Spring Sprung

A friend took some lovely spring/Easter photos of Jilly earlier this month. Thank you to Stephanie Reeder for capturing such beautiful moments.

Party at Three

JillyBean turned three - three weeks ago. There was so much activity taking place that I have had no time to come here to write about it. Plus, I spilled lemonade on the computer keyboard and the keys are sticky, making it difficult to type....

The birthday was great. I made a pink train cake, per her request, for our family celebration and was pretty happy with the result. It was strawberry cake with homemade butter cream frosting. It didn't look professional but it sure did taste great.
She got a new bike - a Thomas bike - as well as a doll house, a cow barn (since Santa forgot at Christmas), and a couple of movies from mom and dad. Grandma gave her a softball glove and a few other fun things.
The big shindig took place the following Saturday. We hosted 12 kids and their parents and it was a great time. The weather was beautiful, so the party stayed outside much of the time. Daddy brought home a tent that we set out in the back and placed a long banquet table under it so the kids could decorate their own mini train cake. We used it again to stage the food while the kids sat at little tables that we placed around the tent.

Guests were greeted with a sign that Daddy had made and we placed bunting and balloons on the front porch, giving it a festive look.
The kids had a blast decorating cakes and were pretty creative.
I made a train game for them to play and it was a huge success, but for the most part the kids had fun running around and playing outside. Jilly wore a cute little dress that a family friend made with Thomas material. It was a tad bit big, but Jilly HAD to wear it. The party concluded with a Thomas cake that I had made. It was chocolate and was soooo fresh that I can still taste it. It was honestly one of the best cakes I have ever had and it came from a grocery store. They did a fabulous job with it.
The kids loved their Thomas hats and wore them the entire time. They liked that they had their name on them and I think the parents appreciated not having something that made noise or more candy to take home, though they did have the cakes. It was a great party and now we can take a bit of a breather before planning for next year.

Easter

We were all pretty worn out from Easter activities so this is the first chance I have had to come in and talk about it.

I have always loved Easter. I have vivid memories of dying and hunting eggs and receiving a special dress each year. Apart from the religious aspect of the holiday, I always felt it was one of the more special events of the year. Most of those memories include my Grandmother and New Mexico and I found myself looking back at family photos of us preparing for Easter and celebrating and a rush of wonderful memories flood my mind. I want Jilly to have that same feeling and memories as she grows older.
We did not get the chance to hunt or color eggs last year so we made up for it this year - threefold. It was almost overdone, but JillyBean had such a fabulous time that it was worth all of the jellybean- and chocolate egg-induced sugar highs she experienced the past two weeks.

Our first hunt took place two weeks ago with our fabulous MOPS group. I think that Jilly had more fun gathering eggs than she did trick-or-treating.
We hosted an egg hunt at our place for our mom's group. A dozen two- and three-year-olds came to our place and we scattered eggs throughout the courtyard behind our house and the kids went crazy. It was so much fun watching them charge out to pick up eggs to place in their baskets. Afterward they munched on cupcakes and fruit and played together. It was a great spring gathering.
The Easter Bunny brought Jilly a basket filled with gear to explore the great outdoors. She received a butterfly net, a bug house, flashlight, binoculars and magnifying glass - all from a super cute line called Sunny Patch, a division of Melissa and Doug. She also received some toy snakes because, for some reason, she's obsessed with the creatures.
She also got some more lip gloss and a color book of her beloved Wonder Pets. The candy was kept to a minimum - just a chocolate bunny - since she had plenty by this point.

This year's Easter dress was a custom frock that had her monogram embroidered on it. It was a sweet little pink and green apron dress that looked so dainty on her, in spite of her newly skinned knees and elbow. I had wanted to experiment with sponge curlers (another childhood Easter memory), but I never bought them. Still, I thought that she looked adorable.
We spent the afternoon at our good friends' house where we enjoyed a lovely after church brunch and, yet, another egg hunt. The kids had a blast. You would have thought they would have been done with hunting eggs, but I am pretty sure that we could do it again and they would be just as excited.
This was the best Easter that we have had since Jilly has been with us. Well, that's not exactly true. The BEST Easter was three years ago when she was born. She is the best gift the Easter Bunny has ever brought me and I doubt that gift will ever be trumped.

