We had an impromptu three year photo session the other night. Here a couple of the pictures we snapped of Mikayla. She is so hard to get a picture of these days because she doesn’t like to look at you and she has the cheesiest grin when you ask her to smile. Rotten is what she is!
Poor lighting, but wanted to show her "princess smile"!
Yesterday evening we celebrated Mikayla’s third birthday with some friends here on the mission by going all out Mickey! Here is a picture recap of the details from the party.
The Invitations
Although we were inviting mostly people right next door, I still wanted to create some invitations and couldn’t pass up these cuties.
The Decorations
These were made from Styrofoam balls painted black and then glued to make a Mickey head. I also painted her initials on them because I had three.
Mickey head plates and party hats. I hot glued two small black plates to a larger one. They weren’t very sturdy, but were cute! The party hats were made from white cardstock (I would have used red if I had it) and then I glued on two circles for the ears, attached a string and was finished. I added a little red polka dot bow to the cups to add a little color to the table.
The door sign – it is no Lara Mattingly banner, but it worked okay! I replaced the "a’s" and dots on the "i’s" with Mickey heads.
She was excited about her party! This shirt was made by Emily Gilliland to raise funds for her adoption (you can have one too, check out her blog for details).
The food
Yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. We also dipped Oreos and another round cookie in chocolate to make Mickey heads.
Close up of the chocolate dipped Mickey heads.
Minnie’s lavender cocktail courtesy of Joe. So pretty and tasty too!
We had a Hot Diggity Dog Hot Dog bar. Complete with homemade hot dog buns, mustard, ketchup, onions, jalapenos, cheese and chili.
Goofy’s Garden Veggie with guacamole and Minnie’s Mac and Cheese.
Chip and Dale Chips and Dip
Pluto’s Potato Salad
Pete’s Punch, which was really just homemade lemonade made from lemons straight off the tree!
Party favors were homemade caramel corn in Mickey bags.
The Guests
Guest of honor grabbing a quick snack before dinner started.
Ben!
Sister Diane
Sister Barbara
(Joe was here too but I don’t have a solo picture of him or me!)
The Games
We had two games. The first was to see how many words you could make out of the letters in "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse". Sister Barbara is a Scrabble fanatic so she blew everyone else out of the water! We also had a drawing contest to see who could draw the best character from the show. Mikayla was the judge.
Hard at work making some words.
Look at that concentrations!
Mikayla even joined in on the fun and wrote some letters.
Judging the drawing contest.
She chose Joe’s drawing and he was really excited about it!
Some party Snapshots
Enjoying her Mickey cupcake!
During present time she would open the gift and then run over to Joe and put it on his lap. By the time she was finished his lap was piled high with gifts. Then of course she went back over and studied each one individually!
She got lots of clothes from Mimi and Poppy so she played a little dress up game. This is the outfit she ended the day in!
I think everyone enjoyed themselves and most importantly Mikayla had a blast! It is still hard to believe that she is three! Thanks to everyone who came out to the party, sent presents or called to wish her a Happy Birthday. It was a great week of celebrating!
It is still warm here during the day, but at night time it has started to cool off some. So, we have been spending lots of time in the evenings outside playing, reading and enjoying the coolness! This week I introduced Mikayla to mud pies. I can’t believe I hadn’t done this yet, it is such a favorite childhood memory of mine. Sitting in the corner of our yard making mud pies with my sister and "selling" them over the fence! In case you have forgotten how or have never made a mud pie before, here are some step by step directions.
Step 1 – Gather your supplies. You will need dirt, water, a pail or bowl to mix in and a pan to use as your pie pan.
Step 2 – Gather some dirt (or sand) and mix in some water.
Step 3 – Pour into pie pan (or other container you deem as your pie pan).
Step 4 – Add "berries" or extras to your pie if you want (i.e. rocks, leaves, stems, grass, pretty much anything you can find outside).
Mikayla kept calling this her cherry mud pie!
Step 5 – Enjoy and repeat!
She had a lot of fun, although I must say she wasn’t a fan of actually touching the mud with her fingers. If she got mud on them, she wanted to immediately wipe it off. We are working on that though!f If you have kids and you haven’t made a mud pie with them yet, I suggest you go out and do it today! So much fun and great for the imagination!
When Mikayla was a baby we took a picture next to a green giraffe (which has now been named Gertrude) and have continued to do so periodically throughout her life. Here are some growth shots to see how much she has changed in the last three years!
Birth
Year One
Year 2
Year 3
And just for reference here is a picture of her growth chart.
Ben’s finger is showing how tall she was when we got to Africa and the banana leaves above the three are how tall she is now. She has grown almost three inches since July! Crazy!
Saturday was Mikayla’s third birthday and in honor of the big day we spent time doing things she loves. Like eating donuts, opening presents and going to the "park and play". She still has a few more gifts to open, but we are saving those for her big (and by big I mean little) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse birthday celebration this coming Saturday. Here are some snapshots we got from our day of celebrating!
Mikayla woke up to find her floor filled with balloons and "streamers" on her door. We looked all over for streamers and couldn’t find any so I glued some newspapers together and cut them into strips. Not quite a festive as colored streamers, but she loved them anyway!
Then we made donuts and of course we had to put sprinkles. I used this recipe for the donuts and they were delicious! Best the day they were made and well worth the effort it required!
Then she got down to opening her presents. The first is from us and was a toolbox filled with art supplies. She loves "crafting" things and so this was a hit.
