HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SOPHIE-CAT!

Pics of Sophie, one for each of her four years. I pulled these up earlier today thanks to her celebration at school. Yes, I cried when they pulled out the coming-home outfit that she wore... which usually stays in my top drawer so I can see it everyday. Anything goes on our birthdays; the kids can request *anything* so she asked for Pop Tarts for breakfast (actually the very first time I'd bought them... not to say we don't have junk, but just not that in particular!), carrots/dip/Goldfish/frosted cookies for snack at school, mac & cheese for lunch & pizza for dinner. We just finished up our picnic-on-the-living-room-floor dinner from Mellow Mushroom, aka "the best pizza ever", which was followed up by leftover cake from her party on Saturday. The kids just burned off most of that by dancing wildly to Christmas music, complete with air guitar behind the head from Ben & tap-dancing from Sophie. Her birthday night is complete!

Bedtime & Bonfires

Every so often the kids decide they want to crash in the same room. If they're tired enough, it goes well because they just go to sleep with minimal craziness. If not, it could be a LONG wait. It's kind of funny to see because they both have so much *stuff* that they sleep with, there's barely enough room for them! And Sophie has this cuddling habit which Ben isn't fond of.

Anyway, pics below of their sleepover & of the bonfire our friends Cynthia & Tommy hosted a few weeks back.

See - only a few weeks ago! I'm catching up.

Ben & Sophie funnies

Tonight as I was putting Sophie to bed, she interrupted our prayers by saying, "Mom, I have to tell you something." She pulled me in close, then said very lovingly, "you're the biggest mommy in the whole world!" Not exactly the words a girl wants to hear, but it was obvious she meant it to be a very big compliment, so I could look past that to its meaning!

Ben has a.... girlfriend. It's really cute but vaguely disturbing to me all at the same time. Isn't he still at the "girls have cooties" age? When he first came home & announced this, we had just realized that he had his first loose tooth (which he has since lost), so that was a LOT of growing-up things happening at once. Too much for this mama! Anyway, so we were chatting about what made C his girlfriend & why he liked her, and I now know two things. One is that he likes her because she wears pants. The other is that she plays trains & trucks with him. I asked him how this was different than what he did with his *guy* friends and he looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Because she's a GIRL!"

Fairy House

Ben was really into making fairy houses recently. You can't see much from the picture, but he constructed a really cool house complete with a bark roof & support beams (sticks) and had a blast gathering stuff to create it. Sadly, it was destroyed by a reckless Power Wheels dump truck, but we hope to build another one soon!