Happy 6th Birthday Hannah!!

I cannot believe my precious niece, Hannah Grace, turned 6 years old today!!  Seems like just yesterday we made 3 (YES 3!) trips to Berryville thinking it was time for her to arrive!  But February 18, 2008, came and she finally arrived!  And she was beautiful, just like we knew she would be!

I knew nothing about babies when she was born.  Holding her for the first time I had to be sitting down!  That's embarrassing to admit, haha!  But I was her cool Aunt Kristen so I figured it out and we became buddies!

And that first year flew by and she turned 1!

Then she turned 2!

And 2 months after she turned 2, Sara Kate arrived.  The day Sara Kate was born, Jenny brought Hannah to visit us in the hospital and she was excited to see us, excited to see the baby that had been in my belly, but she was sure to tell everyone that 'Baby Cake' (she was saying Baby Kate) was Aunt Kristen's baby, not her mommy's!  So sweet.

I never imagined the love that would grow between my Hannah and my Sara Kate.  It absolutely melts my heart.

 

 Then before we knew it, Hannah turned 3!

Then she turned 4.  And Sara Kate was right there beside her to celebrate.

I can't find any pictures of when Hannah turned 5, probably because Chris was out of town and I was at her party alone, chasing around my almost 3 year old, but we were there! :-)  

And now my once tiny little niece is now 6!!  Sara Kate thinks Hannah walks on water and no one compares to her.  They are the best of friends and it is more than I could of ever of dreamed.  I hope and pray they are always this close!

Happy Birthday precious girl!  Aunt Kristen loves you more than I ever imagined I could!!

My Funny Valentine

Well, Valentine's day has come and gone!  I'll be honest and say it's not my thing.  AT ALL.  But I did make (or attempted to make) cute little Valentine's for Sara Kate's classmates, I did buy cute little heart plates and napkins for her school party, I did dress my child in pink and/or hearts all week long, and I did buy her an adorable little Valentine's gift that she just so happens to love.  So this week was all for her, my funny little Valentine!

When I was trying to decide what to do for Sara Kate's valentine's, I thought about what I've done the past 2 years, which is make cookies, put them in cute little bag, and tie them up with ribbon and a cute little printed valentine.  I decided I didn't want to do that this year.  So to Google I went and of course, Google didn't fail me.  I found an adorable little idea that involved pencils and an adorable free printable.  

I had card stock so I just had to buy pencils, erasers, and ribbon, thank you Hobby Lobby!  The finished product looked no where near as adorable as the ones on website, but that's what happens when a non-crafty person tries to be crafty!  Ha!  I guess they turned out ok, and Sara Kate's teacher thought they were adorable and perfect for their age.  So I suppose it was a success!  I want to be sure to give the creator of the idea credit so here's the link to her website.

Supposed to look like an arrow through a heart...see it?  Chris didn't until I told him, ha!

 

As for the adorable gift that my child just so happens to love, here it is.  Sara Kate is princess obsessed right now and is equally obsessed with her 'hair being long like Tangled.'  Poor kid.  Ha!!  But she loves to brush her hair and for me to dry her hair with my hair dryer so this little bag-o-fun was perfect.

She was super excited when we got home and had a present waiting!

And she played with it all night long.  Chris and I got our 'hair fixed' all night.  Daddy was a good sport, ha!

And as I suspected, my funny valentine and her little gift joined me in the bathroom this morning while I was getting ready and she got to do everything I did.  And she loved it.  She's my little girlie girl.

Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day.  And peace out to that silly little 'holiday' until next year! :-)

Snow Day 2 - Going Crazy!

Turns out that weather system that I mentioned in yesterday's post with snow, sleet, and freezing rain slammed into us and we got it all.  And it's been a mess outside all day!  I got up to get ready for work at my normal time, and when I got out of the shower at 6:15 I heard heavy sleet pelting the house.  After a text exchange with the boss man he said he would reevaluate at 9 this morning.  Fayetteville was getting pounded with sleet and freezing rain and Benton County was getting more snow, so today turned into another snow day here at home.  Except it was more like an ice day, which kept us stuck inside the house.  So counting the weekend we've been here for 4 days and we're starting to go stir crazy.  I think even Sara Kate was going a little stir crazy!  So we ended up having some super silly play time today!  And yes, she's wearing that lady bug costume again today!

I got my hair did...

 And it kinda hurt, haha.

 

The tickle monster came for a visit...

 

 

Sara Kate got to go flying on my legs...once this game started it went on and on and on and on...but I love hearing her precious little laugh!

 

And I got a sweet hug.

Daddy put up her princess castle in her room and her room is pretty much a disaster at this point, but she had big fun.

 

 

By the end today, I think even the dogs are done with this weather!  Ha!

I'm back to work tomorrow, Sara Kate is back to school tomorrow, but Chris has ANOTHER snow day.  The public schools are on snow day 11 for this year!  This winter has been brutal!!  We have another system coming in later this week, but hopefully it won't be bad.  We'll see!

Snow Day!

My last post was talking about how it was sunny and 65 degrees, and a week later we are having a snow day!  Yesterday the snow started before we left for church, maybe around 8:30 or so.  Sara Kate was so excited to see snow falling out her window, and she was so excited to wear her smocked snowman dress to church in honor of the snow!  She even wanted to go outside and take a picture with the snow, although it was very light at this point.

By the time our church service was over at 10 the snow was coming down hard.  We had to stay through the traditional service, which turned out to be very abbreviated since the snow was falling hard and accumulating fast.  By the time we left around 11:30, traffic was moving extremely slow and terrible accidents were piling up all around the city.  I saw a tweet that said the Fayetteville city police had worked 15 accidents with another 24 pending.

This was when I was sitting in traffic on the way home from church.  So pretty but so unexpected.

I gotta say, we were fooled by the weather guys about this storm...they said we were only supposed to get a dusting to an inch and we ended up with 6.5 inches at our house by the end of the day when it finally stopped.

Of course my snow princess was ecstatic about the snow.  It was very cold yesterday and snowing so hard we didn't go out and play, but she did want her picture taken in it.

Schools were closed today and my office was closed today (actually I was supposed to be in Little Rock at 9:30 this morning for a training...thank goodness we didn't have to go!!) so we've had a lazy snow day at home.  Sara Kate got her first taste of Lucky Charms cereal this morning, a little snow day treat!  She loved them and kept asking me if she could eat the rainbows (marshmallows), haha!

She watched 'The Bee Movie' and had to put on her ladybug costume and pretend she was a bee.  She flitted around the house saying, "Mommy, I'm a bee!"  Ladybug, bee, whatever you say baby girl!

I had plans for us to go down to the hill by the park and go sledding but it was so cold this morning (4 degrees) we had to wait awhile.  I thought we'd go around noon but the sun came out and it started melting the snow too quickly so we couldn't go sled.  But the snow was perfect snowman building snow!  So that's what we did!!

Love her.

Now for our snowman...

And the finished product!!  He's a pretty cool dude, and in honor of the movie 'Frozen,' I think we'll call him OLAF!  So meet Olaf! :-)

 

 

So there's a little glimpse into our snow day.  It's 36 degrees outside now so hopefully we'll be back at work/school tomorrow...although we have another weather system that's supposed to bring freezing rain, sleet, and snow coming in tomorrow so we'll see!