Happy 3rd Birthday, Elyssa!

Welp, we officially have a 3-year-old in our house! Elyssa turned 3 today! We had a little birthday party Saturday that actually got bigger than we expected. We started out just inviting family (which would've been a total of 13 people) and then decided to invite a few of Elyssa's friends from her class. Somehow, we ended up with between 30 and 40 people over here and had a blast. We could've invited many more people but we had to stop somewhere. Rats!

We were blessed to borrow two water inflatable slides and the kids had a great time on those. We already had a little pool from last year that ended up being a grass pond by the time all the kids stepped from the grass into it. It was pretty gross! We, also, recently bought a cheap little kid-sprinkler and had it turned on for the kids to run through.

The kids stayed outside playing, pretty much, the entire time, which kept my house from getting too horribly dirty. They had a picnic on the lawn for their lunch time.

After lunch Elyssa opened her gifts. She got lots of bubbles and sidewalk chalk, which she absolutely loves! Then, she got some clothing items, a cute backpack (which is just in time for her to start 3-year-old kindergarten!) and two dresses. I'm sure there are other cute things, too, that I'm leaving out. She was really blessed with some fun things!

Her biggest present was the Barbie Jeep that several of us family members went in together to get her. She was nervous about it at first, but then really had a fun time in it.

We had to stop the "play" time for a few minutes to sing "Happy Birthday" and present Elyssa her Dora cake. She blew out her candle wonderfully and really enjoyed her cake!

My sister was in town this past week and we were blessed to have her family join us for the party. Here is a picture of "the girls" from my family (excluding Mandy...she was sick and we missed her horribly). My parents and brother and his little girl came, as well.

Mark's parents and Mark's brother's family joined us, too. We missed David, Karen and Kyle, but know they were with us "in spirit" in California!

I told Mark the party was a really fun time for me. It was the best to watch my kids play with everyone. What a blessing to have such awesome friends and family! We love you all!

Happy birthday to my "big" little girl! We love you, Elyssa!

PS - You've just gotta see Victoria touching my face and talking to me! We just took this video this afternoon and it's rather dark in the room, but you'll get the idea. How sweet!



PSS - I got a call from Early Intervention today. Someone will come on Saturday to evaluate Victoria. From that evaluation, they will decide if she needs physical therapy or any other types of therapy at this point. We pray that this meeting is very productive and that from it Victoria gets all she needs to be the best she can be!