What a perfectly purple party!

The Kennedy girls (Liana, Danielle, Janessa, Jillaine & Maryn) organized a shower for Amy including her church, work, soccer, basketball friends. Great food, great games, great devotional, great prayer time for Kaden & Amy. A purely perfect shower of blessings.

PS The girls made all the decorations and all the food.

Kayla - 2 years old

"How old are you Kayla?"

"ine TWO!" 

This said while holding up 1 finger...

Well she is definitely 2!:-) She was 28 lbs 5 ounces at her checkup and was 37 1/4 inches (which is 3/4 inches shorter than Mattea, but about 6 lbs lighter!) So to us...she is our skinny mini...although when towering over others her age, I guess she is anything but!

this was her on Valentines Day with her present (in lieu of candy:-)) and their first time ever having ice cream at breakfast! Little do they know...it was frozen yogurt:-)

This was her on her first day of potty training...she started telling me in mid February that she needed to go but I wasn't quite ready to dive into it...so we went cold turkey on Feb 25th and she did great! Not a single daytime accident since Day 1! We try to train for naps/night at the same time, and she has done really well...she is consistently dry at her nap times, and although she is not 100% with her night times...she is pretty reliable as long as we make sure to wake her up to go before we go to bed. That makes 2 down...1 to go...YAY!:-D

She is our little sweetheart, full of love, kisses and hugs for anyone and everyone! But especially for her "Camey", who she loves on to the point of him hollering at her to stop:-P. She is also extremely thoughtful, never forgetting her sister and always bringing her things, and doing things for her. She is our cleaner...and can't walk away from a mess - a very handy trait I must say!!!

 She is also very polite and is constantly saying "k-weeze" (please) and "tank-du" (thank you). She seriously never forget. Along with..."I sooooo saw-wweee" (sorry), even for things that she didn't do!:-P

Now along with her sweetness, and loving emotions...comes a whole slew of other emotions! Lol...she can cry at the drop of a hat and is super sensitive to anything and everything! well...except pain, she can literally run into a wall and not even bat an eyelash..but in terms of her feelings...they seem to be in pain all the time!

All in all, she is pretty happy-go-lucky and people often ask us if she ever gets in trouble....and the answer is YES. SHE DOES. Lol...but then again... in the absence of her older sister, her crimes would probably be drastically reduced!

Much to Daddy's relief...she has finally proven that she is not colour blind! lol...she still throws out a few random colours every now and again, but is getting much better:-) She knows all her shapes very well...and actually can recognize all of her letters and also knows their sounds!

Kayla also loves to colour and is actually very thorough! She is quite opposite to Mattea who doesn't like to do anything that requires taking time...Kayla loves to sit down and figure things out, which makes puzzles, buckles, buttons, zippers etc some of her favourite things to do!

She also loves to play with her dolls, animals etc and take care of them...although we don't understand even half of what she is saying most of the time...we do catch snippets of "Don't poo poo da baf tub!" and "open ya mouf and eat ya foud!"

We laugh that she has some kind of accent, but we just don't know what it is yet! Her pronunciation is pretty funny though. She never says yes...but says Ya (picture heavy german sounding accent!). And she also "wubs" (loves) everything and often talks about her emotions "I so eh-sited" "I soooo happy". 

The last two pics were just taken yesterday...and I guess turning 2 marks the introduction of the fake smile!

Canaan Catchup

This update is long overdue...Canaan is now 7 months old! He was 19lbs 6 oz at his 6 month checkup back in Feb. He was just shy of 30 inches tall...making him the tallest of our kids at the same age (beating out Mattea by 2 inches!!!). He is a TALL kid!

Here are some pics from the last two months...

Canaan is definitely a Daddy's boy! He will dive out of anyone's arms to go to his Dad and will keep turning away, pretending he can't see you and is hiding, if you try to take him away!

He is a super smiley baby...and although he has a special love for his Dad, he will share his smiles with just about anyone!

 This little guy does NOT mess around with his belly! I thought my girls ate alot...and I think they did...but this kid...is a different story! He is a bottomless pit! Oh the things to look forward to with boys I guess!

He loves his sisters and is always laughing at their antics, and trying his best to get close to them (or to their toys!)

He is finally attempting to crawl...compared to Kayla who was crawling at 5 months...this guy is a lazy one!

He can say Dada, Dad-dee, Hiiiii, give kisses, give hugs wave bye, and say "UH OHHHH" (this is said in a seriously growly, grunting of way!)

 He is definitely a boy, from his voice to his looks, to his need to holler at, beat on and whack anything and everything

Who knows...maybe he will be like Mattea who never learned how to crawl but went straight to walking! He seems very very interested in standing and can do it for quite a while but hasn't caught on to the fact that he can't let go yet!

These shots were taken on the day he turned 7 months!

 He is also our cuddliest baby...and loves to be kissed, and give his slobbery kisses (also by FAR our drooliest!) - hopefully he gets those teeth soon!

Mattea Feb-Mar update

Here are some pictures of Mattea taken over the course of the past 2 months...

These leopard print pjs are her favourites! and she may have adopted my childhood ability of picking crazy outfits. She purposely chooses her wildest clothes and wants to wear them all together! Then when I try to tell her what matching is...she is like..."Mom...stripes go with stripes!"....c'mon...hard to dispute that logic...so now we are working on choosing complimentary colours;-)

 I think this is pretty much every piece of of plastic jewelry that she owns:-) Kayla would proudly declare her a "wock staw!".

