Easter 2012

It's hard to believe that this year is Madeline's 5th Easter!!! And her 4th year at Powell Gardens for their annual Easter Egg Hunt.

Picking up some eggs.

Checking out what was in the eggs.

We get a picture of Madeline posing by this bunny statue every year.

Powell Gardens is just beautiful right now.

After the Easter Egg Hunt and walking around in the gardens Madeline painted a pot for Grandma Sharon.

The little artist at work.

On Easter morning we had our usual Easter Egg Hunt at the house. The Easter Bunny also brought her the Cars 2 movie, a Cars thermos, some Cars Band-Aids, and a couple of the character cars from the Cars movie. This girl loves her cars!

My pretty girl on Easter morning.

The Beauty of Life

Some of the most beautiful things in nature are the simplest, like watching new life grow before your eyes.

Madeline and I planted seeds last Sunday. The photo above was taken the day we planted the seeds.

This picture was taken only 5 days later! It's so amazing how fast they grew!

Nature is a beautiful thing. Just watching these seedlings grow was a wonderful learning experience for Madeline.

She is just so proud of her little plants.

These are watermelon.

And these are sunflowers.

The little small sprouts are Portulaca (a type of flower).

And these nice robust sprouts are pumpkins!

Fresh Beat Band Concert!

Yes, my big 4-year old just went to her first live concert - The Fresh Beat Band! A friend of ours was the lucky winner of 25 tickets to the sold out show at the Midland Theater and invited us along!

Madeline has watched the Fresh Beat Band's show on tv for the last year or so, so was pretty excited to get to see them! She got up and danced around as she watched the show and had a blast!

Maddie and me before the show started.

Relaxing on a cushey chair.

Watching the show with a couple of her little friends.

Of course all the kids wanted the little flashing light wands to wave in the air.

Julia, Madeline, Mauryn, and Dakota. Dakota's mom is the one who won tickets.

Madeline outside the Midland Theater. What a fun night!

Maddie's First Dance Class!

This week Maddie had her first little dance class. I think it's actually called "Creative Movement" or something like that. It was basically a little ballet class.

The parents had to wait outside but there was a little window to look through so I tried to take a couple pics.

Maddie waiting in line to get a hand stamp after class. She looks like she enjoyed it!

She was doing some sort of move for the teacher here.

And doing some sort of move for me.

So proud of herself!

Valentine's Day

Wow, I'm so behind in blogging! Yikes!!! I'll try to catch up starting with Valentine's Day! The Friday before V-Day we had a party with our playgroup at a local community center. We did the mini pizza making and cookie decorating again this year. We also had lots of balloons which the kids all loved playing with.

One of the moms in the group used a plastic table cloth as a parachute and played some games with the kids.

Here's a pic of Maddie with her friend Alyssa.

The weekend before Valentine's Day Maddie stayed at grandma and grandpa's house for 4 nights. I picked her up on V-Day and we had lunch with Grandma in Warrensburg, MO at Heroes. I had baked some small heart cakes while she was gone and let her decorate them when she got back.

She sure had fun doing that!

That's alot of decorations!!!

Alyssa's Princess Party

Today Maddie went to her friend Alyssa's 4th birthday party at Fairytale Ballet. The girls had so much fun dressing up, dancing, chasing bubbles, and eating cake.

Madeline was so proud of her tutu!

The girls did so good listening to the dance teacher.

And had so much fun dancing together.

Look at them busting out their best ballet moves!

Doing the ribbon dance.

Maddie in a mermaid costume dancing with her wand.

You can just see how much fun they were having...especially Maddie.

The little girls loved Alyssa's princess cake.

Happy birthday to you Alyssa!

Mmmmm, cake!

The birthday girl!

And of course they loved watching Alyssa open presents. It was hard to keep them from helping out! Happy 4th birthday Alyssa!!!