Brian's Birthday Party

This afternoon was Brian's birthday party ... Reagan goes to preschool at Ms. Lisa's with Brian and he's such a cute little boy. I'm still laughing about how dumb I was and I'd like to share the story so everyone can get a good laugh: The invitation said the party would be held at the Harrington Park Fire Station (they live in Harrington Park). I thought, "how cool! He's having a 'fireman' themed party!" So we told Reagan she should wear her fireman hat to the party. Just before we were leaving, we searched the house up and down for the hat, but couldn't find it! On the way to the party, she was sad she didn't have it, so I told her, "the firemen there will probably give you a new fire hat!" I had visions of firemen taking the kids on a tour of the fire station, letting them see and climb on the fire engines, etc. When we walked into the 2nd level of the fire station, I was shocked: it was a huge hall for entertaining!! I couldn't believe how big this place was and it finally occurred to me that it was a huge party with lots of adults, and not just a little kid party with a "fireman theme!" I was laughing at myself for being so stupid and clueless. But in my defense, I had never seen anything like this place ... I guess it's common in NJ for fire stations to have large spaces like these, but nothing like that exists in Utah (at least, not that I know of!). I've now been here for 4 1/2 years and I'm still learning new things all the time :)

Anyway, it was a really fun birthday party and I took a lot of great pictures ...

Here's the birthday boy Brian with his mom Gigi ... I'm SO bummed this picture turned out blurry because it would have been SO cute!

Ms. Lisa was there with her daughter Nicole

Helen and Amelia, another one of Reagan's friends from preschool

Amanda and Reagan

Gigi's aunt made these incredible cakes!

After everyone had a bite to eat, the entertainers that were hired started playing music and Reagan loosened up a little ...

The McElroy Family ~ Brian was lucky enough to have a very special guest at the party: his father Brian who is currently serving the military in Iraq. He left last summer and got to come home for 2 weeks. He won't be back home for another visit until this summer, so they were all very excited to see him. Brian's little sister is named Reagan and she's Avery's age!

Gigi hired someone to come entertain the kids and he was so great with them! He kept the kids busy and having fun for a solid hour. Most of the activities were SO simple, yet the kids were in heaven.

Reagan LOVES the parachute

... as you can see!

Balloons

What's with the tongue?

This one blew me away: he sprayed the kids with 7 rolls of toilet paper! What a cheap way to make kids go crazy :)

As you can see, he used some type of blower with a painting roller attached ... as soon as a roll was finished, his assistant would quickly replace it with a new roll.

And then, BUBBLEWRAP! He put two large pieces of bubble wrap down on the floor and the kids went nuts, jumping on it and popping all the bubbles.

Then the head guy made things out of balloons. Reagan got a heart, and then she saw all the boys playing with swords and wanted to join in ... luckily, the guy made her a sword too.

While the head guy was doing balloons, his assistant was doing face/hand painting. This was the first time Reagan had ever done anything like this. She chose to have balloons painted on her hand, vs. something on her face.

Then it was time for the pinata! Reagan gave it an impressive whack!

The birthday boy Brian

Helen and her 3 month old boy Reyhan (I'm not sure how to spell his name - her husband is from India, so it's an Indian name).

Blowing out the candles

Reagan

My little 3 year old is so stinkin' cute! I figured I was well-overdue for a post about all the funny things she's been saying and doing lately. After all, that's what this blog is all about, documenting the little things that consume our days, but will one day be forgotten if they're not written down somewhere. So here are some random thoughts about my little Reagan:

Just typing "my little Reagan" brought to mind something she says ALL the time: "I'm NOT little! I'm BIG!" I didn't realize how often I called her little, until she started correcting me. I often refer to her, using terms of endearment such as, "my little cutie," or "my little bug-a-boo," or "my little munchkin." She takes a lot of offense to this and insists on telling me what a big girl she is.

She LOVES lollipops! Of the many different kinds she's sampled, she seems to favor those of the "circle" variety. I know, most lollipops are circles, so this doesn't really make sense. But whenever she asks for one, she says, "May I please have a circle lollipop?" I don't know where this came from, but it's one of her unique sayings that always makes me laugh. In the picture above, she had just eaten a blue ring-pop.

She's still learning all the little quirks of the English language. This is that bitter/sweet time-frame for a parent when it's sort of difficult to correct her mistakes because the mistakes just sound so cute! I can't think of all of them right now, but here are a few: she's often using the word "at" instead of "to" ("are we going AT preschool?" or "we're going AT Utah!"). She also has a hard time using the past tense of the word "say" ... if she's explaining what someone "said", she'll say "he say'd it" or "he says this." She loves to put her dress-up clothes on every single day. Today she wore the Tinkerbell dress and said, "Mama, fly me!" which meant she wanted me to lift her up and make her fly. She also says "you falled it" whenever I drop something or she says "it falled" instead of using the past tense "fell."

