Birthdays

In a 2 month period we celebrate all of our Birthdays. Makes for a busy couple months. We started the year with Brett's birthday and then mine. Next is McKinley's birthday. This year for her Birthday I took her to get a pedicure and manicure at a spa. She loved it! We also let the Birthday person pick where they want to go for dinner. McKinley is our little carnivore so we already knew we were going to Texas Roadhouse, this girl loves her steak! We had a nice little family party on her Birthday and then she had a friend party at the gym. She had about 20 friends at her party, and some how in all of the craziness I didn't take any pics of her friend party...good job mom!

The next big birthday celebration was for my little man who turned 1! Can't believe my little guy is 1 already...sniff...sniff! Since Gav is to small to care we decided to just have a little family party. Brett likes to decorate a cake for them when they turn 1 and decided to do dinosaurs for Gavs. Its so funny to watch these little kids expressions when you stick an entire cake on their tray. He poked at it for a few minutes and then dug right in!

Next came presents, and Gav got a lot of fun things! However his favorite was his little glider bike...that smile makes me want to buy him another bike :)

His favorite part of the evening was probably when he got his present from Grandpa and Grandma. Not only did they give him the cute jammies he's wearing, but they gave him a big box full of paper and his own carton of blueberries. This kid was in heaven!!! Gav was so content in his box with his fruit, didn't know if we'd get him out again.

For Gavins first birthday I had a friend of mine take some pics. She did our family pics last summer and always does an incredible job, Thanks Hannah! Here are some of my favorites:

This past year feels like it has flown by. I can't believe my lil man is 1!!! Getting him here was really difficult and my body is still healing from the trauma it went through to get him here, but I'd do it again in a second. I love this little guy so much and can't imagine our family without him in it. I'm so blessed to be the mommy of these 3 wonderful kids!

Birthdays, Recitals, and the Nutcracker

I decided when we had Gavin that 3 kids is 10x more difficult then 2. I don't know if its because I have more kids than hands, but wow life got crazy. However, over Christmas break things seemed to calm down a little bit. I've decided that life is crazy because we spend more then 2 hours a day driving kids to/from school, to ballet, gymnastics, piano, etc. When I'm not loading kids in and out of the car and dragging them around the state life is a lot easier. Besides taking trips and celebrating Christmas we've had a bunch of other things keeping us busy.
Mckinley performed in the nutcracker this year. She was soooo excited! She had 2 parts; she was a mouse and a fairy.

Last night she also had her first piano recital. She played 2 songs and did awesome! She has the cutest teacher that she absolutely adores.

Annabelle celebrated Birthday number 3!!! Can't believe my little Bella is 3 years old. We had her birthday party at the gym where she takes gymnastics, and it was a blast. We had a lot of friends and family that came which made it that much more fun. My cute sister started a buisness and she dresses up like a fairy godmother and then she does little makeovers at birthday parties. All the little girls got their hair fixed, nails painted, and then they got crowns and wands. The boys got swords and pirate bandanas. It was so fun!

We also had a family party for Annabelle and she was soooo excited about all of her new presents.

Our cute little Gavin is growing like crazy and is in to EVERYTHING! In the past week he has had 3 new teeth come in, which has been a treat for all of us. He can say momma and dadda, but most of the time just crawls around growling at every one. He recently learned how to wave and its so cute.

Life is crazy, like always, but the good kind of crazy. We've had a lot of fun experiences and times together as a family. I'd like to think that things will start to slow down now, but we have all of our birthdays in a 2 month period. So I'll probably get around to posting again in March :) Til then!

Christmas with the Maxfields

 Christmas came and went to quickly this year. By the time we came back from Disney World we only had 2 weeks to get ready for Christmas. Brett was on call and staying in town the entire week before Christmas but luckily we got to have him home for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We had our annual Maxfield family smorgasboard twice this year, which is always a good time. We had a Christmas party with my family the Sunday before Christmas and were able to do the nativity with all the grandkids.

The kids got a lot of fun things for Christmas, but the favorites were definitely the girls dolls and horses.  They were so excited to wear their new dresses to church especially since they matched their dolls dresses. Kinley even had me fix her hair to match her doll.

We had a wonderful Christmas and recieved so many nice things. Brett gave me a tahitian black pearl necklace, bracelet, and earring set. He was so excited to give them to me that it made it even more fun to recieve them. Bretts Christmas present came early this year. He got a golden retriever puppy that we named Tiana. She's a cute and has already gotten so big. We had a busy but great Christmas, and the best part was that we got to spend together as a family.

Disney World Vacation

The day after Thanksgiving we flew to Orlando to spend 10 days at Disney World. Brett had an Anesthesia conference there, so the rest of us decided to tag along. Its been over a month since our trip and our kids can't stop talking about all of the fun they had. We stayed at a really fun hotel called the Beach Club. It had an awesome pool with a sand bottom beach and pirate ship water slide, but the best part of the hotel was its location because we were able to walk in the back door of epcot from our hotel.

I'm a big time planner, so when we decided to take the family to Disney World I started scheduling a bunch of character meals. It really is the best way to see all of our favorite Disney characters without having to wait in the crazy lines.

So I know this seems like a ton of pictures, but I took over 300 pics so this is really just a small sample of them. Every time we met a princess they planted a big red kiss on Gavins head. One of the days we were there Gav had 3 huge kiss marks on his face. What can you do when your face is so darn kissable :) We had a blast at Disney and we can't wait to go back. Unfortunately Annabelle was an inch to short to go on most of the roller coasters, which was devastating to her. So we've decided our next trip to Disney World will be when Gavin is 40 inches tall. Until then we'll just enjoy looking at our 300+ pics of this awesome trip.