends of ours also born on November 29th, 2006) hearing about their day and telling them about hers.

What a day!! I now understand why my birthdays were always so special to my parents. I always knew that birthdays were a fun day to celebrate but now I really get it. All of the memories of Danielle's birth (and the years of heartache leading up to my pregnancy with her) come to my mind and I'm overwhelmed with the joy of being her mom. So, today was fun to watch her excitement and getting a chance to make her feel like the special girl she is, but most of all it was a day of thanking God for bringing her into our lives.

I'll have to post pictures of her enjoying her presents in a future post.

Danielle's birthday party with friends...

She got fairy wings from her friend Ava! Yay for dress up stuff!!
Samantha loved her cupcake!

All the girls.

A princess castle pinata!

This year we decided to have Danielle's first friend birthday party. A few girl friends came over for a tea party, painted fingernails, hit a pinata, etc. Danielle loved it! She is blessed to have sweet friends (and a sister) who love her.

We baked cupcakes and then had the girls decorate them and then eat their own cupcake. It seemed to be fun for them and I didn't have to agonize over trying to decorate a cake.

Tomorrow is her real birthday...we will bring cupcakes to her preschool and then have a little family dinner, cake, etc. It seems like an awful lot of spoiling, but it's fun to do when she is so appreciative and excited.

More pictures to come after tomorrow!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Danielle is thankful for Mom, Dad, Sis, rainbows and smiley faces.

Our precious table decoration....Danielle made this turkey last week at preschool.

Samantha was very proud of her "hand turkey".

The snowman craft turned out cute.

Hooray for playing dress up!

We are so thankful for our many blessings today and everyday. This year was our first Thanksgiving with just the four of us. It was a quiet, restful day since the girls were recovering from colds and Jeff wasn't feeling well either. We still did quite a few fun things, ate yummy food, and shared special moments. I loved hearing Danielle say Grace before dinner, letting her set the table (even with the fancy dishes), and watching her get so excited about decorating the table.

Since we weren't able to do the outdoor things we had planned we tried to do a few crafts. Danielle enjoyed making her snowman out of marshmallows...Samantha just wanted to eat everything! Danielle did a great job writing down what she was thankful for after drawing her "hand-turkey"...Samantha cracked me up when all she proudly said was "my hand! my hand!".

Speaking of Samantha, we watched the end of the movie "Elf" tonight and now Samantha says "Santa goning?" which means "Where was Santa going?". Looks like we have a fun month ahead discussing and preparing for Christmas! Of course we plan to focus on the real meaning of Christmas, but we enjoy the Santa stuff, too.

My Recipe For Pumpkin Pie by Danielle Miller

"You get a rectangle, this kind of pan (showed with hands), that's straight and you put a pumpkin in and cut the stem off and then you put some water in and put it in the freezer. Then you eat it and that's the way to make a pumpkin pie."

Danielle told the above to her pre-school teacher yesterday. I tried to read it out loud at the dinner table last night and could not hold in my laughter so Jeff had to finish reading it. Too cute! I asked her if she wanted to make a real pumpkin pie sometime. She said "yes" so I guess well try it out this week. I'm definitely going to introduce her to the canned pumpkin, though!

We hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Will post fun pictures and stories after the holiday.

Christmas Is Coming

No we are not listening to Christmas music yet, but it is time to start getting ready!! We packaged up our shoe boxes to send to Operation Christmas Child so that 2 little girls will get a package lovingly packed by our girls. The girls had fun picking out items and we pray often for whoever God wants to have these boxes. Jeff and I started doing these years ago and we plan to make it a tradition for every year. It's a lot more fun now that we have kids to do it with!

We also did some salt-dough ornament painting this weekend. They are a little easier to decorate than Christmas cookies but it's not as fun when you can't eat your finished product.

The girls had quite a few loving moments this weekend. This morning Samantha was sitting in Daddy's chair and Danielle asked, "Can I come snuggle with you?". Samantha said, "yes!" so they snuggled and watched their morning show together.

The last picture is Jeff wearing a crown Danielle made for him on a game she plays on the pbskids website. She is sure doing well with her reading and writing.

One more funny thing. Samantha normally says her name "fa-fa", but tonight one of us called her "Sam" and she said "Sam!". So, now when we ask her name sometimes she says "Sam". Pretty cute.

Uneventful Week

Danielle's cut is finally starting to heal nicely. She loves her princess bandaids which helps since it hurts a little when we change the bandaid every day.

We've been doing more craft projects and indoor fun these days. We tried making salt dough ornaments. They turned out quite nicely and now we will see if we can paint them. It should be interesting...I might only have Danielle help with this project.

Today we had a little tea party after the girls had their nails painted and ribbons tied in their hair. It sure doesn't take much to please them. I've decided that my china serves no good purpose sitting in the cabinet so I let my girls carefully use it. They feel special and then I get cute pictures of them enjoying themselves.

First Injury

Last night we were watching the high school volleyball game and the girls were playing around the bleachers. We knew there was quite a potential for injury so we were trying to keep them sitting quietly, but that isn't easy to do when it's late, they're in a new place, etc. Anyway, Danielle fell and hit her head on the bleachers. It bled quite a bit since it was her head but thankfully the bleeding stopped after a short while. We took her home and put on a butterfly bandage to keep the cut closed up. She was tired so we put her to bed and she slept great. We took her by the doctors office today just to let him take a look. He said Jeff bandaged it up well and to leave it for 5 days. We were glad to hear that he didn't think stitches were necessary at this point.

We are thankful for several things. First, that Danielle made it to almost 4 years old before her first real injury. Second, we are glad it was a minor one. Third, that we had butterfly bandages in our first aid kit! Now we just have to track down some Vitamin E to apply when it starts to heal so we can minimize the scarring.