Reagan loves to sing! She sings all the time and I can't get enough of her little voice. Last week in preschool, the theme was nursery rhymes. Ever since, she's been singing "Bah, Bah Blacksheep" and it's the cutest thing ... instead of saying "have you any wool," she says, "have you any wolves!" I just don't have the heart to correct her :) I recorded her singing this on my phone, but she was hamming it up, over-doing it, rather than singing it the way she usually does: (but it's still really cute to hear!)

She's really good at imitating John and me which is sometimes adorable and sometimes scary. It's adorable when she's laying next to me and she cups my face in her hands and says, "Ohhh Mama, you are SO beautiful!" ... I've done this to her so many times that she says it back to me in the exact same way. She's so good at bringing a smile to my face. But other times, she yells at Brutus (our 150 pound Italian Mastiff) to get out of her way, and we realize she's saying it exactly the way we do. It can come out pretty ugly and our initial reaction is to scold Reagan for talking so rudely to the dog ~ then we realize she learned this from us and we better learn to be better when talking to the dogs!

Last week, I was having a really "off week" which started by me accidentally putting my iPhone into the washing machine! I was extremely depressed about this because I'm so attached to my iPhone. Reagan witnessed all of this and tried very hard to make me feel better about it. The next day, I picked her up from preschool and one of my favorite songs came on the radio on our drive home. I started singing and dancing, looking back at Reagan to join me (I do this all the time, yes, I'm a big dork when no one is watching!). She said to me, "Are you happy now Mama?" I couldn't believe that she remembered how sad I was the day before and she recognized that my mood was now different. The ironic thing was that her comment made me start to cry for 2 reasons: 1) I was so touched by her ability to be concerned about my feelings and 2) I felt very guilty for being so down the day before over a material possession and exposing my innocent 3 year old to my sadness.

Reagan loves to walk around in Papa's big shoes!

Last Sunday, Reagan and Avery were in the kitchen with me as I was cooking something for breakfast. Afterward, Reagan told me she was going to see her Abuela, or as Reagan calls her, "Aw-bay-a." I kind of forgot about her because I didn't hear anything for a very long time. After about 20 minutes, I went into Nila's room and found Reagan sitting on the bed, just talking with her grandmother. It was so sweet. I love the above picture I took. We don't know how much longer Nila will be with us so I want Reagan and Avery to spend time with her to enrich this last stretch of her life. I also want my girls to remember their grandmother.

Joaquin's 2nd Birthday

Last week (1/18/09), Joaquin turned 2, so Maribel and Marcelo had the family over tonight to celebrate.

If only Avery were smiling, this would be a great family shot!

Avery and her Papa ... Avery was loving the empanadas that Marcelo picked up from a Uruguayan bakery.

This is one of Avery's funny expressions ...

My sweet little Reagan

She is so good at flashing me her cheesie grin!

My girls

I tried to take some pictures with my new camera without using the flash, but the sun was going down and it was difficult to get enough natural light. These were the best I could do...

Joaquin was very cautious about flashing me any kind of smile, but these expressions were cute too :)

Doreen and Ethan

Debbie and Avery

Lauren, Gabby and Jose

The kids were all playing so nicely together ~ Gabby is always so great with the little ones

Avery discovered the drape all by herself ... she walked over to it, then quickly realized it served as a great hiding place. We started playing "Peek-a-boo" and she was cracking up!

As soon as Reagan noticed what Avery was doing, Reagan just HAD to join in!

They had a lot of fun together which made me very happy, of course!

Marcelo and the girls ... they were having fun playing with his iPhone, changing his Facebook status for him

Avery can be such a lover ... she loves to grab little kid's faces and give them kisses. Joaquin wasn't so sure about what she was doing, as you can see by his classic face expressions!

They're going to love this shot when they're older!

Poor Joaquin!

... then she went for his ear and I just love that look. Save me!

Avery was trying to show us her belly button!

... and when we all started laughing at Avery, Reagan had to get in on the attention. She was ever so proud to show us that she also knew how to locate her belly button!

Time to open presents!

I got him a new book, and some snow boots

Dinosaur cake for both Joaquin and Marcelo

All the kids: Joshua, Lauren, Reagan, Avery, Gabby, Joaquin, Alexis, and Ethan