Happy Birthday Grandma Sheri

Grandma Sheri was fortunate to spend her birthday watching the girls (...she calls herself fortunate!). By the looks of the pictures, they had a glorious day!

They started the morning by going sledding at our local sledding hill. Unfortunately, Regan didn't quite trust grandma/grandpa to steer her away from the teenage built jumps in the hill and only went down once.

However, they spotted the nearby playground and given the gorgeous sunny day, they opted to spend an hour playing on the equipment instead.

At two years old, Sidney gets stuck a lot in this deep Minnesota snow. If you're lucky enough to be with her outdoors, you're also lucky enough to carry all 25 lbs (plus 10 lbs extra in winter gear), through deep, heavy snow as she refuses to walk in it.

I call it good exercise.

This girl can spot a swing from a mile away. She's big enough to enjoy a regular swing too, thanks to a lot of extra practice from our indoor swing.

After lunch and a nap, I'm told the celebration continued indoors with a dance party! (Yes, Regan is in her dance leotard as she does actually attend classes on Monday afternoons).

The rest of the family joined in the fun with dinner at Grandma's choice of restaurant: Lucky's 13! Even Shane and Amy joined us...and on time!! Shane impressed us all :)

Sidney is missing from this photo, as she still has a phobia to Uncle Shane. And if you're wondering, yes, she still calls her sister "Uncle Shane" when Regan's doing something that Sidney doesn't approve.

Happy Birthday Grandma Sheri!
We love you!

Dance Recital

Copy/past the following link to your browser to view the most adorable 5 year old on stage dancing her heart out to an auditorium filled with friends and family. The family/friends show comes after only a few weeks of practicing their new dance so it's definitely a work in progress (not to mention there hasn't been a lot of classes lately because of our recent vacation and a snow day!). She did great and we're so proud of her :)

Thank you to all 4 grandparents for making the trip through snow and wind to watch her; we love you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_jkzVgjbBA

Flashback Friday

Regan March 2007

Bubble Bath

This morning Sidney made the request for bubbles in the bath tub. Both girls were in their glory and giggled so hard at creating "beards" on each other. I just love it when they play nicely with each other. It's so much sweeter than listening to the screams and cries of "she stole my toy", or "she hit me". Too bad it's all a part of growing up with a sibling.

Gymnastics graduation

Regan has officially graduated from the 'mini' level to the 'beginner' level at gymnastics. We are very proud of her hard work, but now the real hard work starts. We had a little extra time tonight to watch the big girls (as in teenage bigger) and Regan said "I just don't how I'm going to do it" as she saw them doing flip after flip. Simply adorable that she thinks once she enters the big kid gym that she'll magically be ready for flips!

Here's Regan receiving her ribbon!

Vision questions

Lately, I've fielded a lot of questions about Regan's glasses, vision, eyes, etc. "How did you know she needed glasses?", "What made you think there was something wrong with her vision?", etc. I thought I'd write a bit about Regan's eyes.

Her vision is perfect. She scores perfectly on all the vision screens. Her depth perception is also perfect. So why then does she need glasses?, she has a bit of an exotropia, where one (or both in her case) eyes have a tendency to float outwards when she is tired, lazy, or bored. Noticing this was easy, specifically when she was relaxing or simply "zoning out". We first realized there was a problem 1.5 years ago at the wee age of 3.5 years.

After a quick trip to the pediatrician's office, we started seeing an opthamologist on a regular basis. Regan's eyes thankfully don't stay out, but rather, float in/out only when she's tired. This is important because it meant we had options. Our first option was to try patching. We did this for weeks on end, one eye one day, the next eye the next day. It wasn't real successful, although I'm ready to try again. The next option was glasses, more specifically cheater glasses. This option was started just over a year ago and she continues to wear glasses, because it works. When she has them on, her eyes stay focused! If she takes them off (i.e. for bath or swimming), we can see her eye occasionally take a little trip out. Our most recent adventure is to try a computer program with vision therapy; you see, live-in-person vision therapy would be the ideal. Unfortunately it's not covered by insurance and has a price tag well over $1500. The computer program was less than $100 and while it is as much fun as watching paint dry, we're giving it a try.

I've done my research, I've talked with experts. One doctor has said we are headed down the road to surgery to correct the problem. Another expert has said Regan doesn't need surgery because her depth perception/vision remains perfect. And surgery really won't fix the problem, just cosmetically make it appear better. Wouldn't you know it, insurance pays for the surgery. Odd. Someone had their priorities mixed up. So for now we will keep plugging away with the boring computer program and hope for the best.

Funky glasses came along with the computer program,

she doesn't particularly care for them either.

So with her perfect vision and minor cosmetic problem, you might see why we (or I) am completely hesitant to put her under the knife. Besides, she loves getting compliments on her beautiful glasses (not the ones up above) and they're pretty fashionable!

