Kenna at Almost 4!

My sweet, beautiful, emotional girl. You wear your heart on your sleeve like none other. When you are happy, your joy is obvious with big grins and silly giggles. You're starting to learn to communicate frustrations, disappointments, and already look like a teenager when you roll your eyes. When you are sad, your tears are immediate, and big. You're so expressive there's no hiding what you feel.

Today you asked me for forgiveness for something you did wrong and I asked your forgiveness for my harsh tone in disciplining you. Teaching you and learning these important things with you are the deep joys of my life! I see the Holy Spirit working in your heart and it's beautiful, and amazing to me. You have a desire to tell others about Jesus. You want to know about God and sing his praise. Your favorite books are ones with bible stories and scriptures.

You are always singing, everywhere you go. Sometimes we recognize the songs, sometimes they are little made-up tunes while you play. You love to dress up (ballerinas and princesses are your favorites), you ask everyday to paint or color, and you are learning to swim. You take credit for teaching Finn that "he can walk," and love to help me cook. You like to watch the popcorn popping in the microwave on movie nights with Daddy.

 

You are everything a little girl should be: princess band-aids, tinkerbell costumes, and pink glitter "glamicures," but also bugs and dirt and running as fast and as hard as you can. You are surprisingly good at puzzles.

You and I are so, so much alike, but seeing your personality bloom and blossom constantly surprises me! You are at an age where I want to write down everything you say because it's all so random and hilarious and emphatic. You already overhear things and understand them when I would have thought they'd be over your head.

You are smart and happy and sweet. You love to pretend and to laugh, and you are so encouraging! You are always quick to encourage others and so empathetic when something is wrong. You have started asking "why?" over. And over and over.

You love animals, especially "baby frogs" (although you do not want to touch them). Your hair is wild and curly and mostly uncontrollable, most days. Just like mine.

Emmie's 3rd Birthday!

In June, we celebrated a very special little girl's 3rd birthday- our cousin Emmie! Kenna was very excited not only to receive some mail addressed to her, but also that the invitation asked her to pick out her favorite princess outfit to wear to the party! Kenna chose her favorite one, a medieval-style princess gown that Papa and Mimi gave her about a year ago that she has loved almost to death- we had to hand wash it to clean it up a bit for the occasion!

She was so excited to pick out all her princess accessories, all the way down to her high heeled dress up shoes, and that Mommy had wrapped Emmie's present in a princess bag!

We ran a little late waiting for little brother to wake up from his nap, and when we got to Emmie's house, Princess Cinderella was just arriving too! Her dress was beautiful and her hair perfectly in place, just a princess should be. She started by reading us a story about herself and Prince Charming, of course.

 Kenna loved sitting with her best princess buddy, Emmie, who was also dressed like Cinderella!

Princess Cinderella brought lots of fun activities and surprises with her for all the girls! Things like face painting, dancing to princess songs, and stickering their very own princess crowns with their names on them. Kenna chose a rainbow on her cheek for her face painting, and was so cute waiting patiently and watching while Cinderella painted her. Here she is working on her stickered crown kit:

After birthday cake and lots of yummy pink treats, Every princess got to take a picture with Cinderella, and then Uncle Jason and Aunt Alisa very thoughtfully included a copy of it in everybody's thank you notes! What a thrill to meet a real life princess!

Finn on the other hand, was very careful to stick close to his Daddy and make extra sure he was not mistaken for a princess.

As we wished Princess Cinderella and each other goodbye, Kenna was given a princess art set with markers as a party favor. She was high on all the princess girly goodness! (The two pieces of cake she ate probably had nothing to do with it!)

She still loves to play dress up in her purple stickered crown and use her princess markers. Happy birthday Emmie, and thank you for letting us come play princesses with you!

Family Paint

I'm so thrilled that Kenna is majorly into artsy crafty things. Her favorite by far is painting! Almost every day she begs me to paint, or asks me at bedtime if we can paint tomorrow. This time she invited Daddy to join her, and when Finn went down for a nap, we all three painted together!

 I want to encourage and facilitate her creativity as much as possible, but sometimes painting just sounds like way too much of a mess to do every day. We found some easy ways to make the set up/clean up not such an ordeal- we use a little styrofoam veggie tray as a paint pallet, which washes off easily to be reused several times. When we got something large in the mail that came separated by large squares of cardboard, we saved them in the basement and they make the perfect sized table top that we can set out quickly for messy projects.

Kenna sat and dictated an idea to Daddy and he painted it to her exacting specifications- a "scary switch" with scary teeth. Then afterwards she wanted the witch to have a dress, and Daddy somehow managed to fit that in as well.

Here is their finished collaborative masterpiece:

 

Mommy painted a Kenna-inspired "happy" sign in pink and orange:

And here are some of Kenna's finished ones. The first one picked up the texture of the cardboard beneath it. The second one reminds me of big slices of summer tomatoes! However, Kenna likes to pick which of her "pieces" go on our fridge, and neither of these were worthy to make the cut. Too funny.

She is such a prolific painter that I ended up getting one of those little cardboard shelf files meant for magazines to hold all her finished sticker, paint, and marker creations!

Baby Ella and Grannie's Visit!

On May 7th, we welcomed a new addition to our extended family- our baby niece and cousin, Ella Kathleen! Kenna could hardly contain her excitement that there's a new girl in the family, so Kenna, Finn, and I went to the hospital to meet baby Ella! Of course, the first thing Kenna wanted to do was hold baby Ella. Between Finn being cranky and me trying to help Kenna hold her, I was thankful Aunt Alisa was able to take a picture for us:

We three girls, squished into a very deep-seated hospital chair! Kenna was so excited! It feels like not that long ago we came to see Ella's big sister Emmie in the hospital just after being born, and now there's a new little tiny girl in the bassinet:

 Of course, when there's a new baby in the family, we all get extra excited because that is sure to mean that a visit from Grannie is coming! She came to town to help Jason and Alisa adjust to their new addition and she also usually comes in May to celebrate Jason's birthday. We had lots to celebrate as a family this month!
We stopped by Jason and Alisa's house to see baby Ella and to go to a birthday dinner for Jason.

 Grannie never forgets special treats for the older great grandkids. She and the girls had a great time playing bubbles!

 Finn was not quite walking at this point (he was so, so close!) but could not stand to see Evan, Uncle Jason, and Daddy playing basketball without him. We kept trying to keep him happy with his own ball there in the soft grass, but he insisted on crawling out across the driveway to get to the big ball. He did is so much that his poor little knees and tips of his toes were scraped and bleeding a little! He is all boy and apparently feels no pain when it comes to keeping up with the big guys.

While the big kids were riding bikes, Finn got a helping hand from Grannie to try a scooter for the first time! He is so determined to keep up with his sister and big cousins. We're all impressed at how well Grannie keeps up with all of them too!

After playing, we met up with Papa for Jason's birthday dinner at Outback Steakhouse. It was a little wild with four tired kiddos (mostly mine were the tired ones since we skipped naps that day!) but we had a fun time together.

 

We also all shared in Uncle Jason's dessert- happy birthday!

 We obviously take ice cream very seriously in this family.

 Here is one more photo of Ella a little bit older now, that I also had to borrow from Aunt Alisa. We just don't see these cousins of ours often enough! With that beautiful dark hair, I think she looks just like Uncle Jason! Welcome to the family, baby Ella!