Happy Birthday Caleb!

Saturday was Caleb Mitterling's first birthday party! Kendall was super excited to go to the park, see her best friend Sarah, and give Caleb his present. His party was Curious George - isn't this the cutest cake?!

The birthday boy!

Besties: When Kendall got there, her and Sarah ran to hug and stayed together the rest of the time. They are such sweet friends! I love it! Here they are watching Caleb eat his cake.

After they ate their cupcakes with red icing, they were a mess and Sarah's grandma was taking their picture. They enjoyed getting to see themselves on the camera! Look at how Sarah has her arm around Kendall's neck - precious!

Sweetest face!

Can you even believe that she is big enough to sit on the big swings?! She prefers these over the bucket swings now - she's just getting too big!

Randy was doing prison ministry all weekend, so he wasn't able to be there. Nathan gave me a break from pushing the swing and took a turn. I think those girls could swing all day if we let them!

Look how high she can go!

Happy Birthday Caleb! We love you and had a great time at your party!!

New Dress!

Kendall got this sweet dress from Kiki and Pops for her birthday, but just wore it yesterday to church for the first time. She loved showing me how much it spins and asked me to take her picture! Of course I will!

Love it!

This is another no-picture post, but I promise there are some pictures coming soon. We went to Caleb's first birthday party today and I have tons of pictures of a red-headed, red-icing-faced cutie pie!
This morning Kendall and I drove to Angleton to do some research on selling our antique dressers. On our way home, we saw some cows out in a field as we were driving by. Kendall started yelling at them from inside the car.
*Back story: A few months ago we went to Pearland and were on our way home really late in the afternoon when it was time for Kendall to be napping. I was trying to keep her awake on the drive home because I wanted her to nap at home, so I was doing everything I could to keep her busy and entertained. It was raining and we saw some cows out in a field, so we started talking to them, saying, "Go get in the barn cows! You'll get wet!" Kendall thought that was pretty funny and anytime she sees cows now, raining or not, she tells them that.*
So. Back to today. We passed the cows and Kendall started yelling at them and I just thought it was so cute what she told them!
"Co-oows!"
"Cows, you need to go get in the fa-aarm!" (Not barn - the farm. She's not real clear on the difference yet.)
"Cows! Go to your mamaaaas!!"
"Go to your mamas and be sa-afe!!"
I said, "Kendall, do you want the cows to go to their mamas in the barn?" She said, "Yes. And be safe." I love that she knows that being with your mama means you are safe! Sweet girl!

No More Secrets!

Kendall made us laugh so hard tonight! Randy has been gone all day doing prison ministry, so Kendall and I decided to go shopping tonight for his birthday present. He has been needing some new Under Armor underwear, so I thought that would be a great present (they aren't cheap - he has an expensive underwear habit!). We went to Academy and I made the mistake of telling Kendall we were shopping for Daddy's birthday present. She said, "Oh, Elmo present?" and I told her no, that we were going to get Daddy some panties for his birthday. She said, "Oh. Daddy panties." So then I realized that it was probably a bad idea to tell her a week before his birthday what his present was, and I said, "But don't tell Daddy. It's a secret." She repeated that over and over again and kept saying "surprise" and "secret."
When we got home, I reminded her that the present was a secret and told her we needed to hide it. I asked her where we should hide it and she told me "behind the couch." She has been running behind the couch lately and loves that only her and Molly fit back there. I put them behind the couch, and then right before Randy got home, I moved them somewhere else.
Kendall was sitting in her chair eating when Randy pulled up. I told her, "Daddy is home!" and she ran to the door yelling something I couldn't understand. When he opened the door and gave her a hug, I realized that she was saying, "Daddy!! Panties!! Daddy! Panties!!" over and over again. I just started laughing and tried to pretend like I didn't know what she was talking about and get her to move on to something else. But she was so excited. She was running and pointing to the couch saying, "Panties Daddy!!" over and over. Little toot. I said, "Kendall, that is a secret, remember? Tell Daddy you can't tell him because it's a surprise." So then she did what she was supposed to and said, "Secret Daddy. Daddy present." We were laughing so hard at how excited she was and of course Randy, who can't stand surprises, was thrilled to learn he has a partner in crime now. We gave him his birthday present early and Kendall sang Happy Birthday to him. Stinker.

Vote for Kendall!

I entered Kendall in the Parents Magazine cover photo contest and she is in the running! You can vote for her every day, so make sure you go vote and tell your friends to go vote! The top ten winners get to go to NYC and have a photo shoot and then the top winner will be on the cover of Parents Magazine!

http://photos.parents.com/category/vote/photo/225149

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Is this the cutest princess you've ever seen?! Today was Sarah Grace's 3rd birthday, and her party was after church. Kendall wore her beautiful dress that Gigi and Peeps got her, and she was so pretty!! As we were getting ready for church and the party I pulled out the camera to pack it and she said, "Mama you wanna take my pitcher?" I said, "Yes! Of course!" And she ran and jumped on the couch and posed.

After church we went over to Sarah's house for her princess party. All the girls dressed up, and did lots of princess-type things. They started by working on a sticker page.

Micaela came dressed up as Cinderella and the girls loved it! This was as close as I could get Kendall for a picture.

After they worked on their stickers, they hunted for princess rings in the treasure box of dress-up clothes. Kendall enjoyed showing Micaela her pink ring.

Next, Micaela read the girls a princess story.

