Friends, Forts and the Famous Five

Well January has been the month for having lots of friends come over and play. And of course, no play date would be complete without building a huge fort. Lia is the QUEEN of fort building. Seriously, almost every day she builds a masterpiece in one of the rooms of the house. Sometimes it's her bedroom, her playroom, the family room, the living room, our bedroom, or the basement. Right now the fort is in the basement and it's massive. I've included a picture of it so you can see its intricate design. I have to say that Lia is very good at building forts. Heck, she should be since she's had so much practice. We actually bought her this thing called "Super Forts" which is a system for building your own forts. I naively thought maybe that would cut down on the use of all our blankets and assorted pieces of rope, string, belts, etc. Nope, that's not the case. Now she uses all those things in conjunction with her Super Forts. My dad (Papa) thinks that Lia is going to grow up to be a construction engineer. Wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Another thing we've been occupied with as of late is reading the Famous Five books. The Famous Five was written by an English author named Enid Blyton and they feature the adventures of two brothers, Julian and Dick, their sister, Anne, and their cousin Georgina (called George) and George's dog Timmy. They are really great books because the mysteries in them are frought with things like secret passways, secret codes, hidden treasures, a castle on an island with a dungeon, etc. Nanna got the books (21 in the series) for Lia for Christmas and we're already on our fifth one. It's kind of funny because Dan will ask us to wait to read till he gets home from work so he doesn't miss out on what's happening. So those of you with kids that age should check it out. The only thing with these books is that they are difficult to find. We found ours on where else but E-Bay.

And you'll see that I've included some cute pictures of Lia (in the photo section down below) in dressing up in her friend's Minnie Mouse costume. She sometimes switches dresses with a friend for a week or so and this was one of the latest trades.

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Winter Wonderland

Well December brought snow to us and with snow comes lots of snow angels, snow forts, king of the hill, etc. Dan has been on vacation since the Thursday before Christmas so he and Lia have spent many hours doing just that. Dan told Lia that when he was little they used to make all these tracks in the snow and then they would either play tag where you couldn't go outside the lines of the tracks or else they would say all their tracks were the outlines for rooms in a house. So they have also been playing both of those things as well. Lia has been loving all this time she's had with her daddy at home!!

One kind of cool thing about our new house is that we have a kind of steep driveway hill. Now that's only a cool thing if you're a kid and you can sled down it. It's not so cool when you're the mom and you have to get your car up it when it's icy (but that's another story). So there are a couple of pictures of Lia sledding down our driveway with our neighbor friend Jacob.

I have posted pictures of them and their many adventures in the picture section down below.

Lia's 5th birthday!

Lia's Birthday Celebrations!

Well there are good things about having a birthday in December and bad things about having a birthday in December. One of the good things is that the celebration often seems to last for days as was the case for Lia. The bad thing is that you get all your presents in a few weeks and then nothing else for the rest of the year.

We had our first birthday celebration for Lia's birthday with Dan's family on Thanksgiving. Dan practiced making the birthday cake that we were going to make for her party with her friends a week later. As you can see from the pictures, he did an AMAZING job at creating the perfect pink princess castle cake! I knew that Dan had worked in a bakery in high school but I was unaware that he had used a pastry bag to fill cream curls so he was very adept at using one to decorate a fancy cake. Lia got a beautiful outfit for her American girl doll from her aunts, uncles and cousins and a Princess scooter from Grandma and Grandpa Hielkema which was something she has been wishing for forever (as she says).

Our next birthday celebration was Dec. 1st with a few of Lia's friends. Lia wanted to have a "play date" party with cake and ice cream this year and we told her she could invite five friends (because last year was a LOT of kids when all her friends came). All the girls came dressed up in their princess attire and brought their dolls as well.

Then on Sunday we met Nana and Papa and Auntie Julie and Uncle Bill for dinner to celebrate Auntie Julie's birthday and Lia's birthday. We brought the remains of Lia's cake from the day before so everyone could have their "chocolate fix". Nana and Papa gave Lia their hand-me-down digital camera and she was SO excited to have her very own camera. Auntie Julie and Uncle Bill gave her a beautiful Cinderella dress, shoes, crown and wand that lights up. Lia adores all things princess and the more sparkly and glittery the better so she loved their outfit.

Lia's ACTUAL birthday is on Tuesday the 4th of December. We are going out for Chinese for dinner and she'll get to open the presents from us. It's hard for us to imagine that our little girl is already five years old. Dan always says she is growing up way too quickly. But every single day that Lia is part of our family and we spend with her is wonderful because we're just happy that God has made it so (to quote one of her favorite stories)!

One more time......

The night after Halloween I went upstairs to check on Lia before I went to bed. I walked in her room and saw one of her dresser drawers open and I saw tights laying all over the floor. I was wondering why her tights would be all over the floor when I looked over at her laying in the bed. And there she was, fast asleep all dressed up in her Halloween costume. Of course I had to go get my camera and take a picture because it was so cute.

'Da boys are in the house with Lia

Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber were our inspirations this year for the Halloween pumpkins. The "artist formerly known as Dan", was the creator of the Bob and Larry re-creations. He did it all freehand just from looking at their picture in one of Lia's Veggie Tales book. Not bad!! Lia helped him paint, and the results (as you can see) are fantastic!

And after much consideration, Lia finally decided on the perfect Halloween costume. Of course the one we got was totally a last minute find the day of Halloween at the resale shop. But Lia loved it and it looked so sweet on her that we both decided a unicorn it was for her. So enjoy the very rare sighting of a unicorn.