McKenna's 4th Birthday!

4 Year Stats

Height: 40.2in (3.2in increase in 1 year) 60th percentile

Weight: 31lbs (1lb increase in 1 year) 5th percentile 

We decorated...

She made a grand entrance- basically giving us a script of what to say. :)  

Present time! 

Doctor stuff! 

Opening an Ariel barbie.  

Then later that morning she went on a breakfast daddy daughter date.   I can't tell if she's excited or not. ;)

Biggest blueberry pancake for such a little girl!  

We had some friends over for a play date!  They loved dressing up!

Ben wanted a picture too. :)

After lunch we went to daddy's Pumpkin Festival at the Gateway.  

After naps we headed up to Mantua with some ward friends (Roths and Puzeys) for cake and ice cream and a fun overnighter.  

I started a new tradition of letting the birthday kid decorate their OWN cake!  

She had a blast!  

The really sad thing is that even with an improved frosting writing tool, the cake still turned out about the same as when I decorated it myself last year.  Oh well. :)  She loved it either way!  

The next day we went to Applebee's and opened presents with my parents and two local siblings.  

The singing.  

Ben's workin' it. 

Quite the pile of presents!  

THEEEEN, she got to go on a birthday date with Dan's mom to "Disneyland!"  Actually the Disney Store, but we'll let her think it's Disneyland for a while longer.  :)

They put a special button on her and then made an announcement over the loud speaker, the music swelled, and they put her name on the big screen!  She probably loved the attention! 

And here's her haul from her birthday date!  

McKenna is such a sweet girl!  I'm SO grateful that I'm learning most of my parenting skills on her!  Her brain is always going and thinking.  She asks SO many questions throughout the day.   She's going through a phase of irrational fears (no nightmares yet though) so we have to be careful what we say around her (like telling her that her brain will get mushy if she watches too much TV) . She's loving preschool and we actually just enrolled her in a ballet class!  She's always wanting to know what will make her smarter.  She loves to know what the plan for the day is and if we'll be going anywhere.  She's starting to help me cook more and more too.  McKenna can be such a sweet big sister to Ben.  We get lots of opportunities to help her practice being nicer to him too.  For example, we're working on her not being too bossy and talking nice to him when she wants him to do something her way.  I LOVE that she still take naps for me more days than not.  She is still really into drawing and coloring but hasn't responded too well to ME trying to teach her how to write her letters.  She wants to "do it herself."  She loves dress-up and jewelry.  She really getting into all the holidays this year too.  We love our Kenna girl!