One GIANT Post aAbout One SPOILED Birthday Girl

 The girl is 4. Sad but true. It shouldn't be so hard for me that my kids are growing up but it is. Its scary to be honest. AnDee is incredible. She is sweet and oh so helpful. She takes care of her brothers and can be quite bossy. I love her little kid humor and when she bursts into giggly fits. She is smart but stubborn and is definitely her own person. I love that she is so comfortable with who she is. When I was growing up I was a "tom boy" and I was so determined to be a tom boy that I didn't allow myself to be girly in any way. It was like I felt as if I were to wear the color pink or play with a doll I would lose my tom boy label or something. AnDee is so confidant no matter what hat she is wearing. She is EXTREMELY girly and always wants to be dressed up and loves to wear make up and jewelry but in the same breath she rocks the socks off of everyone when she is playing soccer or doing some extremely dangerous trick on the trampoline or climbing way too high in the trees. (when I say way to high I literally mean it. She climbs WAY too high) She can wear a princess dress and dig for worms at the same time and it makes perfect sense to her. I hope she stays that way.
Her soccer season ended last week. Sad but I think she is ready to move on. She decided that scoring goals, while fun, was not a her cup of tea. She followed in her moms footsteps and took to defending quite nicely. So nicely in fact that no one scored... ever because AnDee would run from goal to goal blocking every shot that came at her. The trouble was that she was actually fast enough to block one shot and then run all the way to the other goal before the kids could get down there to shoot on the other side. It was hilarious and I enjoyed every minute of watching her play. Although I do have to shamefully admit that in the beginning I was a little to in to it and made her cry a couple of times. Not because I was yelling at her or anything mean like that but because I would coach her and she felt like she was failing when she couldn't do exactly what I said. So we came to an agreement that she wouldn't ever cry at soccer again if I would just sit in the stands and be quiet.... and I did for the rest of the season. I only gave her an occasional thumbs up and let her Grandma Pam and Dad do the cheering. :)
When we asked AnDee what she wanted to do for her birthday, it was a toss up. Go fishing or to the dinosaur museum??? And so we decided that if the weather was nice we would go fishing and if it was cold we would go to the museum. The day turned out nice and warm and so we picked up some pizza hut (after a morning of shopping at toys r us with the money she got from Nanny and Poppy) and went to spring lake, just a few minutes from our house. Unfortunately we didn't get so much as a bite but on the flip side there were ducks and geese every where and we even got to see a muskrat swimming around. I think next time we will have to make a day of it and actually go up the canyon for some real fishing.

For her birthday party she wanted to roast a pig. (no seriously, thats what she wanted) It seemed a little overkill so we decided to make it a birthday party/summer kick off party and invited a lot of mom and dad's friends as well as AnDee's. We made it a luau theme. Grandma Pam made AnDee a cute little Hawaiian-like dress and Mom scored big time at the dollar store with leis and grass skirts as well as some killer decorations. Dad roasted the pig and we had TONS of food, friends, water games and volleyball. SO MUCH FUN!

We talked for weeks about what she wanted for her birthday. There were two things... a princess dress and a fishing pole (in true AnDee fashion) and so thats what she got. The biggest, most sparkly pink dress you've ever seen on a 4 year old and a pink fishing pole. When she opened her presents at Grandmas house I didn't have my camera and there she was sitting on the rocking chair in this huge pink dress, holding her fishing pole. I made the comment that I needed a picture of that and it stuck in her little head. She wanted a photo shoot. So this morning much to her delight I broke out the camera and we had one heck of a photo shoot. She got quite creative with it as you will see from the pics.

We sure love this girl! She has changed her mom and dad so much and every ounce of that change has been for the better. We are so grateful our Father in Heaven sent her to us when he did. She couldn't have come at a better time... 4 years ago.