Chloe is 5!

Chloe turned 5 yesterday and I'm still in a little bit of shock. Am I really old enough to have a 5 year old? (I know Ben is....) And where have the 5 years gone? We were so anxious for her to grow up and do new things all the time and reach new milestones, but the faster time goes, the more I wish it would slow down. You only have one oldest child one time and she is getting way too old much too quickly. I may have two new babies in the house, but my first baby is now 5 and I can't believe it.

And boy was this little girl excited for her birthday. We are just starting to learn the concept of time and for months before her birthday she kept asking, "Mom, when is my birthday?" My replies of "In 2 months" or "In 2 weeks" really made no sense to her and she was so glad when my response to her ever repeated questions was, "Tomorrow!"

The day before her birthday was a preschool day and her teacher lets the birthday kid bring a treat to share with everyone and makes them a birthday crown to wear. She was just as excited for this day as she was for her actual birthday!

We made cupcakes in ice cream cones for her class, and Chloe was very concerned about which kids would want which color of ice cream cone (I would have done all the same color if I had enough). Finally, after pondering this perplexing dilemma for quite some time she announced, "You know what? I will just tell the kids, 'You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.' " (Yes, we tell her this often). I don't know how it all went with who got what color at school, but I'm sure if Chloe announced her little statement, it was probably fine!

The Birthday Girl in her birthday crown, eating treats at school. (I do notice in the picture that Chloe got a pink ice cream cone and there were only 4 pink ones to go around for a class with 8 girls in it... I guess she didn't throw a fit over what she got because she got what she wanted! Oh well, she IS the birthday girl!)

To make her day special, we decided to take her out to eat for dinner. Usually we stay home and either make pizza or order it in, but we knew Chloe would be thrilled to be going out, especially to Red Robin. She loves that place, not because of the food, but I think because of the red bird and balloons. She is always asking if we can go there.

Chloe kept asking me during dinner to ask the waitress if they did something for birthdays. I asked the waitress and she said yes, they did do something for birthdays. A few minutes later, a crew of waiters and waitresses came out with balloons and a sundae to sing to the birthday girl. If any of you know Chloe, you know she gets embarrassed easily by people she doesn't know and putting her on the spot. Below I posted a video of her being sung to. Notice in the video as soon as she sees everyone coming to our table, she snaps her head down and pretends she doesn't see (or hear) them and intently colors her menu. When asked her name, she merely whispers it. She quickly takes the balloons, then she's right back to her coloring as if no one is there. It was pretty funny.

We had a great time eating out (our first time eating out with all 6 of us). Alexis slept the whole time (naturally) and Leah decided to be a little dramatic for the first few minutes, then calmed down right as the food came (and right after she filled her pants) and was happy the rest of the time. We only had one typical twin/big family comment on "wow, you've got your hands full," which is a record.

Back home to open presents. She got so many wonderful things from everyone- thanks to all who sent such thoughtful gifts. I have never seen her so excited for presents- she kept saying over and over, "Wow, that is JUST what I wanted!"

The Sisters

The gang

So..... the stressful part of the day. We decided on a chocolate cake (I say "we" because Chloe changes her mind every ten minutes when asked what kind of flavor she wants of things so I "helped" her decide on chocolate, for personal reasons). Anyways- I made the cake mid-morning on Wednesday and when I took it out of the pan, it fell apart immediately. It would have taken 6 tubes of frosting to repair that damage, and I had no other fudge chocolate cake mixes in the house, so I had to pile all 4 kids in the car and make an emergency run to the grocery store for a $1 cake purchase. It is times like this that I wished I had a live in nanny to watch the kids so I could make a 5 minute run to the store really last 5 minutes.

The second cake came out of the pans well, but when I went to frost it, it pretty much crumbled like the first cake. I didn't have time to do anything else, so I used more frosting than should be legal and threw a candle on it. My poor children and their sad cakes. I am no Cake Boss, for sure, and I will never be invited to be on The Ultimate Cake Off, but it was quite tasty and Chloe was so distracted by all her great gifts that she really didn't even notice (she was so full from dinner that she didn't even eat any, either. I, on the other hand indulged to make up for the stress of making it).

We had to light the candle twice so brother could blow one out too.

Happy Birthday to our grown up little girl! Kindergarten, here we come!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great Thanksgiving this year- the first one at this house! The last Thanksgiving that we did not travel for was 5 years ago at our apartment in Kent and I was just days away from delivering Chloe. I was going to post a picture of that Thanksgiving, but I was large with child (and when I saw large, I really mean LARGE. I didn't want to post a picture and alarm anyone with my overwhelming size).

We were excited to host our first Thanksgiving in our own home with our own kids. And we didn't have the stress of making it fancy for anyone- our kids don't know any better.

We had a very relaxing day, just the 6 of us. We spent lots of time lounging around watching The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, movies and football.

Mitchell couldn't wait for dinner!

