Happy Birthday to you…

Happy Birthday to our big FOUR year old, Miss Madeline Belle Randolph! Last weekend we celebrated Maddie’s big number 4…well, we didn’t really do much celebrating since both kids had double ear infections :-( Our big plans to have a beach party and go to Legoland and the zoo have been put on hold. However, we did have a lot of fun hanging around the house and enjoying each other’s company. Maddie didn’t really seem to miss the big party this year. She was happy to open her presents with Mommy, Daddy & Collin (she got a full new wardrobe) and we took her to the bike shop to pick out her very own big girl bike. She was so excited and completely surprised when we arrived at the bike shop. She had a blast riding her bike all weekend long. The weather here was beautiful and we enjoyed spending lots of time outside. They even played around with the hose for a while.

I found this brilliant idea on Pinterest and I am excited to start this new tradition with both of the kids. Starting on the child’s third birthday (we are a year late with Maddie, but that’s okay), every year on their birthday you ask the same 20 questions and see how their answers change over the years! I asked Maddie these questions on Saturday and here are her answers:

20 Questions with Madeline
March 10, 2012

1. What is your favorite color? Purple

2. What is your favorite toy? My Ariel doll that Uncle Andrew and Auntie Katie got me at Disneyland.

3. What is your favorite fruit? Pears

4. What is your favorite tv show? Dora the Explorer

5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? In-N-Out Burger

6. What is your favorite outfit? The long skirt I got for my birthday.
7. What is your favorite game? Tag

8. What is your favorite snack? Popcorn

9. What is your favorite animal? Tigers

10. What is your favorite song? Katy Perry songs

11. What is your favorite book? 101 Dalmations
12. Who is your best friend? Izzy

13. What is your favorite cereal? Cheerios

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Ride my jeep and my bike.
15. What is your favorite drink? Sprite

16. What is your favorite holiday? Valentines Day

17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? My fuzzy blanket.

18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Eggs and Bacon

19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday? Pizza

20. What do you want to be when you grow up? A baby doctor.

Madeline – you have always been wise beyond your years. You are so intelligent, intuitive and just an all around special little girl. You never cease to amaze us with the brilliant things you say and big girl things you do. You love your hip hop class, riding your bike, swimming, singing, and going to school. You love your brother so very much and are a great big sister (most of the time). You can be a handful sometimes because you are so very smart and know just how to push our buttons. We love you anyway! Can’t wait to see what exciting things you have in store for us this year. We love you baby girl!

Funfilled Weekend

Having a fire fighter in the family really is a blessing. I was talking to my dad last week as he was on his way to the local fire station. He was headed there to pick up some of the third graders at his school who were there for a field trip. A field trip…at the fire station. My kids visit the fire station at least once a week! I don’t think Maddie really appreciates it much. She loves going to visit daddy and makes an occasional trip down the fire pole. Sometimes she likes to sit in the truck and pretend she’s driving. But Collin…that little boy’s eyes light up as soon as we turn on to Citrus and he sees the station out of the car window! He yells, “Daddy! Daddy!” and beelines to the trucks as soon as we get out of the car. He could spend hours just walking around the place…touching everything he can get his little hands on. Even the inside of the station is like Disneyland to Collin. Daddy is a hero to both of my kids. He is a hero to me too.

We are fortunate that we live close enough to daddy’s station to make trips there whenever we want to. It’s for this reason we’ll probably never move too far from Redlands. When daddy is gone sometimes for a whole week at a time, it is nice to be able to take the kids by to see him on our way home from Target…or to stop by after Maddie gets off school to show him one of her art projects. My kids needs that…I need that! Last week was one of those weeks when Chris was home just one day…Thursday. Thankfully, it was the day that Mads had her tooth pulled. I really needed him home that day. It’s nice when things work out in our favor. Seems like that doesn’t happen very often, but we’ve gotten pretty good at just going with the flow and making the best out of the situation. It is our life. We chose this path and we need to live with it. Chris will miss birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, Easter…the list goes on. It is inevitable and it is okay. It may not be traditional, but it is our normal. We deal with it. It’s not always easy and I would be lying if I said I’ve never been frustrated/upset/angry/sad when I find out Chris isn’t coming home from work. However, I do my best not to let my emotions get the best of me and I do my best to make each and every day fun for my kids…even when it’s just a day at home doing laundry and cleaning house. We are blessed to live in a beautiful home with a huge yard for the kids to play in. Chris works really hard for this and I’ll be damned if we take it for granted.

