Minnette turns 4!! Oh, MY!

The morning of Minnette's birthday, Daddy came home from work (he works the 5-8 am shift) with a surprise birthday breakfast complete with pink balloons, pink milk and pink donuts for the girls!

They are all in pink heaven:

Singing Minnette "Happy Birthday" with her birthday donuts: 

 Kyle and I and Grandma and Grandpa Murphy co-contributed to get Minnette a set of wiggle cars for her birthday. Our neighbors had a couple and our girls absolutely LOVED them. We thought it would be a good idea to  invest in two of them since she would definitely have to share with her little sisters.



These are absolutely the best kids toys ever. Even Kyle and I can ride on these. Kyle loves to ride with the girls down big hills- and they will get going SO fast! They are awesome.

My sister and her kiddos came up to visit us (and get out of the Phoenix summer heat) for a couple of weeks just after Minnette's birthday. Which means that this lucky girl got to have a second birthday with her cousins!

Here she is opening a present from her cousins Parker, Aria and Terra:

It's a Tangled doll... Minnette loves Tangled! I think she's pretty happy about this!

Sidewalk chalk from Aunt Raquel:

And flip-flops and some new clothes from Grandma Willman:

Singing Happy Birthday with cousins, two anuts AND a birthday cake this time:

Aurelle, Parker and Aria enjoying some birthday cake:

 She's super excited that her cake has pink flowers on it... she requested one of the BIG flowers on her piece: 

 

What happens as a result of consuming LARGE quantities of concentrated pink food-dye in the form of frosting flowers:

And who doesn't love a good messy-baby-eating-cake picture?

Before:

After:

On her actual birthday, after the birthday breakfast and gifts, I planned a mommy-daughter date to take her to get her 4th birthday pictures and go out to lunch. She loved having some one-on-one time with Mommy, and being able to pick wherever she wanted to go for lunch (She picked Taco Bell!).

Love this one!

 

 

Love the personalty in this one:

 

 

Just look how grown-up she looks in this picture!

Minnette's 4 year well-check stats:

Height: 42.25 in. (92.96th percentile)

Weight: 36.6 lbs. (64.37th percentile)

BMI: 14.41 (19.9th percentile)

She definitely is growing up... she is still a super tall girl (in fact, we have two nieghbor girls, one that is 18 months older than Minnette, and one that is 1 month younger, and Minnette is almost as tall as the 6 year old, and inches taller than the girl her own age!), but has continued to progressively thin out from the days of her chubby-baby rolls.

A little about Minnette at age 4:

-Minnette definitely has a flair for the dramatic- she gets so animated while talking and will often use grand hand and arm gestures when she gets really excited.

-Minnette loves to ask questions and learn about things. You can literally see the gears turning as she tries to make sense of something you are explaining to her, and you can see the second it clicks and she really understands. She absolutely loves to tell others about things she has recently learned, and will so matter-of-factly explain it to almost anyone who will listen (things like, "Dogs eat dog food," "On my next birthday I will be 5. My birthday is in August," "We will not be moving to a new house for a loooong time," or my favorite is when it goes something like, "We went to see Christmas lights at the Salt Lake temple! My mommy and Daddy were married in the temple. My mommy had curly hair when they got married. Mommy and Daddy both wear a wedding ring because they got married. They kissed because they love each other. After they got married, I was in Mommy's tummy. And after I came out of Mommy's tummy, then Aurelle was in Mommy's tummy!") It is super fun and cute, and I find it funny how caught-off-guard strangers, friends or other family members often are by the random, and often personal, information they are being given!

-Minnette is currently in Sunbeams (the name of the 3 year old Sunday school class she attends every week), and absolutely loves it and her teachers. She comes home so excited to tell us about what they learned, songs they sang or how she had a stick with her name on it picked so she could go up to the front of the room and pick a song. She is learning so many new songs and loves to sing them all day long. She loves to play "primary" with Aurelle by setting up a podium, reading scriptures (making up scripture-like sayings like, "and it came to pass... Jesus went to get the plates... Laman and Lemuel were courageous," etc.), calling on pretend children to pick a song, saying prayers and assigning Aurelle to give a talk (which Aurelle totally goes along with!). She gave her first talk in primary, and did so great, holding up her pictures and everything!

-She can be a picky eater at times, such as when she decided that she no longer likes red sauce with her pasta- she just wants garlic salt- but she will quickly and eagerly down an entire plate of anything you give her if there is a treat or dessert being offered after doing so!

-She was recently spot-lighted in Primary and I thought it would be neat to write down the answers she gave about herself (we didn't ask her these questions, I believe her primary teachers did)

Favorite Food: Chocolate Icecream

Favorite Color: pink

When I grow up I want to be: a Mommy (LOVE it!)

