Allie turns 4

On Sunday April 15th Allie turned 4.  She is such a sweet girl.  We are so grateful she is part of our family.  Some stats about Allie at 4:

She weighs 40 pounds

She has blueish green eyes

Her favorite food is tacos and beans.  She also loves macaroni and cheese, hamburgers, cucumbers, tomatoes, pickles, orange yogurt, fruit snacks, muffins, pumpkin bread...well the list goes on.  She is a really good eater

She loves playing with Brailie, swinging in the back yard, playing in water, digging in dirt, singing and dancing and playing dolls and dollhouse

She loves having a bath and usually doesn't want to get out

She still likes me to help her get dressed though she can do it herself

She loves nightgowns and princesses and strawberry shortcake

She loves to play with friends.  If I could have one wish for her it would be for her to have more friends.  I wish we could have a family move in with a girl just her age who would be in her class at school and church.

She knows how to spell and write her first name and spell her last name

She knows her address, phone number and the country she lives in as well as the pledge of allegiance

She is learning to sound out and read words like cat, hat, pot, dot, sit

She is really good at counting, cutting and gluing.  She knows all her colors and shapes 

She does not like to color

She loves to have stories read to her and to go to the library

She knows lots of primary songs and really loves Nephi's courage and The Armies of Heleman

She is a good helper when she wants to be and is excited to have a new baby at her house



We wanted to get a few pictures before church and the girls were willing so we snapped away.  100 pics later we had to weed down our favorites.  Here are mine:

Even though she isn't looking at the camera I like that this picture shows her calm quite side-which we see occasionally.

We had to include Brailie

Cute little sweet girl

Doing a crazy picture

This one looks like she is leading the music.  She is really cute when she does that in FHE

Giving daddy a kiss

The blue eyed girls

Giving mom a kiss

Proud dad with his sweeties.

A Rainbow Birthday Party for a super cute 4 year old

My little girl turned 4.  For months I have been asking her if she would just like to stay 3 and every time she would get quite defensive and tell me that she wanted to turn 4.  I offered stay little pills and get small pills and told her being 2 or 3 would be fine but to no avail-she just had to go and turn 4 on me.  I actually like 4-I am hoping with 4 there are less melt downs and tantrums (if you know otherwise please don't pass the info on to me and let me live in my dream world a little longer).  She is so smart and funny and a good helper and a good big sister.  Her and Brailie are playing so well right now it makes every day of frustration with a newborn and a 19 month old worth it. 

We had a rainbow themed party for her.  I couldn't really think of what she is into right now so rainbows seemed happy and springy and that is what she is (most of the time).  I don't get to throw parties very often and that is one of my favorite things to do so I had to do as many cute and fun things as possible in one night.  It turned out perfectly-even though we had to have it in the house instead of inside.  We had a few friends and Greg's parents and my aunt and uncle from Springville.  It was the perfect amount of people and Allie was thrilled to have them all here for her.  I am going to post the details on my Small Fry blog as I have been missing that a bit.  Here are just some highlight pictures.

 1. These are cupcakes in a jar-the rainbow version-pretty much my new favorite thing.
 2. Rainbow banner made with paint chips
 3. A second rainbow banner made with paint chips (they are the best thing to use for rainbow parties)
 4. Rainbow cake pops made by my fabulous brother and best uncle ever.  They aren't even the cheaters method cake mix pops-these babies were homemade cake and homemade frosting and Greg summed them up perfectly when he said, "these are the most wonderful, delicious thing I have ever had.  I need 40 more."
 5. Rainbow napkin rings
 6. In all the festivity planning I forgot a little cake to put the candles on so my aunt and I went to the store and bought this very over priced mini carrot cake.  I scraped the carrots off the top and sprinkled it with colored sugars I had.  It was perfect for Allie to blow the candles out on.
 7. Rainbow sugar cookies.  These were made with a recipe I found for edible playdough (check the small fry blog for the details).
 8. Rainbow punch (cheaters method).
 9. The party spread (before the punch).

It was cute because she didn't want to have anyone sing Happy Birthday but then when it started her face just lit up.  I don't know what she was expecting to have happen but she was all smiles as everyone sang and knew just what to do after the song ended.  Cute girl.

The picture caption says it all.  She is a beautiful 4 year old and was so sweet to make sure Brailie was included in party stuff.  It was really cute.


Here are a few pictures of Allie opening presents.