I am pretty proud of myself for keeping things together at the house…holding down the fort if you will…while Chris is out busting his butt for our family. I think I work equally as hard raising the little monkeys (they both have issues/it’s all my fault), feeding them three healthy meals every day (we occasionally order pizza/Chinese/McDonalds), doing the laundry (sometimes it takes a week, whatever), cleaning the house (I dearly miss my housekeeper and I’m in the market for another), keeping up with my fitness (I would go INSANE if I didn’t workout) and actually doing REAL work too (I manage to squeeze in about 15 hours of paralegal work somewhere each week). It’s hard and not always pretty, but at the end of the day, I can look back and say I did my very best and my kids had FUN. I lose no sleep. I am blessed. I am thankful.

I started off in a real funk on Friday morning. It was one of those days when I got out of bed and felt like doing nothing all day. Needless to say, the kids weren’t pleased. They feed off of my funk and start acting all funky themselves. I saw things starting off on a downhill spiral and new I had to turn things around. It was a beautiful day and we were going to enjoy it. We loaded up the Tahoe and headed down to Walmart to pick up some sunny day supplies! We bought flowers, potting soil, bubbles, sidewalk chalk and pinwheels. Total cost about $20. Let me tell you…we had the BEST weekend with our $20 worth of sunny day supplies! We spent HOURS outside enjoying the beautiful weather and making memories. Grandma and Grandpa made a trip out to join in on the fun on Sunday. We went out to lunch and had a great visit with Great Grandma Guire. We even got to visit with daddy who was on a call at Grandma Guire’s retirement home. I love it when things turn around like that. Here are a few pictures from our fun-filled weekend. Enjoy :-)

Maddie wanted a picture of her flying a kite. I had her lie down and I traced her. Collin immediately laid down next to her and wanted to be traced too. He was so still!


The kiddos :-)


Maddie with her self portrait.

Our beutiful butterfly (Maddie did MOST of this herself).


My beautiful butterfly!


Silly boy didn't want to miss out on the fun!




And this is what your back looks like after you lie down in chalk :-/


This Jeep gets more use than any Power Wheels vehicle ever owned...true story!


My climber...always trying to stand on top of something!

He's so handsome!

Collin loves being driven around the yard.

Bubbles!!!



This little guy came slithering up on the patio while we were hanging out with Grandma & Grandpa. We have LOTS of lizards at our house, but I've never seen one like this. I think it is an alligator lizard. It was creepy.

Of course Collin was ALL about it...right up close and personal. Freaks me out.


Grandma and Maddie with our yummy homemade lemonade. We picked all the lemons in our backyard. It was soooooo yummy!

Toothless Princess

Before

After

Well, it lasted for a whole 7 months following her big injury last summer, but we finally had to bid farewell to Maddie's poor little grey tooth this week. You'll recall that last July, Madeline had an unfortunate couch dancing accident and smashed her two front teeth into our coffee table. After several dentist visits where we were told to just watch and wait to see what happened with her tooth, her x-rays this week showed signs that her body was rejecting the tooth and a small abcess was forming. Dr. Stevens recommended that we have the tooth pulled so as to avoid any damage to her permanent teeth. To our surprise, Maddie was thrilled! We scheduled the extraction for Thursday morning and the whole procedure took about 2 minutes. Maddie never even shed a tear. She loves her new little "window" and feels like a big girl. She could hardly wait to show it off at school this morning. The tooth fairy came and left Mads $4 under her pillow. Maddie says she got $4 because she is almost 4 years old...I'm guessing its because the tooth fairy had four singles and a twenty and didn't want to set too big of a precedent :-) You'll notice in her before picture Maddie is holding our elf, Chippie. Chippie makes special trips from the north pole when major events are happening with the kids. He arrived the night before Maddie's appointment with a note saying that he wanted to go with her to the dentist. She held him the whole time :-)

Kaylie's Birthday Party

We had a great time at our dear little friend Kaylie's birthday party last weekend. She had a wonderful cowgirl party complete with pony rides for the little ones.