Then Kendall went and got her most favorite toy at Sarah's house - her baby bath. She loves that thing so much and plays with it a ton every time she's there. Caleb came over to play with her. You can tell by her face that she was a little worried about that...

...and then she made sure that he did not take her baby out of the bath! Mom of the year snapped a picture before getting on to her. :)

The Calhoun girls were there with baby Shelbi who is just a few weeks old. Kendall was SO interested in her and asked to hold her several times. Every time she held her she was so gentle and patted her and kissed her. She's going to have so much fun being a big sister!

A princess picture with all the girls!!!

Singing Happy Birthday! Kendall sang the whole song and loved it. When they got to the end of the song, she did what you are supposed to do, and blew!! Thankfully she didn't get any of the candles out and Sarah was able to blow them out herself. She just thinks that's the end of the song and it's what you're supposed to do!
Eating cupcakes and ice cream with the girls!

Happy Birthday Sarah! We had so much fun at your princess party!! Thank you!

New Blog

Yesterday we were able to start a brand new blog for Cooper!! Randy and I have been going back and forth for the past few months about what we would do for her - would we just continue to post about both girls on this blog and somehow change the name, or would we start a whole separate blog just for Cooper? A lot of what we post about will be the same, because the girls will be together most of the time! And, keeping up with two blogs will be a little bit more work. But, what we eventually decided was that since our blogs are actually the girls' baby books and scrapbooks, we need to make sure Cooper has one of her own. So for at least the first year or two of Cooper's life, she will have her own blog to document what she is doing each month and how she is growing. We were excited to be able to post her first pictures on it yesterday!! The address is www.cooperelyse.blogspot.com. I have linked to it on the right side of Kendall's page.
On that note about the blog being Kendall's yearly scrapbook, we got her second blog book in the mail this week! I used blurb.com again and again was so impressed with the final product. Last year I didn't get her book finished with editing and ordered until late May/early June, so this year I was way ahead of the game! It looks great. I was surprised that it is actually 200 pages, whereas last year's book was only 150! I used the same size pictures and font, so that means that I had much more posts her second year than her first! I will post pictures of the book soon. I'm super proud of it - it looks great!!

Cooper Elyse Dane

It's a girl! We went for our sonogram today and found out that we are having a little girl. Her name is Cooper Elyse. We are 100% on her first name being Cooper, and we are feeling pretty good about Elyse. We are also 100% sure Kendall will be a great big sister to this precious little sister. We are so excited!Close Up - head, hand, arm, chest

IT'S A GIRL - left cheek, right cheek (the clear picture we prayed for!)

Sweet Little Feet - toes, foot

Profile - head, eye, nose, mouth, hand, spine, torso, knees up

Everything looked good and she measured just like she should at this point. She is 7 oz. We are very thankful for this precious little girl (and thankful that she COOPER-ated for her sonogram)!

What Will "It" Be?

This funny-faced,

post-nap,
crazy-haired,

bunny-eared,

tu-tu loving,

Big Sister

is so excited to find out what her little baby Cooper is tomorrow!!! And so are her mom and dad. Our sonogram is in the morning and we are praying for a healthy, growing baby and great pictures that show us what that baby is!!! I am 18 weeks today. Woohoo!!

Zoo Videos

Here is a video of the elephant bath. There's not a lot of Kendall in it, but she has been very into watching "movies" (especially "daddy movie") on the computer these days, so we thought she would like to be able to watch this.

A Trip To The Zoo!

Friday, Randy and I took Kendall to the Houston Zoo. Kendall and I had been last summer with the girls and kids, but Randy hadn't been yet. We decided to go ahead and go before it got too hot - last summer was miserable when we went in June. We were really looking forward to watching Kendall this year experience all the animals. She was super excited about going.
On our way to the zoo, we were talking about where we were going and what we were going to see. I said, "Kendall, who are we going to see at the zoo?" trying to get her to name some of the animals we would see. She said, "Mommy's friends!" She was just remembering going last year with all our friends, but we thought it was pretty funny.
She was pretty interested in the giraffes...

...but then we got to the elephants. She really liked watching them. She thought it was pretty funny how this mom and baby were pulling the hay out of the holder with their trunks.

Her most favorite part of the whole day was getting to see the elephants take a bath! She loved it and talked about it all day. I have a video that I will post later - she is still talking about those elephants getting a bath!

When we got to the bears, this one was asleep and she kept yelling at it to "wake up, bear!"

At the lion exhibit, you could go underground and then back up to a viewing window where the lionesses were. The picture is not great, but they were right there up against the window and Kendall was fascinated. I thought she would be scared, but she didn't want to leave!

But then I told her she would get to climb the stairs again and that made everything better. This girl loves stairs. And she wants to do them, "All.....by.....myself." She says that a lot these days. And every time she says it, she says it very...slowly. It makes us laugh.

She found a friend at this bird exhibit.

And she helped us pull the wagon some! We packed a picnic lunch and took the wagon so we could pull Kendall and the coolers. Turns out she wanted to walk most of the time.

She really liked this gorilla statue.

Giving him a big hug!

There is a really cool reflecting pond in the middle of the zoo with koi in it. She liked trying to look at them.

And throw things from the ground into them. Here she is throwing something, and almost falling in!

We had a great day at the zoo! It was beautiful weather for being outside, and Kendall just loved it. One of the best parts was that she stayed awake for the 45 minute drive back to Lake Jackson, so we all got to take a nap that afternoon!! Yea Kendall!