Free (or Three, however you say it)

Caroline turned three this week!

We let the kids pick out their meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on their birthdays.  Henry had a nice meal of shrimp and cornbread.  Josiah picked pizza, which came as no surprise.  Caroline?  She asked for one of her muffin tops for breakfast (we try to keep a steady supply in the freezer).  For lunch she wanted chicken nuggets.  Dinner?  Chicken nuggets.  We added strawberries, carrots, and fries to make it more of a "favorites" meal.

We made her cake since we had to know all of the ingredients to ensure she could actually eat it.  She wanted cupcakes and insisted on helping me make them.

After singing to her, Todd took a bite of his and mentioned that they weren't too bad for gluten and dairy free.  Then I took a bite and understood he was being sarcastic with that comment.  Really, they were not as bad as other gluten/dairy free items, but they are just not as good as things with butter and milk in them!  Poor girl has no idea what she's missing.  She did like them, though, so that's all that mattered.

She loved all of her new gifts, too.  We got her a doll playpen so that she had a place to put all of her dolls.  She has become quite the mother to her dolls and really enjoys playing with them.  She liked to flip it upside down also, and use the underside as the bed.







Other favorites have been a music jewelry box with a dancing girl.  All the kids like to have this music playing while they are in the playroom.

She loved her new Hello Kitty hooded bath towel, too.  Every time she gets out of the tub now, she looks at herself in the mirror with it on and smiles.

A grocery basket of pretend food is quite popular with all three kids, as well.  The boys have had a restaurant going ever since her birthday.  She uses the basket as a second baby bed most of the time.  You can never have too many baby beds around here.

Henry is coming along with his reading.  We counted 30 words that he learned to read this week.  He loves to read sentences now, as that is "real reading."  He gets super excited each time he finishes a sentence.  "Pat sat on the mat."  I can read!!!  He is so cute.

Josiah finished up his Awana book this week and was very excited to move onto the review book.  He didn't get to do that last year because we only did Awana the spring semester and he was already doubling and tripling up on pages to finish the regular book in half the time.

Both boys got to go to a friend's birthday party Sunday afternoon.  Technically, Caroline was invited, too, but she has been a very cranky girl for quite a few days and it seemed best to send her home for a nap.  The party was at a really neat park that had two huge playgrounds.  They played, ate some food, played, drank lots of juice, played, ate cake, and played some more.  It was the perfect setting for a birthday party.  All the kids were content to play and they only played three small games.

We have had a disgusting amount of June bugs lately.  This is what our front entryway looked like, filled with dead June bugs.

I swept this up after taking the picture one afternoon.  That very evening, as soon as it was dark outside, we could hear them hitting our front door again and by 9 p.m. the whole entryway was covered again.  Todd swept it that second evening and by nightfall again, the whole entryway was covered.  It is so gross, but at the same time they're killing themselves, so they're not damaging anything.  Basically,  I just use the garage to exit the house until these little critters are done with their suicide missions.

It was a very busy week all around.  Fortunately, tomorrow is spring break for us and we are taking it!  We are taking every. last. minute. of. it.  The kids have a list of playgrounds they want to visit and we're going to the rodeo mid-week.