She also opened gifts from her aunts and uncles. Here you can see her playing with her Candy Land game (thanks Aunt Chelsea and Uncle Tim) in her rocking new Toms (thanks Aunt Christa, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Christopher, Uncle Kris, Tyson, Tanner and Taylor). There were other games and craft items included in these gifts, but I didn’t get pictures of them all.
After our donut breakfast and packages we hit up a park about thirty minutes down the road. She ran and played and had a great time. After some time at the park we went and grabbed lunch. While at lunch Mikayla met an older couple (with a granddaughter her age) who she proudly told it was her birthday. They then called in the owner and told him to go to the store and buy her a birthday cake…which he did! They ended up inviting us to their house for coffee afterwards. They had a ton of geese, rabbits, chickens, and dogs that Mikayla got to interact with. She had so much fun.
After the park and animals we headed home for a dinner of cheeseburgers and french fries and of course some Funfetti cake!
Daddy continued the cake smashing tradition him and our friend Rod always had, but this year Mikayla took the brunt of it.
She didn’t seem to mind though, and I helped her to get him back!
We had a great day celebrating with her and she will now proudly tell anyone who listens that she is three!
When we first had Mikayla I knew that I wanted to start some sort of tradition surrounding her birthday to make it extra special. The first two birthdays we did countdown days based on the year she was turning. Each day she would get a small present or activity to do as a family. For her first day we did a one day countdown to her birthday and her second birthday a two day countdown. In theory this year we would have done a three day countdown to her birthday. But then I got to thinking about future birthdays, when she turned ten we would need to do a ten day countdown and at 18 an 18 day countdown…that seemed a bit daunting! So, this year I instituted a five day countdown for her birthday and will hopefully continue this in years to come. Each day she got to open a small "gift" or as she called them "prizes" (that is how she has been saying surprises as of late). I think she really enjoyed each one, plus it helped her to get really excited about her birthday! Here are what we did for each day of the countdown.
5 – She got a small notebook and several pages of stickers. She loves to stick stickers inside a notebook so this was a hit. Unfortunately, she used most of her stickers that day!
4 – Popcorn and movie night. Ben said up a projector to project the movie on our living room wall. We popped a big bowl of popcorn and let her go to town! She thought it was really neat watching a movie that big and sat really nicely for the whole thing. I think she might be ready for a real theater experience!
3 – Campfire complete with roasting marshmallows and hotdogs. Sister Diane walked over during this "event" and Mikayla told her all about what was happening!
In her bag I put a felt hot dog, a marshmallow and fire made with pipe cleaners. Here she is "starting a fire" with her pipe cleaner fire.
2 – Felt finger puppets. I whipped these out during her nap one day. She hasn’t quite figured out what to do with them and how to put them on, but she plays with them like they are stuffed animals or babies!
1- Mickey Mouse dress up kit made from a little felt and some hot glue! This one was placed in a special purse made from our friend Dacia back home. She is loving some Mickey Mouse lately and so I thought this would be perfect and it was a HIT as was the purse! Now when she watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse she wants to put on her Mickey outfit. So cute! I wonder if she will want to wear it to her Mickey birthday party next week?
We did lots of fun things on her actual birthday, more to come soon when I am not so tired!
How is it that three years have passed since I was in the hospital holding my sweet baby girl for the first time? It has gone by crazy fast, but we have loved every minute of it! This last year has been filled with a lot of firsts for Mikayla (and us) and a lot of fun new experiences. Here is a quick picture recap of Mikayla’s third year of life!
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
January
February
March
April
Happy Birthday Mikayla! I hope your fourth year of life is just as exciting as your third!
Mikayla LOVES to get into her daddy’s wallet and play with his money and credit cards. She takes them all out and scatters them all over the floor. So, the other day when Ben suggested we make her a wallet of her own out of felt, I jumped on it. After all, who doesn’t love a good felt creation! It isn’t exactly like a real wallet, but she loves it. Especially after daddy gave her a "credit card" (old Southwest Airline card) and a real US dollar. She goes shopping all the time and when she uses the credit card she even likes to sign her "name".
I simply hot glued down the sides, added some Velcro to the yellow strip so it would "snap" shut, embellished with the flower and Voila! A DIY felt wallet in less than ten minutes! Of course you could make it sturdier with the use of the sewing machine or larger with more pockets, but she didn’t seem to mind!
Letter I was a tough one for me to come up with ideas for. I managed to come up with a few that I think were fun (and somewhat creative). So, without further ado:
I made another puzzle from a coloring book page for the Letter I . She had fun putting together her ice cream cone!
My mom had sent some insect stickers so we used these to make the Letter I.
She also sent some of those "Grow-A-Capsules" in the shapes of bugs, but we called them insects. She enjoyed watching the capsules grow into different insects.
Since she likes to stamp so much, I wrote out some "I" word and had her stamp the correct letters on top.
Then we rolled the dice and counted out that many insects.
She glued sprinkles on top of the numbers according to the number on each cone.
At the store last week I found some insect gummies so we sorted these by colors and then by insects. Of course we ate some too!
She has gotten really good at writing the letter I. Although she will sometimes write an H instead.
I made some colored ice cubes with food coloring and let her use them to paint with. After painting the I, she then went on to paint 10 other pages! This kid loves painting!
I broke back out our Ice cream letter matching game this week. It had been awhile since she played it.
Then of course we made ice cream. I chose to make the individual ice cream in a bag version. She enjoyed it for the first minute and then got tired of shaking it and I had to finish.
And of course she had to eat some as well!
Next week we will move on to the Letter J. Stay tuned!