Charlotte Turns FOUR!

 Charlotte celebrated her birthday at school.

They took a super cute class picture with Charlotte front and center.

Charlotte chose frosted donuts with sprinkles for her birthday treat.   The class LOVED it.  Charlotte loved being the star of the show.

 I picked Charlotte up early that day.  We went and got our hair done.  Charlotte was so excited.  I actually had to leave her and go around the corner to get my hair done separately.  She did really great though and it got me out of the salon early without being asked to buy products. Whoo hoo!

 I had informed Charlotte of our plans and she was so excited to tell everyone she was going to get her hair done and then go to Chuck E Cheese.  So that is exactly what we did.  She was super excited to ride the horse.

I couldn't believe she wanted to do the roller coaster game.  This game (ride?) was a little rough.  It shakes and turns and you feel like you're on a roller coaster.  It was kind of crazy.  Poor Charlotte's head wasn't quite tall enough to be on the pad so it had to be uncomfortable but she didn't care.  She wanted to ride again.  Not this girl.  I was dunzo.  Barf.  

It is a cool idea though!

 Charlotte rode another one of her favorite rides (?), the mini carousel.  She pretended to be asleep on it.  She is so funny.

Andrew and Tommy met us at Chuck E Cheese.  Then Charlotte and I escaped once again and picked out cupcakes at Gigi's.  YUM!

 The following weekend was Charlotte's party! I did make the invitation but I did NOT mail them out.  I used an app this year.  I am becoming much more of a no muss no fuss mom which is so exciting.  Instead of hand making all the food, cakes, and decorations, I bought decorations online, bought a Target cake, and ordered pizza.  Fantastic!

Here's the beautiful birthday girl in her unicorn shirt!

I took a picture to Meijer of the cake I wanted and they were not very accommodating.  But TARGET on the other hand, basically recreated this fantastic cake from scratch.  Incredible! They even included the paisley design on the side.  Are you kidding me?? (Is it because they practically know who we are because we visit 3 times a week? Maybe. ;)

 Time to blow out the candles!

 I ordered these crazy unicorn horns (yes, people made dirty jokes about them) from Walmart online.  Who would have thought?

 It was time to open presents! Everyone was watching closely. (Just kidding. Cake coma.)

Lovely picture of this trio! :) 

Charlotte loved all her presents.  She got some really fantastic stuff. 

 Uncle Adam had to help put together the Frozen Lego set that she got.  She is so excited to become a master builder like her big bro.

You can bet that as soon as the Frozen castle was made, Tommy jumped in and weaponized it.

She got this amazing mermaid blanket.  Charlotte was a big fan.

She also got a lot of fun books.  I believe this is the exact moment Emily had to read the word FART. :) LOL!

 Hey look, it's Mama and Dada in our unicorn horns and shirts.  We look dashing. :)

The birthday girl and her mama.  

After all the fun, we played outside because of course it was a beautiful September day.

Tommy and many others had fun playing b-ball.

We actually remembered to get a family picture.  Yay!! Another classic!

Happy Birthday to you, Miss Charlotte! We love you so much!

Father's Day 2012

On the morning of Father's Day, we were still in the hotel in Syracuse (read more in the post below) so we went to breakfast with Gram and Pop.  We tried to go to Cool Beans but it was raining so all the boaters were filling up the place.  Boo.  So we went to McDonalds instead which is an excellent alternative.  Maybe not so much for Tommy with all the cheese and eggs but that's why we brought an entire cooler of food for him for the weekend.  :) 

After we ate breakfast we went back to the hotel to pack up our stuff. Gram, Pop, and Tommy hung out in the breakfast room while we loaded the car.  Tommy gave Pop his Father's Day card and marveled at the noise-making dog in the card. :) 

 Are you kidding me? The dog is mowing the lawn in that card??? Awesome!

 Wait, wait, wait, let me see it again.

 After breakfast, we drove home.  Tommy played in his duck.  Kiddo is having a great time!

 That night, we took my dad to McAllister's for dinner for Father's Day.  How cute are they walking in together?

 Tommy LOVES McAllisters.  He does a lot of business lunches there.... with Elmo. :)

 We ordered Tommy a kid's meal (because they have an allergy menu that we could check). He dove right in to his plain turkey sandwich.  We had to cut the crust off but he loved it.

Then as we were getting ready to go home, we decided to take Tommy to Chuck E Cheese just to see what it was like.  It was going to need to be a very quick trip because we forgot the diaper bag.  Yikes.

 We walked in the door and Tommy literally filled his diaper on the sight of the giant mouse.

The giant mouse, also known as Chuck, was about to perform a song.  Tommy loves to dance so he joined right in...

That is, until those crazy kids starting shouting.  :)

 We then went straight to the kid's section and went on pretty much every ride.  It was late Sunday night so hardly anyone was there, thank goodness.  Also, the rides were probably about 30 seconds long which was perfect for a 18 month old's attention span.

 His favorite! A carousel!

 I think this was a firetruck.  It didn't matter what it was.  He loved it anyway!

 There was also this weird ride.  It kind of freaked him out but he still wanted to ride it.  He also wanted to stop after being on it for 5 seconds.

 Tommy helped Dada win some tickets playing this football game.

 Grandma helped win some tickets by playing skeeball.

But most of our tickets were collected from the manager basically "making it rain" Chuck E Cheese tickets all over the place.  It was so freaking awkward to pick up the tickets after he threw them just from the awful thought of what making it rain actually is.  Eww.  But apparently this is a thing. I had no idea (with music).  This is my favorite one though because good ol' Chuck "do the dougie" too.

 Once we were finally done collecting all our tickets, Grandma and Grandpa ran them through the ticket counting machines.  (I swear, the things grandparents do for their grandkids.) We ended up with 101 tickets!! Holy cow!

 With 101 tickets, we got an awesome nerf launcher (that probably cost Chuck E about 5 cents to buy).

He had some trouble learning how to use it.

 Not only did we come home with a nerf rocket launcher, but we also came home with printed out pictures from one of Tommy's rides.  For just a quarter! What a deal! :)

So anyway, Father's Day was great! Tommy made this cute picture for Dada at daycare.  Awww, he's such an artist.  It looks just like him!

Tommy is so lucky to have such an amazing father and two amazing grandfathers in his life and not very far away.  Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there!