Maddie and Collin loved riding together.

Maddie got her face painted.

Collin was just being a handsome devil.

Fun at Grandma & Grandpa's

These are old pictures...they were taken sometime back in December when we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house to decorate the Christmas tree. I found them on the camera when I decided to finally upload some pictures to the blog. I've been such a slacker lately, but I'm really making an effort to blog more this year. We have tons of awesome stuff going on all the time, I just never seem to find the time to blog about it. I really need to make more time. I love looking back at all of our posts when Maddie was little. I want to be able to do the same with Collin. So expect more blogging from me this year (hopefully)! Enjoy...

The kids love their Uncle Chris...such a big kid at heart <3

Collin was busy playing with a piece of drift wood...

...and Parker was obviously off eating something! :-)

Phone Photo Recap

I love going back and looking at the pictures taken on my iPhone every once in a while. There are always cute pictures of the kids that I had completely forgotten about and random pictures taken by Madeline that make me laugh. It’s a nice pick me up when I’m having a stressful day. The quality is never very good and the circumstances are usually nothing I would have busted out the good camera for, but they are special little moments in and of themselves that deserve not to be forgotten. I have hundreds of photos on my phone…hundreds…but I picked a few taken over the last couple of months that really made me smile. Enjoy :-)

Here's Maddie and Izzy at the Thanksgiving Feast at school. They were dressed as pilgrims :-)


Here's Collin the day after we took our family photos. About halfway through our photo session, Collin tripped and fell into the adorable little bench the kids were seated on in a few of the pictures. He scraped up the whole side of his face and was left with a horrible scab that lasted through much of the holidays. Our boy was tough though...we had to cut the photo session a little short, but still ended up with some beautiful pictures!


Speaking of beautiful, here's a copy of one of the photos I took of Maddie in my wedding dress. This wasn't actually taken on the iPhone, but I have it saved on here so I had to share. Isn't she just stunning??!?! We will hold onto this for her wedding day.


Here's our dear friend from the North Pole, Chippy! The kids looooove Chippy. "Chippy" was one of Collin's first words. Although he returned to the North Pole on Christmas, he still makes an occasional visit to congratulate the kids on major accomplishments. He stopped by the other day to let Maddie know how proud he is that she has slept in her bed for 15 days straight!


Maddie was awarded Student of the Month for November 2011. We are so very proud of her. Unfortunately, Maddie's teacher failed to inform us that she was being presented with the award on the day of the assembly, so we missed the whole thing :-/ We were devastated and I still haven't forgiven her teacher.


Ahhhhhh...soooo relaxing! Mads and I stopped off on our way home from her last day of school before Christmas break to get a pedicure. We love mommy-daughter dates!


This is us at the Redlands Christmas Parade. Horrible picture...I guess the flash decided not to go off and it was far too cold and windy to attempt another photo. We had a blast at the parade. It was a special treat when daddy was able to walk down and meet us on duty. The kids loved it. We’ve gone to this parade every year since Madeline was born. It’s kind of like a Christmas tradition for us now.


Here is Mackena...the Cabbage Patch Doll Maddie got for Christmas from Grandma & Grandpa. She takes this doll EVERYWHERE...sleeps with her every night, eats with her, etc.



I have about 50 pictures like this on my phone every month. Maddie is a very artistic photographer :-/



I also have lots of these...she takes snapshots while she's playing her kids games. Always makes me smile :-)




My kids miss the beach...I caught them sitting in the sand on their sand and water table a couple weeks ago.


Here's Chris and I enjoying yesterday's 49ers game. So bummed they lost...next year, I guess!


Cheers to the lost iPhone photos!!! You will not be forgotten :-)