Friday, August 26, 2011

Back to School Party

It was the perfect way to ring in the new school year, meet the new three year olds & soak up the love of our little school.
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Turning Four: The Presents


While we work hard to emphasize to Josie that birthdays are about more than just gifts, we are grateful for the generosity of friends and family that wrapped up lots of fun new games, toys & activities for Josie in honor of her fourth birthday.  Here are some photos of all the unwrapping and all the oohing and ahhing that goes along with being four and getting presents!




You'll notice that she is wearing lots of different outfits in these pictures, because presents were unwrapped over the course of several days - between her party, her actual birthday, gifts by mail, etc.  It was definitely a whole birthday week!

She loves playing dress-up!

Here she is opening her new cowgirl boots that topped her list of birthday wishes. They had to be "real" according to Josie. Lou & I weren't exactly sure what that meant, but apparently we got it right because she was beyond-thrilled with these!
"ooooh" she said, as she tried them on, "very cowgirl-ish"

"take my picture in THESE"
Grandma & DD make another birthday wish come true with her new favorite spot in the house - a zebra chair! (Zebras are kinda her thing right now.)

Topping the list of this year's birthday gifts - books! Our little lady loves reading, being read to, and doing activity books. We all get SO excited to get new books and this birthday yielded some great new ones for the Schneider Library!


These are photos of "the box from Tia".  Josie knew it was coming and kept checking the porch over several days hoping it would be there. We get lots of boxes so it was easy to trick her to get the following reaction.

Before the box, "Mom, I think this is the Tia box.  READ IT! Is it?"  I told her it was probably just diapers for Bea...

And when I went over and read it and said it came from Chicago, this is the reaction I got -

I took a great video of this whole thing, but it took her about 4 minutes to get through everything which ended up being too large of a file for youtube. She was so excited by so many things in that box - and this explorer kit was her favorite. (Tia, you know Josie SO well!)

Last but not least, some presents from us. We got her more activity books (because she can't get enough of them at the moment) -

And - a big box -

With her very own DESK -

All in all it was a wonderful, wonderful birthday. Thanks to everyone for all the lovely cards and surprises. Thanks to everyone who made it to her party and helped us celebrate our big girl turning four. We Schneiders sure are a lucky (and very grateful) bunch! xo