Kaitlyn's 3rd Birthday!! And Thanksgiving!

Yes, I realize her 3rd birthday was two weeks ago...we've been a tad busy since then! Sorry for the delay! And since I haven't posted in so long, you should know that this will be SUPER LONG! ;o) Kaitlyn did have a wonderful birthday party though...as usual, we had lots of friends and family over to celebrate. We had a nice spread of food, not that it matters because Kaitlyn was too busy to eat! First, we let all the kids whack away at a flower-shaped pinata. The birthday girl went first, gave it one whack and decided she didn't like the loud whacking noise it made, so she gave up the stick to her friends! All the kiddo's had a good time hitting it, trying to break it open, but none of them were successful so Mommy took a few hits with Kaitlyn "helping"...actually, I had to force her to stay by me as I hit it! Ha! I had it just about open when Daddy got the scissors out...the kids were getting impatient for candy! After they gobbled up all the candy off the floor, we headed upstairs for the butterfly cake that Mommy made! While we sang Happy Birthday to Kaitlyn, she got super embarrassed and shy...she got this funny look on her face...it was adorable! She blew and blew and blew and finally got all three candles out on her own...no help from us this year! She's turning into quite the big girl! After cake it was time for presents! Kaitlyn got all sorts of neat things including Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, teddy bear, clothes, jammies, white fur coat, snow globe, dolls, etc. We are very lucky to have such wonderful friends who love Kaitlyn! She did really well opening her gifts this year too...which makes me even more excited for Christmas with her! We also took lots of cute pictures of all her little friends...those will eventually make it to Shutterfly! All in all, she had a great birthday party!

We did get some sad news the day before Kaitlyn's birthday party though...my grandpa "Papal" passed away. My mom was up for Kaitlyn's party, but she decided she better get back home to make arrangements for the funeral, etc. While we were sad that Grandma couldn't stay for Kaitlyn's party, we totally understood. It made for a very bittersweet day as Kaitlyn's actual birthday was the day of Papal's funeral/burial. So, we were in Dayton for two days for that then drove home the night of her birthday and rushed to the mall for her birthday tradition...Build A Bear! This year she picked out a purple sparkley bear and it also has TWO hearts in it, just like last years bear...you see, her bears are special so they have TWO hearts in them! Actually, she just enjoys picking hearts out of the bin there! Ha! After Build A Bear we rushed home because Grandpa M and Grandma were coming to visit that night! We had a mini birthday party with Grandpa and Grandma M, Grandpa W, Kelly and Mommy & Daddy gave her a few more gifts too.

We had a nice Thanksgiving although it was a bit stressful. Between all the birthday chaos, being out of town, cooking dinner, having a bunch of people over, etc it was just nuts! We had a great visit with everyone, but I have to admit it was nice having the house just to ourselves after it was all over with! Because of all the crazyness, we decided to skip Black Friday shopping this year...which I was kind of bummed about, but almost too tired to care! Next year Kaitlyn's birthday is ON Thanksgiving Day...we'll see how crazy that is!

This past weekend we made another trip to Dayton for the family Christmas party...what an adventure it was! We pulled Wayne's little work trailer behind our car so we could take home some things of my grandpa's. Well on the way down, Wayne felt like the wheels were off so we took it to a mechanic and ended up forking out $250ish to repair the wheels. And that made us about 2 hours behind schedule! We had a nice time in Dayton, went to the family Christmas party, etc. On our way home, it was snowing and about 5 miles south of Bluffton Kaitlyn said "I have to go potty" so we figured we'd stop at the next rest area a few miles up the road. Well, a few minutes after she said that we hit an icey patch on the road, fishtailed a few times, spun in a full circle and landed our car in the ditch, facing on-coming traffic! THAT was a little scary! At some point during that, I reached back and put my hand on Kaitlyn...like that was going to do anything! She didn't cry but she looked a little scared so we assured her that we were ok and explained that when it snows the roads get slippery and sometimes your car spins around. Ha ha...she must think we're nuts! Wayne called the tow truck and we had to wait about 45 minutes for them to get there, then another 45 minutes for them to figure out the best way to get us out of the ditch...the whole time Kaitlyn's saying "I have to go potty!!!!" I figured she'd have an accident because it was taking so long so we found an old blanket and stripped her down and tried to get her to go on the blanket...but she wouldn't! She knows she only goes in the potty! So that was the worst part...she was crying because she had to go so badly...poor thing! But she was a trooper and held it for TWO HOURS 'til we made it to a potty...finally! Seriously, that was the longest two hours of our lives! So we hung out at the gas station for a little while...waiting for ANOTHER tow truck to come fix our tire...apparently the first one couldn't do it...seriously, what a pain! Kaitlyn and I walked over to McDonalds to eat dinner...at 8:30 at night...then back to the car, waited for the tow truck some more, they finally came and at that point it was 10pm and the roads were still very bad, so we decided to just get a hotel for the night. Kaitlyn flipped because there was a pool in the hotel (of course, we had no bathing suits) so she was pretty sad that we couldn't go swimming...but she had a blast being in a hotel room though! She was wired and didn't go to sleep til almost midnight! And we didn't have an extra pull up with us so she had to sleep in undies...so she went potty last at 11pm and woke up DRY at 9am! WOOT! So, I was a super proud Mama in the potty department this weekend! Ha! Anyways, we finally made it home Monday morning...what a weekend!

Ok...this is entirely WAY too long so I'll stop here for now. I still need to do a nostalgic "My baby is another year older" post to record all the things she's doing now! But I'll save that for another day!