Regan's 5th Birthday Celebration

Yesterday our house filled with family to celebrate Regan's 5th birthday. She was thrilled to have her aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents come over to join in the fun. Each year we let her pick the theme and this year was yet another princess (ironically the same as her Halloween costume this past year): Cinderella. She really is our princess!

Kari made yet another amazing cake for us to enjoy!

Family pictures are a must at birthday parties, despite the frowns we tend to get from the kids for pulling them away from the toys and action for a second.

Regan and ALL of her balloons!

And after everyone had gone home, Uncle Shane stays late to help "clean up" the food and bar (this means eating again and drinking some more). I put the two to work cleaning up the barbie cash register mess and let's just say Shane could have a lot of fun playing with kids toys. Ryan was trying to put the money away and Shane realized it's a working cash register as he called for "Tom, clean up on aisle 6" over and over in the most monotone voice he could find.

And today we will watch the snow fall and play with all of the fun arts and crafts presents that Regan opened from her generous family yesterday.

Dancin' queen

Regan continues to enjoy participating in weekly dance classes. Tonight we got to see her perform at the half time of a local basketball game and were joined by dedicated fans Grandma Sheri and Grandpa Arnie. Unfortunately, Regan's not feeling completely up to par, complaining of a sore neck, but she did quite well nonetheless and we are very proud of all her hard work. Her and I took our annual trip to the state danceline competition today which gave her some good motivation for dancing tonight; she simply adores all those girls in sparkly-sequined leotards with gobs of make up!

This group of 4-5 year olds sure got a lot of "awws" tonight from the crowd!

Flashback Friday

Tomorrow we will celebrate Regan's 5th birthday with a party surrounded by family. So today I thought I would re-cap the last 4 birthday celebrations....

2007

(digging in and making a complete mess out of her very own cake)

2008

(sporting a "big sister" shirt to announce our 2nd pregnancy to all of her guests;

what a great way to share this news!).

2009

(having just broken her collar bone the night before by falling off our king sized bed)

2010

(Regan's final birthday celebration in our first home)

Pajama day!

I remember having pajama day while in school; it was so wonderful to be comfy in my PJ's all day long and today, Regan got to enjoy just that. Too bad she couldn't fully enjoy her day due to a pretty rough night. She complained of her cheek hurting (??!) from 2:30-3:30am and couldn't sleep. I felt terrible for her and laid on her floor trying to get her to go back to sleep...our bed was already full with Sidney. She did manage to fall back to sleep eventually but she was still exhausted all day and even fell asleep on the drive home tonight! That never happens by the way. Hope tonight goes better or we may be spending much of tomorrow in our pajamas!

School party

Regan brought this adorable cupcake cake to school today to celebrate her birthday with her friends. The pink crown, complete with glitter, was a perfect fit for this princess! She thoroughly enjoyed being center of attention today but still blushes when someone wishes her a happy birthday.

On a side note, today at dinner we were talking about brains and she mentioned something having a big brain to which Ryan replied "like daddy!" and she responded "no daddy, you have a small brain!". That's my girl :)

Happy 5th Birthday Regan!

We celebrated Regan's 5th birthday today. And what a celebration it was! There simply wasn't a dull moment, we went strong from 8am-8pm going from the water park, to rides at the Mall of America and finishing up at Rain Forest Cafe. Whew! We're exhausted but I think she can say it was her best birthday yet. Enjoy the day in pictures....

Regan, still in her jammies, opening her new camera

Grandma Sheri and Ryan blew up balloons for a birthday surprise morning

Regan's new camera....PINK!

Family photos in front of Lake Superior

And then it was off to Mall of America for some fun rides. Again, we love free and the birthday girl had unlimited rides for free on her birthday :) She went on some super scary rides, and compared it to the "forced fun" water slide; she commented "it was scary, but it's still fun!". That's our girl!! Didn't take long at all for her to catch on to forced fun. Sidney's not far behind, she cried on the first ride tonight, but giggled through the rest of them and kept (voluntarily) going back for more.

A birthday sundae for the birthday girl. Happy Birthday Regan! We love you very much!

Birthday Eve-2/14/11

Valentine's day means something a bit more special for us. While most people are talking about love and relationships and marriage, we reflect on the arrival of our first born baby girl! I probably didn't realize what February 15, 2006 was going to bring for me, but I do remember sitting on the couch that Valentine's night while Ryan cleaned up dinner (I will never forget having spaghetti for dinner that night either, because I was too tired to make dinner plans!).

Today, as I called Regan "my 4 year old" about 400 times, I found myself remembering wrapping her in like a burrito, jaundiced and all, just so happy to have our baby girl!

And watching her go from a teeny tiny baby to a bouncing toddler right before our eyes!

And now suddenly....she's about to turn 5!!

