Madeline and Andrew turned FOUR!

Today my babies turned 4. Such a bittersweet time for me. I am so excited for all they are doing and learning but so sad that I am moving so far from that sweet small baby stage. Back in December I bought the Melissa and Doug double sided easel for them and stuffed it in the closet. The deal was way to great to skip out on that night while lurking on Amazon.com.

Monday night I slipped out with Ben to hit a local store to get spill proof pain cups, rolls of paper and paint brushes to go with the easel. We then walked down to the Hallmark and Ben picked out a Webkinz for each sibling. It was Michael's idea but we let them come from Ben. I was under STRICT instructions to NOT pick out anything silly or *gay*- ex. a snake, a gerbil or maybe a frog.... Michael thinks the Cow Webkinz I picked out for Ben for Christmas falls in that category although Ben absolutely adores his cow... Bennie. SO Ben picks out a white Lamb for Madeline and INSISTED that his brother needed the.... TREEFROG! No amount of argument of suggestion worked. Michael looked at me like I was crazy.

Last night I had Ben help me wrap the small items we bought. I also informed him we would be surprising the kids with an evening out at Chuck E Cheese and then the ice cream shop(cold stone- I am the queen of online coupon specials!)

This morning I woke as normal to get Ben ready for school. He was SO excited and got read quickly. Andrew was up early as that is his way. Madeline was still asleep in bed but he was NOT going to let that last long. He ran in a awoke her up by throwing her wrapped gift from him and yelling she needed to come open it in the living room before he left. Both kids were THRILLED about their Webkinz. Andrew was even more excited when he realized that he could now spin the Wheel of WOW himself! LOL.

The day proceeded as normal. We had breakfast and headed out to the library for reading time. We stated late and I allowed them to play on the computers for a while. They begged me to go to *Taco Bells* for lunch so we did. We brought daddy home lunch and spent time playing *video games* on Xbox and watching Little Einsteins. We decided to go to Pizza Hut and get evening Buffet but when we got to the one by CEC we realized they no longer DO the buffet at night... ARGGGG! SO we just ordered and ate quickly so we could get to playing.

Who would have ever imagined that CEC would be PACKED to capacity on a Weds evening? Since it was such a special day we HAD to wait in the stinking line and go in. The place was packed. When we finally got to the counter and paid for tokens I found out WHY. A local school was doing fundraiser night. Oh Yeah.....

We spent out 140 tokens and ended up leaving with the tickets. They were so understaffed and we refused to wait any longer. It was just too late to do the ice cream so we headed home. Michael stopped and ran into Acme and grabbed the tiniest cake I have ever seen. We came home and put candles in that. Sang and cut cake. 3 glasses of milk manged to get spilled during this short lived festivity...

Everyone is tucked into bed, faces and hands scrubbed, teeth brushed and rinsed in fluoride. Kids still have not opened their easel! Friday the in laws will come over and we will do dinner and they will get the real cake/ice cream party kind of birthday night.