The Three Year Old!

Last Friday, Hannah turned THREE!!!! She was so excited for her birthday! She wanted to wear her "party dress" that morning, so I agreed.

She went to daycare for the day and we took cupcakes for all the kids. They all made her a picture and they put the pictures together in a book for her. They sang and had cake and ice cream there for her.

Tony took half a day off and did the last minute running around for her party stuff. We picked Hannah up from daycare and took her to the party place - Bounce City. All her friends arrived and they all ran to play. The place did a great job for us and I'm so glad we did it there. They did all the set up, party stuff and clean up and there were like 10 built-in babysitters that I didn't have to pay!!! The kids had a blast! They all played really hard and ran all around. It was sort of hard rounding them all up for pizza and then again for cake and presents. We all left by around 8:45, so almost 3 hours of a party and some hard-core bouncing/running/playing was definitely tiring!!

Here are a couple pics before the party started.

This is the princess chair that was all for Hannah to sit in while she opened presents!

I didn't get too many "bouncing" pictures because you can't take a good picture through the nets and they go too fast down the slides for a digital camera to capture the picture! Here is one of Hannah before she went down the slide:

Here's one of the party:

Her Barbie cake:

Blowing out the candles:

Opening presents:


She got all sorts of great things - some items were Barbies, Dress up clothes, the rose petal cottage (don't know where to put that?), beads to make necklaces with, luggage and we got her the Leap Frog Click Start computer keyboard/mouse game system.

She had a great party and it was so much fun to watch her with her friends. They held hands, played together and just really enjoyed the evening. It was awesome to watch our baby becoming such a little girl!!!

We had a busy weekend. I cleaned Saturday morning and Tony went to some friend's house to play cards in the evening, so Hannah and I hung out together and had a great time. We went to dinner and then to the mall. She was so good this weekend! We had several discussions about the difference between how a 3-year-old and a baby behave, so she tried extra hard to be a big girl this weekend and didn't whine a lot and was very well behaved!!! I loved it and hoped we turned a corner.....just not sure how long before it comes to a dead end! I'll enjoy whatever time we do get and keep working on her!

Sunday, we headed down to my dad's to celebrate her birthday. We hung out for a while and then had lunch. Then Hannah had another cake and more presents! They got her a V-Smile game system. She will really enjoy playing that!!! Here are a few pics from that party:

Then my dad had worked to plow a path down a hill on his property for us to go sled riding. If we had only come a little more prepared with snow pants, it would have been an even bigger hit! The weather was mid-40's so it was so great to go out in. We had the set up too! My dad hooked the sled to the back of his tractor and pulled Hannah across the field. Then we went down the hill with her - it was awesome. The best part, Dad was waiting on the bottom with the tractor to pull her back up!!! It was like an instant ski lift!! So cool! We went down about 6 times and Hannah complained about being cold. It really wasn't that cold out, but what I discovered was her pants got wet, so her butt was like an icicle!!! If only we had brought her snow pants, we'd have been out there for probably an hour!

We had such a great birthday weekend! I'm so proud of our little three year old! She's such a smart, good "big" girl and I'm so very blessed to have her!

Oh, a few other cool things she does: She now knows her entire phone number. She can spell abd write all the kids names at daycare and mom and dad. She can count to 30 and her new favorite thing to do is ask what letter things begin with - she's SO into learning!!! I'm so amazed at what she knows already at three years old! It's very cool!

Update on the minivan: I'm starting to like it! We broke down and let Hannah watch a movie on the drive to my dad's. Cool feature for her, but it will still only be for long trips in the car - NOT just to the store!!!! It is very comfortable to ride in and the space for stuff is GREAT. I had to go to Toledo today for work and it was nice driving it. I'm getting into the cool features of the touch screen radio system. You can copy full CD's into memory so you don't have to put the CD in - it's kind of like an MP3 player - very cool! So, it's growing on me! Erin suggested getting vanity plates for it - I'm thinking "STILCOOL" is appropriate, but Tony has questioned when was I ever cool? He's so oblivious to reality!!!!