fabulous five!!!

Miss Livvy turned the big FIVE this weekend. It is crazy hard to believe that my baby is so grown up and starts ALL DAY kindergarten in just two months and one week from now! 

It's been such a blessing to have such a sweet little girl in our family. She is so loving--both verbally and physically. She is honest, funny, smart, kind, sometimes sassy, and certainly can stand up for herself. She is my little buddy and side kick.  

On Friday night Liv helped me make birthday cupcakes while Rob took all of the boys to get haircuts.  I turned on Pandora and created a "Let it Go" station (Frozen) which I thought Liv would get a kick out of. This will sound so cheesy, but listening to her sing along to "You've Got a Friend in Me" (Toy Story) and "Do you Want to Build a Snowman?" (Frozen) in her cute little perfectly-in-tune voice made my heart want to explode! When Rob got home and I explained to him that I was so surprised that the Disney music was making me cry, he said, "Well, you love your little girl and you miss your mom." I think that is the perfect summary of my emotions this weekend. I'm so grateful for my two favorite 'girls' and all I have learned from them.  How I love my amazing mother and lovely daughter!

Cute little helper: 

We got Liv to bed and then let the boys in on the secret of what we were getting Liv for her birthday-- a dollhouse! The boys were excited and helped us start the assembly before reluctantly heading for bed. The project took about 3.5 hours (the directions were pretty straight forward and easy, it just took a lot of time). I never know how stressful it's going to be for Rob and me to try to build something together (ha!), so it was a success! :)  

I was a little concerned with the fact that we were getting Liv one thing (albeit a BIG thing) for her birthday. I liked Rob's great idea of wrapping up the furniture so she would still get to open presents and it would feel and last longer. As we finished everything up Rob pointed out that it was the exact time of Liv's birth: 1:23AM Mountain Time. Here is a late night selfie:

All dressed and ready for the big day:

She is too much! :)

It has become a tradition for Rob to take the kids to the store to pick out a box of cereal on their birthdays. Liv is not much of a cereal fan (unlike her brothers) and so I was planning to make pancakes for breakfast (her favorite). She really wanted to go with Rob to buy cereal though and picked out cocoa krispies. The kids ate breakfast and then we got started right away on opening cards (thank you!) and gifts.

Hewitt bought Liv a pink floatie for the pool with his own money. What a sweetheart he is to his little sister.

Liv was so excited to be getting all sorts of cool furniture for her dolls to play with!

She had the best reaction to opening this little toilet! She covered her mouth and giggled, and then covered her eyes while laughing as you see here.  It was so funny and cute!!!

I thought for sure she would figure out that all of the stuff was to go in a dollhouse!  She seemed so content with all of the furniture and was so excited.  We said something like, "Let's carry all of this stuff up to the playroom," to get her upstairs for the big surprise.  She seemed surprised to get what she'd been really hoping for.

The laundry room (washer/dryer with ironing board and iron) is my favorite!

We moved things around in Liv's room to make room for the dollhouse.  We ended up cleaning the closets and everything else out as well, and even un-bunked Tosh and Hewitt's beds and changed things around in their bedroom too.  Liv's bed is now on an angle and there is lots of room to play around the new house:

After getting the rooms back in order, Rob took the kids out for lunch (while I made frosting and decorated). Liv got her favorite--a hamburger with ketchup only.  We all then spent the afternoon at the city swimming park. It was SO CROWDED (especially right when we got there) but Liv was so excited to go and we didn't have the heart to change our plans.  We had a fun time despite the crowd (we will avoid the weekend from now on). Rob was thrilled that he got me to go down the water slide.  It made me happy to watch Liv playing in the water and being so happy-- she could stay there for hours and hours and never get tired of that place. Thankfully she was looking forward to eating her dinner request of chicken and broccoli casserole (we usually have turkey broccoli casserole after Thanksgiving each year and she devours it!).

Patti (my awesome mother-in-law) gave me the cutest idea for Liv's 'cake' this year. It looked simple enough to attempt, and used three of my very favorite foods!  Here is the result:

Happy 5th Birthday to our fabulous Liv Maryana!