My Big Girl is 4!!

On Monday, we celebrated Karys's 4th birthday. I cannot even believe that as I type it! She has changed so much in the last year and I am amazed every day at the funny/crazy/wacky things she says/does. When she turned three last year she graduated out of the Speech Therapy she was getting through ECI (Early Childhood Intervention). She was evaluated by the school district to see if she qualified for speech services in the public school, but she was able to produce too many of the sounds on their list to qualify. Even though she graduated out she still had several issues in her speech. As the year progressed she started fixing more and more of those sounds. Now I think the only thing she can't always do is produce an "L" sound (very normal for her age) and her "R" is usually a "W" (also normal). I'm very proud of her!

For her birthday this year we didn't do a big party. There were several reasons. One is that it's costly and the main reason is that I just didn't get anything put together on time! Plus, I'm not really good at party planning. At least not like my other friends do! All of that stuff stresses me out and I don't feel like I do that great of a job at it, so I'll just leave all the cool parties up to them and we'll just attend all of their cool parties! :) But I did want to make sure she got to see her friends for her birthday. We invited several friends to come eat with us at Chick-Fil-A and I brought a cookie cake her us to celebrate with.

The birthday girl!

Getting ready to blow out her candles

Our crew at Chick-Fil-A. (Thanks, friends, for coming to celebrate!)

A mouth of purple icing :)

Zane enjoyed the purple icing too!

For her birthday dinner, we had our family come over and celebrate with us. This included my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and Ryan's sister and brother-in-law and their 4 kids. I had asked Karys what she wanted to eat for her birthday dinner a few days before and she told me, "Macaroni and cheese and apples." Since that's what she wanted, that's what we had! Well, that plus I made a second pasta dish and had a salad. She'd been telling me she wanted a Wonder Pets party, but I couldn't find the stuff for that so I picked out some fun princess stuff at Walmart that I thought she'd like. Thankfully she did! :) I made cupcakes for us to have that evening.

Getting ready to blow out candles

Zane was making a goofy face I thought was funny :)

Zane liked the cupcakes!

Karys decided to wear her princess dress to open presents

Opening presents in the princess dress

My mom found Karys a "Mary Poppins" shirt! As soon as Karys saw it, she said, "That's Mary Poppins!"

After opening presents, I told her to go around and give everyone a hug and tell them, "Thank you." I thought this picture of her and Connor was cute. :)

A cute picture of Karys and Granddaddy

I told her to give me her best 4 year old smile. :)

Zane's trying on Karys's new dress up shoes, much to Ryan's dismay. :)

Happy birthday, Karys! You're a sweet girl and I love you more and more each day! :)