Showing the 4 wheeler she got from mom and dad and opening a book of Beatrix Potter stories from Aunty Helen and Uncle Doug.  They also gave her 20.00 and gave Brailie 5.00



Opening a box from Grammy.  She got a set of 3 more sweet streets houses and a big bag of accessories.  The girls love these little houses and people and they are a big hit at basketball games.

Thrilled about this little pack of ice cream erasers

Opening paper dolls from Grandma and Grandpa.  She loves these

A great set of mini strawberry shortcake dolls from Uncle Steven.  They are a huge hit also.

Here she is displaying her cowgirl skills with her new cowgirl hat and gun from the Hunt boys.  It is the most appropriate gift from them as every time we go to Coby's (which is the number 1 requested place to go) she plays guns with the boys.  She was so excited to have her own gun to shoot Kole with now.  Pf course now Brailie needs one too. 

Look at those gun skills.  Ahhh I've been shot.

HIp Hop Nightgowns

Allie needed a new nightgown.  I found her one at DI.  She was thrilled with it and it made a great dancing outfit.  The girls had to put on both of their nightgowns, turn on Popcorn Bopping, put on hats and do a few hip hop numbers.  Such a party around here.

Easter Morning

Easter morning was fairly uneventful at our house.  I didn't want Easter morning to be about Easter bunnies and eggs and gifts galore.  We got the girls each fishing poles (well a new one for Allie and we washed up Allie's old one for Brailie), new fishing nets, big bouncy balls and some candy eggs(left over from last year when we didn't celebrate Easter at all cause we were in Canada and I totally spaced it).  The easter bunny (mom) was in no mood to bake cookies so he picked up some from the grocery store. 

They were thrilled and happy with very little-bless my sweet children.

Fishing in Monroe and the big catch

While in Monroe the dad's took the kids fishing.  Allie is in love with fishing-she was so excited.  Brailie fell asleep on the way home from out picnic so she didn't make it on this trip but she is in love with fishing too.  This was Allie's lucky fishing trip.

Chatting with Zach

Cute fisher girl

Help from a pro

The big catch-it was Allie's first fish ever

Yep Allie that is just how I was-I will catch em but I ain't touchin em.  Way to go girl.

Easter Weekend At Grandma's in Monroe

This year for Easter we went to Monroe to Greg's parents house there with his brother Ryan and his family and sister Carrie and her family.  The weekend involved seeing baby lambs, a big Easter egg hunt, a fishing trip and tons of playing with cousins.  The girls had a blast.  I think Allie could have stayed and played for a week longer and probably gone with minimal bathroom breaks, food breaks and sleep. 

A lamb that had just been born (okay so they are not cute until they are at least cleaned off and fluffy is what we learned from this experience).

Looking for the lambs

Easter egg hunt

A full load of candy

Another full load.  She was happy when her basket had 4 eggs in it and thrilled when it had 37

The loot

In Grandpa's footsteps.

Walking like Grammy

Just found this video of the girls walking like Grammy.  The one day Allie said, "Grammy let me show you how you walk," and then did this.  Another night she said, "Grammy why don't you try walking like a normal person."  Good thing my mom isn't easily offended by her grandkids.

Untitled from Heather Parsons on Vimeo.

One smart cookie Brailie

This is a video of Brailie saying her name, her address, her phone number, what country she lives in and then the Pledge of Allegiance (which she kinda gotta tired of speaking in the mic by the end).  At the end she said, "go army" which is what all the basketball girls do at the end of the pledge since the former assistant coach has gone to war and he always used to say that too.

The annual Easter Egg Dying

I'm not going to lie-I was not really in the mood for Easter festivities this year and I am also not going to lie-the things I did do I did with only part enthusiasm.  It was a holiday that just crept up on me and though I wanted to do a bunch of cute stuff I didn't feel I had the time, energy or money to do it.  My girls are amazing in the fact that they are thrilled with so little and happy with plain and simple and so I sometimes find myself saying, "why even go to all the work when they really will be happy with...." and that is what I did with Easter this year.  I did feel we should dye eggs though I think egg dying is really an activity for older kids.  I cooked a dozen eggs, bought the kit and put the set up outside.  They each dyed (or rather tossed their 6 eggs) into some and all of the cups of dye, they dried, we threw on a few stickers and done and happy.

When I was little and my mom would boil the eggs for Easter if one happened to explode in the process we were all the more happy because that became the "Alien" egg and it was fun to see how it would look after being dyed.  Allie chose the Alien egg from our batch too.  He looked good in blue

and purple

And green.

See what I mean-thrilled and we didn't even do a fancy thing.