Big Girl Bed

We made the transition to a big-girl bed a little earlier than planned. On Wednesday Daddy took the front off of Jilly's crib, transforming it into a toddler bed. I was not expecting it and neither was Jilly. He did it before he went to work and we were downstairs finishing breakfast and received the surprise when we went up to get dressed. Jilly was excited. Me, not so much. I couldn't believe he "uncaged" her at a time I would be home alone with her - for nap time. Thankfully we had a play date that ran late that day and Jilly missed her nap. She did spend some "quite time" in her bed when we got home, because she was so thrilled to have a "real" bed.

So far things have gone well. She stays in bed and we haven't had issues many parents have with wrangling her to stay in her room. It's still all new, so who knows if that will change...I am happy that we are trying this out as a toddler bed instead of the twin that will be her bed. She has fallen out of bed twice so at least she doesn't have far to go.

Real Life or The Legend of Ricky Bobby?

Breakfast conversations are usually pretty interesting around this house. This morning was no exception.

Me: Jilly, do you remember what we celebrate at Christmas?
Jilly: Baby Jesus' birthday.
Me: Exactly. Do you know what we celebrate at Easter?
Jilly: Nope.
Me: Well, Easter is a time for us to remember that when Jesus grew up and was big like daddy, he made a promise and he kept that promise.
Jilly: Oh. Well, Jesus lives in my heart.
Me: I know and that's very special, isn't it?
Jilly: Yes. But it's not big Jesus. Baby Jesus lives in my heart.
Me: Really? Well, that's fine. I'm sure that Jesus doesn't mind that he gets to stay little in your heart.
Jilly: Yes. He will grow up when I grow up. I like baby Jesus best right now.

Her desire to keep Jesus a baby reminds me of the scene from The Legend of Ricky Bobby where the fictional race car driver explains that he prefers to pray to the Christmas Jesus.

I have wondered for a while how to teach the Easter story to Jilly. The birth of a baby is an easy one, but I'm not certain that an almost three-year-old can understand death and resurrection. That is why I am focusing on the promise of new life that Christ gave us. Jilly's favorite book right now is Horton Hatches an Egg and Horton's mantra, "I meant what I said and said what I meant; an Elephant is faithful 100 percent," is one way to teach the message that God is always faithful as well.

Party Planning

Who would have thought that the start of Spring would be busier and filled with as much activity, if not more, than Christmas time? Not me. Jilly was actually born on Easter Sunday but since the holiday moves around from year to year, her birthday hasn't been all that close until now. Most of what has had me running around like a chicken with her head cut off would have been solved if I would have just told her what we would do for her birthday this year. But no. I had to get her input and now I'm paying for it. Like Beanie Daddy says, she's TWO. She shouldn't be making decisions that cause me more work than necessary. If I want to do it myself, well, that's my problem. But Jilly is the kind of child that when she makes up her mind that she wants to do something, you'd better be dang sure that you do what you can do to make it happen because she won't let you forget. I suppose we got a preview of that with the circumstances of her birth. She came 3 weeks early with no warning. I had been to the doctor a few days earlier and had made no progress toward going into labor any time soon. I was actually hoping we could hold out until May. But no. She decided she was ready and such is the life we live today....

But I digress....

JillyBean's birthday is the Thursday after Easter this year. I had the idea of hosting a party at home with her friends the Saturday before and double it as an Easter egg hunt. I had thought of getting each guest their own basket filled with treats in addition to scattering eggs about for them to collect. I was even hoping that I could convince Daddy to dress up like the Easter Bunny, but knew it was a long shot. Instead, Jilly has had it in her head for nearly a year that she wants to have a Thomas the Tank Engine party. I thought and hoped that she would change her mind as time went by, but she didn't. So, we are having a Thomas party. By the way, I don't understand her obsession with Thomas. She's never watched the show.

