Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Happy 5th Birthday!

It's so crazy that this darling girl is already five years old! She started her day off with requesting to go to a restaurant for breakfast where they surprised her with a giant dinner plate-sized cinnamon roll with a candle in it and sang Happy Birthday to her.

Then she helped decorate for her Frozen birthday party. She had a few requests; balloons, games, and an Elsa dress cake. She has been watching videos about how to make the dress cake on YouTube for months. So we baked her cakes this morning and her Grandma frosted them this afternoon and it turned out pretty great. All of her friends loved it and she was so excited to show it to them. 

As far as how Andria is doing; she has weighed 30lbs for about a year now but she is finally growing taller, which we are all happy about. She still wears 3T pants though so her friends that are younger than her give her some of their favorite clothes when they grow out of them. She loves all of the Disney princesses and she prays every night that we will go back to Disneyland. She has a Power Wheels motorcycle that she zooms up and down the sidewalk on and she loves it, in addition to her princess bike which she also loves to ride. She thinks that she is quite independent and she loves to go get the mail by herself, as long as we stand on the sidewalk and watch her do it. She loves going to reading time at the library and she loves preschool. She has learned to write her name and she recognizes most letters and can count to 20. Her favorite thing to do in her downtime is to color and draw. She even takes notepads in the car and sometimes into stores so that she can draw. She has been taking swimming lessons and she can swim underwater for several strokes now. We just had our Ward's Primary Program and her class sang the best and loudest. Andria adores her brother and he is so sweet to her, even though he loves to tease her. All of the neighbor boys are very protective of her and a lot of the older neighbor girls frequently ask to babysit her. Some of them come over just to play with her even when we are here. All of her really good friend's moms adore her because she plays so well with other kids. 

She is just at a really fun age and she is a pretty happy and content little person right now. 

Frozen Fashionista

This little gal LOVES everything to do with "Frozen"! The other day Andria and her friends were listening to Disney radio while eating lunch at our house. "Let it Go" came on and they all had to run into the living room and dramatically dance and lip sync their little hearts out. It was hilarious and SO cute!! She is "freaking out" (her words) about her upcoming Frozen birthday party.

Happy Easter!

Preschool and Other Happy Things

Andria LOVES her preschool class. Her time there is spent doing preschool activities and learning the basics of dance and tumbling. There are six other girls in her class and she is the same size as a little gal that just turned three. She has frequent play dates with the girls and they genuinely love each other. It is so fun to see her making friends and learning at the same time. She absolutely loves dancing to the extent that when she hears a song that she likes at a store she will boogie down right there. She is a joy to everyone that she meets and we often hear comments that she is a darling little girl, which she is!

Andria still loves playing with her baby dolls and her current favorite movies are Frozen, Hotel Transylvania, and Tangled. Her hair is getting really long and she often tells us that she is growing it just like Rapunzel. She still has amazing spiral-curled hair and it is almost down to her waist since we have only had it trimmed a few times.

She is super-smart but she is attending speech therapy because of a little bit of hearing loss that she has because of all of the ear infections that she had as a baby. She is progressing quite well in it and we are hopeful that she will finish the program within this school year. Thankfully she has another year of preschool before she starts Kindergarten so she has plenty of time to catch up with her language. She certainly isn't behind in any other areas of development. She is quite short and is almost a whole head shorter than some girls her age but it just makes her more cute to be tiny like that.

We painted Andria's room pink this year and she absolutely loves it. It looks like the frosting on a sugar cookie and she invites everyone who comes to our home to see her pink room. She has a little dress-up area in her room with a mirror and lots of dresses, jewelry, a play make-up table, and princess shoes. She also loves to ride her tricycle outside with the other kids in the neighborhood. We will be getting her a bike and she has been scoping them out at stores this winter, deciding which one she loves the best. Currently, her favorite ones are the kind that have a basket to put a baby doll in.

She loves to sing and dance and generally be silly. She is such a joy to have in our family and she fits right in with the rest of us.

"I'm FOUR now!"

Andria ran up to everyone she knew at church today to announce that she is four now. It was hilarious! When she woke up this morning she asked, " Mom, am I really four now? Today I am four?" She has been looking forward to being four for several months now.

We took both of the kids on a surprise birthday trip to Disneyland this year to celebrate. We all had loads of fun! We asked Andria what her favorite part of our trip was and she said, "Everything."

Happy 4th of July!!

The guys are gone fishing today so Andria and I are going to a family bbq in our Texas flag t-shirts. I love this country that we live in! Shane and I both have many family members that have fought bravely to defend our country and the freedom of people in other countries. We're so proud and blessed to be Americans!