Waking Up

Kenzie waking up is always one of my most favorite moments of the day. In the morning and after her nap, she's so sweet and cuddly...and well, sweaty. For some reason, she insists on sleeping underneath a little tent made out of her bedding. She wakes up all curly headed and hot. I do wonder how many extra calories she burns from this.



On this day, I just happened to be taking pictures of something and had the camera with me when coming to collect her from her nap. As usual, she requested that I crawl in bed with her. She then proceeded with her typical activity of covering me with her favorite blanket, and having various stuffed animals give me kisses. She also insisted that I photograph it. Again!



And Again!!



(and lots more times, but the pictures are just more of the same....)

Waking up - Kenzie is always a very sweet and loving little person. These are special moments for us.

THREE

Well, she did it! She done turned three on us.



The weather was magical and after a breakfast of chocolate croissants, we headed out for a walk with Zoey, our dog. I managed to catch several new favorite pictures of her:



I also caught about two hundred more that are close -second- favorites. After her nap, we went to a farmstead to see the goats, which by the way is what she wanted for her birthday. A GOAT. And, an apple tree - "because goats like apples!!" Instead, we gave her a fish aquarium for her room, and she picked two beta fish for it.



We worked with Kenzie on being thankful for her gifts, even though her enthusiasm is usually enough thanks in itself. She's just a spirited sweet little being (*most of the time), but we want her to be polite too.



My favorite saying of the day:
"Thank you Mama & Daddy ...for my birthday!!"

Of course, she was trying to capture how much she enjoyed her day....but the saying in itself is slightly profound. :)

Dearest Kenzie - you are such a joy. So active and lively and just a lover of life. On your third birthday, your gifts were thoughtful and demonstrative of your true passions. The ant farm, fish aquarium, red radio, butterfly boutique, etc. are sure to give us all a good many wide eyes & giggles over the coming year. I can't wait to experience them all with you. You are such a dramatic little firecracker and a joy to be around. Thank you... for your birthday!!

Love, Mama

Busted!

Just love the little face she gives me when she's CAUGHT doing something she's been told not to do. This little face is followed by a gigantic cheesy grin in hopes that it will smooth everything out.

Hard to believe this big girl is going to be *3* on Friday!!!

Color Week: Pink

On Mama's Doodles , I've taken to participating in a photography challenge called: color week . Today's assignment was pink, and thanks to the Kenzie-girl, we have much of it around the house. It was a lot of fun to involve Kenzie in this little task, and although Kenzie is very good with her colors already...it's good color practice for her too. We spent part of our morning trekking about the house staging photos of pink stuff.

Kenzie is into picking her clothes these days. And after an argument about it being too cold, she ended up robed in a short-sleeved pink dress, pink tights, and her pink rain boots. Yeah.... Pink, Mama's favorite. :)

She also got into searching for pink bits of our daily life...with a pink camera. It's a yucky picture, but it's dark in here and I had to act quickly or she'd be sprinting off to another pink photo. This was a fun activity for us both.



Some of Kenzie's pictures of Pink:





And, believe me...there were more, more, more shots of these same items - just as wonderful as these! :)

Hoppy Easter!

Some highlights of our Easter day were pretty much: the visit from the Easter bunny, eating deserts for brunch (egg french toast casserole, cream cheese croissant casserole, fruit, etc. YUM!), & conducting an Easter egg hunt in our backyard:







The Easter egg hunt was followed by a bubble frenzy. We have a fun new bubble machine from Nana.







It was a fun Eastery day!!

She's a good egg.

We have plans to finally finish our fireplace facade tomorrow. A project that another family is coming over to help complete. We'll then move over to their house and make the same effort to re-do theirs. It's fun to have friends with common decorating interests.



So, Kenzie and I decorated Easter eggs today. She really enjoyed giving the eggs "baths"...and me panic attacks. I envisioned the dye spilling everywhere and staining the hardwoods. Fortunately, we don't have any permanent Easter egg colors anywhere, besides these eggs.



Kenzie won't eat hard-boiled eggs, so these will sit around and be pretty (rotten?) and then we'll hide them on Sunday in an Easter egg hunt in the yard. Hopefully they won't smell by then???

Hubba Bubba

Doug bought Kenzie some Hubba-Bubba gum while making extravagant purchases at a Comp USA store that's closing. Kenzie got such a kick out of watching us blow bubbles for her. She got up REAL close, with pinchers on the ready and immediately popped any blooming bubbles.



She even tried to blow a few of her own.