My planning for this event began shortly after the holidays. I began looking for Thomas and general train invitations that I thought were a little girlie. Some were too baby or were more along a circus train theme or were too heavily in the primary color scheme for my taste. Then I found these and knew they would work. I almost had the woman who made them change the color to pink and green, but thought that the red and blue were a bit more authentic and kept close to the Thomas theme.
Next came trying to figure out how to keep nearly a dozen (didn't mean for it to grow this big) preschoolers entertained without destroying our house. I won a cake pan on Ebay that makes six mini train cakes. My idea is to have the cakes ready for the kids to decorate with candy. I haven't decided if I want to frost them ahead of time. That may be a game day decision. In addition, I am trying to make up a game along the lines of pin the tail on the donkey. A friend whose son had a Thomas party last year said there was a similar Thomas game where you have to get the No. 1 in place. That game no longer exists so I am going to wing it. I haven't decided if I want to make a roundhouse and have the kids try to get their engine into the house or try to line up the train cars on a track. I have finally found some train templates that I like online and will print one out for each child. I feel as if I need one more thing to do, but am not sure. We're still kicking around ideas, but hopefully it will be pretty outside and we can shoo them out for a while then have hot dogs, turkey burgers then cake.

I am really excited for the guest favors that I made with the assistance of a good friend who has unlimited craft ideas. Each child will receive a wooden train whistle and a personalized engineer's cap. We worked on these earlier this week and I'm really happy with them:
I bought Thomas fabric and we cut out the little circles to attach the brim of each hat.Then we personalized the hats with each child's name. It was super easy and, I think, rather unique.

Next I have turned my attention to decor. I had grand ideas of turning the downstairs area into a train station, but that's not going to work since I'm busy planning two other parties that fall within a week of this one (more on that later). So we're going to keep it fairly simple. I am going to order two dozen red and blue balloons. One dozen will be tied to the front porch to greet guests and the others will be used inside. I suspect that we can tie one on to each chair that will seat a guest. I also revamped the birthday banner that I made Jilly last year. I ordered Thomas scrapbook paper and cut out letters and strung them together with red ribbon:

I still need to trace and cut out letters for her name, but am happy with this so far.

The big stuff is pretty much done. I promised Jilly that I would make a train cake for her, but I am unsure if it is something that will be served at the big party or reserved for the family party on her actual birthday. I have never done much to decorate a cake than simply slap frosting across it. The cake pan that I bought has instructions as to how to pipe it and I have the right tools, so we'll see how it goes.

Daddy is responsible for downloading train songs that will be played and he has it in his head that he is going to make a station sign that will hang on our porch to welcome guests. We'll see how that goes. I have all the confidence that he can do it, just not sure when he'll get around to doing it.

We asked our guests to consider bringing a toy that will be donated to the Charlottesville Ronald McDonald House instead of a birthday gift for JillyBean. She will get more than enough from family, and we want to continue teaching her the importance of helping others. She will make a birthday donation of her own to the organization as well. I know that birthdays are supposed to be special times when the attention is focused on birthday girl or boy, but I think the party is enough to show her how loved she is and how happy we are to have her in our lives.

Now, please pray for sunny weather so 12 kids and a couple dozen adults aren't stuck in the house.

Hello, Again

Why is that I get on a roll posting here on a regular basis then appear to fall off the face of the earth? Things have been crazy the past month and I have simply not taken the time to post here. Again, it is certainly not for a lack of things to record. I cannot decide if I am too tired or too lazy to update. And, again, this is not a real post, simply a pace for me to put a couple of thoughts in order and "see" some things that I am considering.

JillyBean's third birthday is coming up and I have been fairly busy making plans for that. I will post on that more soon. She has been promised that she will get a "big-girl" bed when she turns three and we have been batting a couple of bed sets back and forth. Naturally the set that she has her mind on is not the one that I prefer. It is cute, but I like something else. I do like the sheets that go with the set, but I am not too crazy about the quilt. Then I found a quilt from another store and think that I may be able to get the best of both worlds but am unsure if they go together well.

Here is what Jilly likes:
I don't like the "busyness" of the quit, but I do like the sheets:
So I am wondering if they will go with this: