all of the above.

Can you find Maddie?
She is taking a ballet/tap class at our local rec center. She. loves. it. Although the first day I wasn't so sure how it was all going to go. For the entire first half of the first day of class she just stood there. staring. straight at the teacher. The teacher would say, "C'mon, join us!" and Maddie would just continue to stare at her not moving a muscle. Great, I thought, this is going to be a long 8 weeks. But halfway through the class she came out to replace her ballet slippers with her tap shoes. I didn't ask questions her anything I just said, "I can't wait for you to show me all of your new moves you're learning!" I guess that was all she needed to hear because after that, she has been the star pupil. She LOVES her class. In fact today as we were getting ready for church she said, "Mom, guess who my favorite adult is and what me favorite thing to do is?" "I don't know, tell me.", I said. "Daddy and go to my dance class." enough said. :)

This is at our city Parks and Rec Toddler Halloween bash they have every year. It's always so much fun. This year Jonathon go to come with us...which is even more fun.

They have lots of fun carnival booths. Maddie is decorating her sugar cookie.

Lyndon was all about the games. He LOVED them. There was this one game where the helper would stack up 5 paint cans and the kid had to knock them over by throwing a ball at the stack. So it was Lyndon's turn and the person was stacking the paint cans while I went chasing after the ball from the last participant. By the time I returned with the ball Lyndon had decided to just take matter into his own hand and proceeded to punch over the paint cans with his best super hero fist smack. (Yes, sound effects were included.) It was pretty awesome, I had to admit.

The hay ride. ya gotta do the hay ride.

I rented a lens for the commercial photo shoot I was doing so I played around with it at the house. Here are some pics... (the first one is to show part of my Halloween decorations. I should take pictures of the rest of it before I take it down. Yes, it is still up.)

She thinks this is hilarious.

wide angle lens. Much wider than what I own now. I like it. I think I might have to save up for one.

On to Maddie's birthday! I CANNOT believe she is 5 years old!

Dear Maddie,

It truly seems like yesterday that I met you. You were the talk of the hospital. You are inspiring to watch. You are so smart. It's almost scary. You can read, clean any room (just as well as me), make chocolate milk and sandwiches, draw beautiful pictures, take care of Lyndon, and dream big dreams. You are one of my best friends. I love our conversations. I love how you always tell me, "I want to be a mommy like you". You're kind, warm and considerate. Even though I reprimand you for doing it, your potty humor crack's me up. I love hanging out with you. I'm really going to miss you when you go to school next year. It will be a sad day for me to lose you but a happy one cause I know you're going to love it.

To my little girl who still has puppy breath every morning...happy birthday, my 5 year old. I love watching the little lady you are becoming.

I love you,
Mom.

Here she is coming down to open her presents (with Lyndon, of course.)

This girl LOVES "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

I love her laugh.

Lyndon, oh Lyndon. how lucky am I that I get to live with this little guy? (He just opened a present for him from Grandma and Grandpa.)

Leave it to Grandma to encourage this little fashionista. (I love opening the Janey and Jack boxes almost as much as she does!) :)

She was thrilled with her new jewelry box FULL of new jewelry. She was really beside herself with joy.

We love the Llama, Llama, books!

Of course we had to go to Chuck E. Cheeses house for lunch!

Jonathon is our hero at chuck E. Cheese. He wins us (uh, I mean the kids) tons of tickets so they can pick out lots of crap, uh I mean treasures...

He really has a skill at winning a ridiculous amount of tickets. It's fun to watch.

back at the house...(after C.E.C., a movie and Mc Donald's for dinner) we had candles and cake.

And to top off the perfect day, our WONDERFUL neighbors whom we all adore, Meme and Joe, dropped by to give the birthday girl one more gift...Polly Pockets!


It was a whirlwind of fun and excitement.

On our doorstep when we returned home from the birthday festivities was this amazing flower arrangement. I immediately thought they were for Maddie (it was her day, after all) but they were really for me! They were sent to me from Aquasana, the company that I did the commercial photo shoot for. I was thrilled, to say the least. The flowers were beautiful and it was so thoughtful of them.