My favorite scripture story is: Jesus

Favorite thing to do: Watch Princess and the Frog (Which we borrowed from my mom for our road trip back home in August, and they watched it a total of twice, I think- so it is so funny to me that she decided to put this as her absolute favorite thing to do!)

Something I can do to serve my family: Be obedient. (totally awesome answer, right? Oh, I love her!)

-I am currently working with Minnette a couple times a week in teaching her how to read and write. She is doing totally awesome and (almost completely) loves it!

-But most of all, Minnette is so, so happy and gets so excited about- and LOVES- life! What better could you ask for in a smart. loving and sweet 4-year-old girl?! I can't think of anything!

We love you so much, Minnette! Happy Birthday, Munchkin!!

Baby Willman #4

On June 13th, 2012, at just over 4 weeks along, we found out that we would be welcoming our fourth little bundle of joy into our family sometime in early February 2013!

 

Our little peanut as seen at my 12 week ultrasound:

 

And an already excessively expanded waistline at almost 12 weeks along!

 I started showing (where strangers would ask me how far along I was) at around 8 weeks this time around!

 

 I scheduled a gender-chek ultrasound at 16 weeks (4 weeks later) to find out if we are having a boy or girl!

Jovi's first piggies!

At 14 1/2 months, Jovi's hair is finally long enough for her very first set of pig tails!

 

Despite the amount of effort that goes into combing, smoothing and securing those tiny baby hairs into tiny little hair elastics... it is so worth it!! I just love those little piggies!

 

(Cute round head+chubby cheeks+tiny piggies= I DIE!)

Deer farm- Flagstaff, July 2012

While my pictures of our ENTIRE trip to Phoenix last summer are extremely limited, I did manage to get a memory cards' worth of pictures and videos of this little excursion!

 

We are very fortunate to be able to attend a family reunion of Kyle's grandma and all of her descendents every summer, and this year the reunion was hosted in Flagstaff (just a couple weeks after we headed down to Phoenix- which was super convenient)! One of the fun excursions we were able to have with most of the Willman cousins (Minnette went with Kyle and a group of other cousins and aunts/uncles to Slide Rock- she had a blast!) was a cute little deer petting zoo in town. All of the kids (mostly) loved it... Aurelle may have been the one and only exception to that. :)

 

The Willman cousins in attendance at the deer farm (Jovi and Bridger are in a baby carrier/stroller):

 

This may literally be the closest Aurelle got to any deer the entire time we were there:

After paying to get in, the workers hand everyone a cup full of deer food and send you through a gate into a big park area. You get to walk right up to, pet and feed dozens of deer right out of your hand!

Some pictures of our little group being swarmed:

 



 

Mommy and the two girls:

Aurelle would not  let me put her down... I think the deer made her a little nervous (read: hysterical)- oh, poor Aurelle!:

 

I think deer might have been getting a little too close for Aurelle's comfort:

Aaahhh, that's better...

 

Grandmas make everything better, don't they? At least they seem to have that affect on my children... Grandmas are magic!

Deer:

 

Being attacked by a hungry deer (even though I call it a goat in the video... oops!)  



How Aurelle preferred to spend most of the time at the deer farm:

The farm (or zoo?) had other animals you could walk around and see, including this miniature elk with ginormous antlers! Seriuosly, I felt bad for the poor thing having to carry al that weight around all the time! I took a picture mostly so I could show Kyle:

Llamas:

Miniature horses:

 

Wallabes:

Aurelle and Aliyah resting and posing in front of the pigeons

And here's Jovi... hanging out... having a blast:



After walking around and looking at all the different animals, you walk out of the deer enclosure (much to Aurelle's immediate relief) only to walk straight into a goat pen, (Aurelle quickly jumped back up into my arms when she realized she was still surrounded by furry animals!) where you can feed and pet a bunch of goats

Canon and Aurelle with the goats. I think Aurelle has to go potty?

From within the goat enclosure, there were several other animals you could see- including this beast: This pig was so HUGE. Seriously, the perspective in this picture does it complete injustice!

Here's a slightly better shot of the gigantic pig (again, I took this picture mostly just so I could show Kyle- I knew he would think it was funny!)

Observing cautiously from a distance...

Getting warmer... (I think she was actually just throwing grass at the goat's face, at first, in order to avoid getting too close, but still wanting to be able to help feed it!)

Aurelle (finally) feeding a goat!

 

And drumroll please... Aurelle actually petting a goat!! See Janan behind her? Must be that Grandma magic at work again!