 She is still super animated and imaginative...definitely possessing a flair for the dramatic! She is into playing all kinds of imaginary games...usually involving some kind of adaptation of a Disney movie or a Bible story

 .
Here is a quote from her playing Jonah in February...

Mattea (as God): Go to Ninevah! And tell the people to stop doing the wong things and start doing the wight things!

Mommy (as Jonah): No! I won't go! I'm going to get on a boat and go far far away!

Mattea: If you do that, I will send a big fish to swallow you up for 3 whole days

Mommy: if he is going to swallow me for 3 days, then why are you holding up 4 fingers?

Mattea (with 4 fingers still in my face and with her God voice): Because I cannot do 3!

And the funny part is...when its her turn to be Jonah...she never gets swallowed by the big fish...

Mommy (as God): Go to Ninevah and tell the people to start doing the right things...

Mattea (as Jonah): Yes God!!!

- if only she responded like that to her parents!!! Lol...and like it or not, her sister is roped into all of her crazy schemes and ideas...and usually gets yelled at for not playing "right":-P 

We got tons of snow this winter, so she had fun making snow angels, attempting to skate (not exactly succeeding), going tobogganing....and making this....snow...um..creature....

 We finished our reading lessons and as promised, we made a trip to My Gifted Child to pick up a reward for her hard work. We returned home with... ....a firetruck. Of all the shelves of playmobil...(which she claimed made her eyes feel dizzy...)....the firetruck stood out above the rest!

She is starting to think really deeply about life, death, and spiritual things...here are a few quotes...

Discussing where meat comes from:

Mommy: that's beef

Mattea: what's beef?

Mommy: Beef is cow

Mattea: really?!

Mommy: yes, just like chicken is from chickens, beef is from cows

Mattea: OHhh! and I know! Ham is from hamsters!

umm...close:-/

Mattea: how come you dont' live with your mommy and daddy?

Mommy: well when you get married, you leave your mommy and daddy and you live with your husband to start a new family. Someday you will get married and you will get your own house

Mattea : But MOM! I don't want to leave you! I will MISS you!

way to make me cry...

During her bedtime devotions...Mattea started trying to piece together a very confusing concept...the trinity!

Mattea: "Jesus's mom is ...Mary...and Jesus's dad is....God...What?! Jesus IS God!? That doesn't make any sense!!!"

and here's one more...just because it was funny...

After asking me "why" all day...I told Mattea to hurry up and eat her food, to which she replied "why?"

Mommy: "Mattea are you asking me why again?"

Mattea (without skipping a beat): fake laughs.."oh mom, I'm not asking you why, I'm just talking about the letter "y"!"

Riiiight....

It was a great winter with her, and she is changing and growing so much! She is counting down the days until she turns 4....and then of course, is already thinking ahead to when she turns 5, then 6, then 7...etc etc!

Kayla's Birthday Pawty

We celebrated Kayla's 2nd birthday this past weekend...and you can probably guess her theme...If left completely up to her, I'm sure it would have been Dora again, but I couldn't bear to make that same cake yet again! So we went with her other obsession - dogs!

On with the de-tails...(ok I promise...no more !:-P)

We went around the house and rounded up all our doggy related items...which when all put together was quite the mother-load! Over 30 stuffed dogs accumulated over the years, plus my childhood collection of Sandicast and glass dogs, with the addition of a multitude of tissue paper pinwheels, and a few streamers and balloons, we were all set! 

I put the streamers on the banisters earlier in the week, but didn't have any other decorations up and Kayla woke up from her nap and immediately said "soooo beauuuu-ful!!!!" "I wuv it!" - kids are so easy to please!:-)

The pinwheels went up mid week...and then realizing that hanging like 2 per room looked stupid...resulted in a tissue paper folding spree (thank goodness American Idol was on to pass the time!)

I hung the streamers/balloons the night before the party - and they were met with gasps and squeals of delight in the morning when the girls realized that the long-awaited Saturday had finally arrived!

Kayla's favourite food is probably pizza, but even though it was just a family party I did spaghetti instead because it was easier:-) Kayla happens to love salad though, so she was thrilled with the caesar salad  and filled up on that. 

Then we have the main attraction...the cake!!! Mark's mom baked the cakes, white for the head and chocolate for the bum:-) and then I iced them with pink buttercream and covered with marshmallow fondant. The feet, head, snout, tail and decorations on the dog are all fondant. The base is rice krispie squares covered with blue fondant, just to give the doggy a bit of height without having to have another cake!:-)

It wasn't perfect (and hindsight, I should not have put him on this particular corner of the base:-P) but whatever! This is only my 2nd fondant cake so I was just happy that it actually looked like a dog!

I also made red velvet cupcakes, with pink buttercream and fondant doggy bone toppers. Earlier in the week the girls and I made sugar cookie dog bones...and I found doggy bowls at the Dollar store, and filled them with Nesquick cereal for puppy chow - it was disturbingly authentic!

I made doggy ears out of felt for all the kiddos, and Canaan was the cutest puppy of the bunch!:-)

The birthday girl had a very over eager helper...who was having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that it wasn't HER birthday...

She did a pretty good job with her cake...but being notorious for her messiness...she asked for a bib moments after this picture:-)

And with only a few cousins at the party...who could resist giving out a Doggy Bag? Especially when I found the dogs at the Dollar Store! The girls got a pink bag and the boys got blue - Oh and for the curious...the puppy treats were gummy worms and the puppy vitamins were gummy bears:-)

All in all it was a really fun day and was really fun to prepare for too actually! Mind you, I'm pretty glad that my next one is not until July...:-D I've been hearing about her grand plans since last year!!! and they just keep getting bigger and bigger! Yay:-/