Ben carving the yummy turkey!

Plastic plates, cups and silverware for the kids, and since we have no fancy china, our everyday dishes for Ben and I. (We did go "all out" and use some fancy glasses for the sparkling cider...)

The kids had eaten lots of cheese and crackers all afternoon, so neither of them was super hungry, but we asked them to at least try just one bite of everything. Chloe is a fantastic vegetable eater (the best, really) and ate all of her veggies (minus the yams, which she grudgingly only took one bite of).

Mitch on the other hand is not a good veggie eater and since half of the items were veggies, he didn't eat a whole lot. We kept referring to the turkey as chicken because he knows what chicken is and loves it. But either he wasn't fooled or wasn't hungry, but he wouldn't try it. And he is becoming quite good with his speech. Point in case: Me: "Mitch, can you try some of your chicken?" Mitchell: "Me no want that chicken!" Needless to say, Mitch no eat that chicken (turkey).

At dinner, we all went around and said something we were thankful for. For Mitchell to understand, we asked him to fill in the blank: "I love...." and he said "Puntins!!" (pumpkins). Chloe said: "Water."

At Chloe's preschool, each child made a turkey and on each turkey feather they named something they were thankful for. Here is Chloe's list of things she was thankful for:

*Friends

*Brother and sisters

*Mom and Dad

*Summer

*School

*Halloween

*Water to drink

*Trees

I thought it was a very thoughtful list and she definitely named things she really loves and is thankful for.

But of course everyone was excited for dessert! We had a pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie and an apple pie (with ice cream and cool whip, of course). Mitch only ate ice cream and Chloe only ate apple pie.

In preschool, Chloe made an Indian outfit and was very excited to "dress up" for Thanksgiving. She kept asking what her friends and cousins were "dressing up like" for Thanksgiving.... I think we may have just combined Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Anyway- it was fun to dress up, and here is the Andros line up for Thanksgiving day:

Chloe, the Indian

Mitchell, the Turkey

(and boy is he a little turkey these day. He is hilarious and lots of fun, but he's two and can be a turkey....)

Alexis and Leah, the Pilgrims

(Pilgrims because Chloe was very stuck on the idea that everyone needed to "dress up.")

Yes, little Leah has BIG, beautiful eyes. She can really take it all in with one good glance!

And the 2 big kids were in bed by 6:00, which I don't think has EVER happened on Thanksgiving. Happy Turkey Day to me and Ben!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Twins 2 week old photo shoot

In my haste and excitement in posting these photos the first time, I failed to give proper credit to our photographer. This photo shoot was given to us by the photographer, Jenny Joy Photography, (www.jennyjoyblog.com) for free as a special promotional offer. We were very fortunate to be given this free photo session, in our home, when the babies were 2 weeks old. Being a free session, we got to keep all the digital negatives in their original, raw, unedited form and as a special gift we were given 15 of the images edited. In posting the first time, I failed to give our photographer credit for the amazing work she did on the images she edited and did not differentiate between the work she did and the editing I did on the raw images given to us. I've rearranged the post to show the images she worked on and the images that were unedited by her and either left in their raw, original form or edited by me at home.

We are delighted at how all of the pictures taken turned out- the photographer did an amazing job capturing such beautiful and precious poses and moments that we will remember forever.

All of the images were taken by our photographer, but the first group are the shots that the photographer edited and worked many, many hours on. They look amazing:

Lexi, our little angel sleeper

Lexi

Daddy with Leah on left, Lexi on right

Daddy with Lexi

Daddy with Leah

Mommy with Leah

Leah, Lexi

The "little old man" shot....

Leah in Ben's hands, Lexi in mine (it seems that most of the time, Leah ends up on the left and Alexis on the right!)

Lex

These bookshelf shots were Ben's idea. The photographer was hesitant to do them, for obvious reasons (tiny babies falling off 4 shelves up, us blaming him) but we finally talked him into doing it. Alexis (on left) was perfectly positioned, all on her doing and was dead asleep. Leah was not quite as asleep and not quite as perfectly positioned, but still cute.

Leah

Alexis

Lexi was so dead asleep and still, we were tempted to leave her there to take a nap!

The rest of the images are the digital negatives given to us, untouched by the photographer's amazing editing skills. Any editing was done by me. I still have to give most of the credit to the photographer for how the images look- such an amazing job was done just in how the picture was taken, and some of these are just the raw negatives.

Leah, Lexi

Mom with Lexi

Leah with quite the pose....

I know this is like the third picture in this same pose, but she looks so angelic.

Leah and Alexis

Lexi and Leah

This shot really shows off all their differences- Lexi has slightly darker skin, is bigger in body, head and face, and has more hair that is darker in color. We have absolutely no trouble telling them apart.

Lexi and Leah

Lexi in Daddy's hands

Leah and Lexi

Lexi

Lexi

Now how will we ever choose which ones to print??