Boy was she excited to celebrate tonight, complete with dessert, or "sert" as Sidney calls it.

Happy 5th Birthday eve to our big girl!!

Ride 'em coygirls!!

We found this archaic horses last year on vacation and the girls were delighted to come across them again! We had plenty of quarters on hand and they had plenty of fun! Sidney's hair just cracked us up; Ryan says she looks like she's headbanging!

Splashin' around

I realize it's Valentine's Day, but I don't have a great Valentine's post, so instead, you're getting a sneak peak at some wild pictures from the water park! The girls have been looking forward to this vacation for months; knowing that we were heading to a "water park for sissy's birthday" according to Sidney. The time finally arrived and we were all very excited! I have to thank Grandma Sheri for braving it and bringing her camera into the park (if you don't remember, mine was snatched last year so it remained safely in the room).

We quickly realized that this big guy (and his sister) were staying next door and Ryan, ok all of us really, fell in love with 66 lbs of squish.

Back to the splashin' time, it only took 2 hours of this before

Sidney went down by herself! Not bad.

She had a good coach, who had no problems going down the kiddie slides. Ryan took Regan down the BIG tube slide...let's just say that was some forced fun that she's not real sure about yet; "maybe when I'm 5". Ok, kiddo, we'll try that one tomorrow, when you're actually 5!

Ah, see, she did finally go down by herself! And she loved every minute of it.

The lazy river; it makes me a bit nauseous. The things you do for your children!

Depending on the lifeguard, the girls can get away with jumping into the pool. Seems odd to all of us, some allow jumping into the pool, others don't?! It's a pool!

Regan tried her muscles across the climbing rope and made it past 3 animals before falling into the arms of Ryan. She did quite well for a little tyke!

I think the "water park for sissy's birthday" lived up to their expectations!

Practice makes perfect

These two cuties are overly excited for an upcoming mini getaway. I had asked each of them to try on a few suits to ensure they fit properly; neither of them would take off the swimsuit! And while it might have hit 30F today, that's still pretty darn cold to run around in a swimsuit all afternoon!

Flashback Friday

In just 4 days, we will celebrate Regan's birthday!

Here she is, at just a few minutes old. Already with a grumpy face...can you blame her, she entered this world on one of the coldest weeks in 2006! I tried telling her to stay inside for 4 more weeks like she was supposed to do, but that didn't help. She wanted out!

Gymnastics

Regan continues to make strides forward in gymnastics. She loves it, although mentioned to me that she was getting bored. The timing was perfect because we received a note home that same night saying she will be moving up next session to a new level, and a new gym! The big girl gym!

For now, my little girl is still four, and still little.

For 5 more days.

Oh dear....

There's a story behind this picture, but I'm going to first give you the picture and then the story:

Are you done laughing yet? Like really, I know how silly this picture looks, on so many different levels. Today the girls were left in the hands of Grandma Jan, whom they haven't seen since Christmas because she leaves us for Texas every winter (we sooooo happy she's back!!!!). Anyway, apparently Regan was sitting backwards on the folding chair, pouting over something. She slipped between the chair and landed on the floor, unable to keep her pouty face through the giggles. My mom...well, I think she was relieved that she could finally laugh without hurting Regan's feelings, because man, would you just take a look at that face?!?!?! Holy moly! As for Sidney, she needed in on the action too; take a look at her mimicking Regan's position.

Welcome home Grandma Jan, see all the fun that you've been missing!!?

It's a girl thing

Last night we visited some friends and the girls discovered make-up for the first time. I suddenly remembered long ago when someone bought Regan some make-up, at a much too early age. Let's keep in mind, she's STILL much too young for this, but I caved and let her dig in this evening and she had a wonderful time.

She wouldn't let me take a face shot, but the pink lips were very amusing! She was so proud of her work :)

As for Sidney, well, she just asked for the pink sunglasses (accent highly on the "i") and was content for the day.

Sledding--for real!

We took the girls to a local sledding hill which hapens to be just down the street; talk about convenient! We met up with some friends and the kiddos (minus Sidney) had a blast! We weren't sure how a group of 2-3-4-5 year olds were going to do on this gigantic hill, but they all hopped out of the cars and went right down the hill after Ryan's lead. It was hilarious as they landed on top of one another at times, hats and mittens going flying at other times! Of course us moms had to take a few turns too, screaming and laughing the whole way down. Such fun!

This one didn't end up so well. Putting two rookie sledders on the same sled isn't always a great idea. The whole "leaning" technique basically created them to fly out and land in the form of a sandwich, with Regan on the bottom. They giggled the whole walk back up the hill, replacing hats and dragging the sled.

I think we're going back...tomorrow!

PS: Sidney did join us, and while she loved going down on the tube sleds, her little fingers and toes just couldn't handle the near 30 degree temps. She whined and cried until I took her into the truck, removed her boots/mittens and warmed her up.