Heidi is Four!!!

Four is my favorite age! And Heidi is especially fun since she's my first girl, is such a chatterbox, and is so loving. Heidi says most anything she's thinking outloud and its hilarious to hear her reasoning sometimes. She's almost always happy (although she can get quite upset if she doesn't get her way sometimes) and is so social. Besides her siblings, all of Heidi's friends are much older girls. She loves to sit and play with all the teenage girls at church and the kids in the neighborhood she plays with are 9-11 year old girls. I'm pretty sure she sees herself as being the same age and maturity as they are. Heidi had a very special birthday with her Aunt Abbey here to plan some fun things, very well though out presents from family, a lunch date with dad, and a unicorn party with family friends. 

Heidi's birthday party was unicorn themed, but pretty simple. Abbey and the boys made these unicorn bags for prizes from the pinata and Abbey made her a unicorn cake. We had pizza, a pinata, and a cake and the kids just ran around and played together.

Leif was very excited to get these disguise glasses ;)

Heidi got a mermaid swimsuit for her birthday present and insisted on changing into it immediately. She wore it for the whole party until the kids decided they wanted to go play at the park (we made the dads take them).

And I took a picture with Heidi since I've done this for the past two years, and I thought it would be fun when she's older to look back at the two of us together on each of her birthdays.

And finally, one of my favorite birthday traditions, here is Heidi's four year birthday interview:

Who is your favorite person? Natalie (I think she's everyone's favorite person right now ;)

What is your favorite color? Purple

 What is your favorite thing to watch on TV? Ponies

What is your favorite outfit? rainbow pants (this was a difficult one for her to answer since she just loves clothes and changes them all the time! She recently got a box of hand-me-downs from her cousin and was delighted, then after she had cycled through all the clothes a few times (this took about a week with how often she changes), she told me she wanted more new clothes)

What song do you like the best? I Am a Child of God 

What is your favorite cereal? Cheerios

Who is your best friend? Ximena (she's my friend's oldest daughter- Heidi really gets along better with older girls than girls her own age)

What do you want to do when your grow up? Be a mommy and take care of babies and play with my kids. 

What is your favorite book? Clifford and The Wild Swans 

What are you really good at? Flipping (I'm not sure what she means by this-jumping around I guess)

Where do you wish you could go on vacation? New York (we went there last summer)

What would you buy if you had a lot of money? one hundred million sets of stuff. . . like cats, dogs, raccoons, wolves, squirrels, bunnies.

What is your favorite dinner? Pot pie (she asked for this for her birthday dinner)

If you could have a wish, what would it be? A happy birthday

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Raspberry (I'm not sure where this answer came from)

Who do you want to be like? Mommy!

What do you like to do with your friends? Play hide and seek (this is what she was playing yesterday with her brothers and the neighborhood friends- they also like to draw with chalk, play tag, look at bugs, etc)

What do you hope you'll get to do before your next birthday? Do ballet (we are signing her up for ballet classes once the summer is over and she is super excited about this!)

What is your favorite thing to do? Go play at the park

What are you proud of? Learning letters and drawing

What are you afraid of? Monsters

What is Mom's favorite thing to do? Take care of the kids

How strong is Dad? Really strong 

What does Dad do best? Work

What does Mom do best? Play with us

What do you like best about Dad? That he loves us

What do you like best about Mom? Playing with her

Daffodil Fields

We made our third annual visit to the daffodil fields today. Daffodils are one of my favorite flowers and I love that this field is in bloom right around Heidi's birthday- that actually the only way I remember when it is. So, I like to take pictures of my beautiful little girl with the flowers. The boys were quite excited to get to play in the nearby playground- especially Trevor who was repeating the work "park" on the whole way there. But they came over to the field eventually too, and although I told them all not to pick the flowers, they all ended up with a handful, so I have a nice vase full of daffodils in my dining room now. There are still plenty left in the field ;)

Cherry Blossoms

 We made our second annual trip to see the cherry blossoms at a park in downtown Toronto. Its quite a drive with lots of maddening traffic, but its a fun day out with friends. My sister came with us this year since we picked her up from the airport just before we went to the park. The kids were willing to endure the trip through the cherry blossoms (taking lots of pictures), just so they could get to the playground with their friends.

 The walk to the playground includes a trip through a little zoo (10-12 different kinds of animals like llamas and caribou), but I didn't get any pictures of that- just this giant stump.

 The kids love this castle-themed park and played for a couple hours with a quick stop for lunch.

 They didn't want to leave, but were quite pleased when we came upon this bubble-blowing man creating giant bubbles for them to play with.