10.27.2009

what happens in Oz...

our AMAZING niece, sophie, turned 4 on sunday. as always, to get in to her party you have to dress up in a costume. this year's theme: Wizard of Oz. jesse and i are cheap and lazy and didn't really want to have to buy a costume or exert over 10 seconds of brainpower creating our own. so we decided to lame out and dress up in all yellow and all red and be the yellow brick road and the ruby slipper. we were going to just put judah in overalls and have him be a farmhand on dorothy's farm, but i got inspiration 20 minutes before the party for and crafted a costume for the little guy.
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who am i? ...


... lollipop guild!

we have tons of old clothes that were given to us by several sweet families at church, and some of them we never used, so i decided to sacrifice them to the cause of a crafty costume. so with some old clothes, new clothes, a pair of scissors and some of jesse's hair wax we had our munchkin in less than 5 minutes!

pretty excited about his first styling product. if his hair is anything like daddy's, he'd better get used to it.


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birthday dorothy with her "baby cousin" (who is looking HUGE next to her all of a sudden). she asked me two weeks ago, "is he growed up yet?" and "can he walk yet?" she cant wait for him to chase her around and lock the door on her (her words)

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good witch gLINDA and one of her royal subjects

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dorothy jr, niece bella, playing "trot trot to boston: yellow brick road edition" (with the lolli-prop of another guild member, jackies mom and dad)

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we told dorothy she had to wear her big ruby slipper to authenticate jesse's costume. she rolled her eyes and said, "i can't believe i'm doing this" hahahaha, is she turning 4 or 13?

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one thing i learned, if you cop out and wear a lame metaphorical costume, be prepared to pay the price.

follow the yellow brick road


follow, follow, follow, follow....


off she goes!

halfway through the party our friends, jay and abby, showed up as another couple with limited costume money and unlimited imagination. she was in all green as the emerald city and he was in all yellow like me but had actually drawn bricks on his t-shirt. that's commitment. but my shirt was waffle-texture anyway so those were my bricks. i was glad to make our yellow brick road a 2-lane highway.

p.s. jake and jackie's neighbor took this pic and his fly was down the entire time. jay and i had a front row seat to the open barn door. (abby is not actually 7 feet tall, she was just wanting to be faithful to the movie poster and have the road lead to her looming in the distance)
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our brother and sister in law do such an amazing job of making family traditions magical. sophie and bella's mom, jackie, is my real life NieNie inspiration for turning the craziness of everyday life with young kids into opportunities for wonder and joy. you just have to meet the girls to know that jake and jackie are doing something right.
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every birthday they make/show a slide show for the girls with pics of the last year and fun music. we are TOTALLY stealing that idea for judah. imagine how fun that would be to watch at your graduation party or the night before your wedding...all those years of memories. a bunch of the pics in this year's video were from a family trip that most of the dukes took to missisippi to drop off jesse's sister erin at college and have a lake vacation week too. judah was too young to pull off the 8 hour car ride (and we had JUST bought the new car and it was the week before i went back too work) so we were so sad to miss out. at the party, as we were watching the video the pictures from the lake trip came up and sophie walked over to me and said, "why did you didn't be there?" it was the cutest, most endearing thing ever. after that sweet question, i would TOTALLY brave the drive and all its conditions to enjoy our precious niece and the rest of our wonderful dukes fam if i could do it over again.

judah's wonderful cousins, aunt and uncle (jake is jesse's older brother FYI)
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he represents the lollipop guild
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where's my lollipop? put it in my hand.
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we love you sophie! happy birthday

4 comments:

  1. Awesome, Keight!! Thanks so much for putting up all the pictures--is there a way I can steal them from your site?

    Totally LOVE Sophie asking why you weren't there (all of us agree!)--is that amazing or what?!? You are loved!!!
    Mom#2

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  2. Love it and LOVE the slideshow idea! I'm totally going to do that...if life and my night owl baby don't beat me down before then :)

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  3. Thank you so much for the kind words K8! We'll all look back on this blog as the day you made your brother and sister famous. We are honored to be a part of your lives and you were indeed missed dearly in Miss. Many more amazing memories to come though!

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  4. I loved this post. I was laughing at every single picture & LOOVE the idea of the bday photos. Seriously, this post brought me so much joy!!

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