Happy 4th Birthday, Ada Grace!!!

Happy 4th Birthday to the sweetest, cutest, funniest, silliest, most creative little girl in the universe!  You fill my days and my life with sunshine and rainbows and LOTS of warm fuzzies!

This is Ada this morning bringing super soft sugar cookies that she made herself for her class today!  OK, I made them... while she ate raw cookie dough and decorated them with frosting and "sparkles" (sprinkles).  :)

And here are some cute videos I took of her yesterday at dance class - these are all a few seconds each, and totally capture her personality at this age!

(The only major "Ada Action" missing from these is her incessant pretending to be some sort of fuzzy animal!  She is a SERIOUS animal lover.  Once she decides on an animal to "be", she does NOT break character- except to gather as much information possible about the species, their habitat, sleeping and eating habits, how they are born, etc!)

"Cleaning the floor" with their tap shoes.  Ada took it rather literally.

Supposed to be doing the Tango with her partner.  They just twirled around like loons instead!

"Gracefully" waiting for instruction-

Plies-

Twirling on pointed toes-

Ada's Arabesque-

Ada's 4th Birthday Party!

After many failed attempts to convince Ada to have a birthday party closer to Northwest Houston for convenience sake, we had Ada's 4th birthday party at Moody Gardens again!  See THIS post about her 3rd birthday at the same venue, with links to all of her other birthdays as well.  :)

Ada LOVES staying in hotels, so we thought we'd make a little weekend of it and go a day early (right after her first soccer game) to stay at the San Luis Resort (or "Sandy Lou's" as Ada called it!)- where they have an awesome pool with a FAST water slide.  

We took a dolphin cruise as well around the marina- where we saw TONS of dolphins!

The dolphin cruise.  :)

Then the next morning we headed up to Moody Gardens for the big party- Ada has been counting down for a month for this day!

Meeting Babe the penguin (per Ada's request, she wanted to see Babe again!)-

Dax was only 6 months old last year, so he had a much better time this year!

Opening gifts at a 4 year old party is always a group effort!  :)

Check out Dax shoveling cookie cake in his mouth, admiring Ada's loot!

The party was held in the Coral Room again- 

I love the aquarium wall for our own private viewing pleasure!

About to tour the Aquarium after partying hard with her besties!

Addy, Olivia, Ada

 My favorite Ada-ism of the day: "LOOK at that penguin with NO HEAD!"  

(That's how they sleep, apparently- we learned that in our question/answer period with Babe the Penguin's trainer, but seeing it is a different story!)

Then we headed to Palm Beach for some summer fun.  

(This is the reason we had the party 1.5 weeks before her actual birthday- it was the last weekend that Palm Beach would be open!)

These are the kids at the Splash Pad- we obviously frequented all of the water slides, the lazy river, and wave pool, too- but Mom didn't take any pictures!  :)

And, a little video of our time with Babe!  :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FAVORITE 4 YEAR OLD IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!

*Almost all pictures from Andi!*

First Soccer Game!

Ada had her first soccer game this weekend!  It was hysterical.  

Daddy got sucked into coaching (which he actually was really excited about!)- so Mommy was therefore volunteered for everything else!  Like making a cute schedule and snack sign up sheet, and creating a group photo room for everyone to share their adorbs pictures each week. :)

Here she is!  Ready for the game!

Mommy and Ada Bear.

 Hanging out by Daddy at first- not quite sure what to do!

Following the pack!

A few wedgie issues...

Ada's turn at goalie... Probably not her best position!

Loving on Daddy during Team Huddle!

If they'd given out penalty cards, Ada would have totally been issued Yellow a few times....  Lots of tugging on jerseys!

Papa and Dax cheering sister on!

Gooooo  TEAM HOUSTON!

Chasing the ball!  At half time she was in tears: "I j-j-just c-can't catch the baaaallll!"  

Poor baby.  How can something be so sad and hilarious at the same time!??!

 Getting her hands on the ball to throw it in!

A close up. :)

Getting tired- we only had 4 players, and the other team had about 12!  So we didn't do any rotating, and out kids were pooped!

Good game, good game!

And, here are some random videos of the action from my phone.  

Baby #3!

Welp, we are expecting a third kid!  I am 14 weeks along right now- this sonogram was taken at almost 12 weeks.  The picture is from "above", you can see the baby's knees are bent, ankles turned in, and arms up.  I adore this picture, I think it's so adorable.

The baby is due March 8, and we are not going to find out what it is until he/she makes their appearance!!  It will be torture, but I'm really excited to wait.  :) 

I felt like death for almost the entire first trimester- I even caved and took the prescription nausea med Zofran- which doesn't come without some nasty side effects itself (headaches and some SERIOUS constipation!).  14 weeks marks the start of the 2nd tri- and I still have "bad" days, and definitely "bad" moments (almost every evening)- but I'm feeling LOTS better. :) Hopefully well enough to start being a more exciting mom, so I can have some material to blog about!  (We basically stayed inside all summer while I tried to cling to life on the couch- poor Ada and Dax!)

Lately...

Lots going on lately!  There's a reason I haven't blogged much, which I think all of you know by now... but I'll get to that in my next post!  :) 

Here are some things that have been happening lately-

Ada started dance.  She's SO cute and funny and giddy during class, she loves it!  She's actually at her first soccer practice as I am writing this post, I will post of a picture of that soon, too.  I'm sure that's hilarious.

She also started her new "school"!  She seems to like it so far- we are only 2 days in, but she's happy!

Dax went to his first Texans game!  Here is a post about Ada's first game when she was about his age.

And this is totally random, but I thought it was cute.  We had to stop by Academy for the millionth time this week in search for Ada's size in soccer cleats- we found something close enough, but then spent another half hour or so just playing in the aisles!  I'm sure we were annoying, but we had fun! :)