Happy Birthday to Natalie

We have the internet again after 2 weeks without it. It was kind of nice to have an internet cleanse, of sorts, but I'm so glad to have it back. Maybe I can at least scale back the amount of time I spend on the computer now that I know I can live without it.

Now, on to the task of trying to catch up on here. We have had a pretty busy couple of weeks. The most important event was Natalie's birthday. Unfortunately, the camera died right as the celebration began. We got some video of it at least.

Here are the only pictures from the day.

Natalie decided on a Don cake.
Don is a character from her new favorite show Dinosaur Train.

For some reason, the kids and I all ended up wearing red that day. It really wasn't intentional. We had to take some pictures, though:

I can't believe my Natalie is 3 now. At the same time, it seems like she has been 3 for awhile. I guess it's because she is always wanting to be older than she is. She definitely wants to be known as a "big girl". She tries so hard to act like one, too.

She has been SO excited to go to Primary (at church) and the nursery kids got to come in for part of it last Sunday. I had been helping Elizabeth write a talk she was giving (which she gave all by herself! We were so proud.) and Natalie insisted on writing one, too. I said that was fine and helped her write something out. As soon as Primary ended, she suddenly burst into tears because she didn't get a chance to give her talk. I didn't realize that she thought she was going to be able to say it in Primary. If she had been given a chance, I have no doubt she would have marched up there and done it perfectly and not been scared at all. She is so funny that way.

Natalie has always been musically minded. I remember when she was a baby, if someone was singing, she would just stop and stare at them. Just kind of taking it in. She still loves music. She is always singing whatever song is in her head at the time (I wonder where she gets that from? :). It is so cute. But, if she doesn't know the words to a song she gets VERY frustrated. It's kind of funny to watch, actually. So, Joe or I usually have to stop between lines and tell her the line ahead of time to she can sing it. She knows the words to lots of songs because of this.

We love our Natalie and are so proud of all that she is learning and who she is becoming. We can't imagine life without her.