It's really not cold out!

Today is Aaron's birthday!  He's up north with the guys for an ice fishing weekend.

We've talked to him a couple of times an he's having a great time!  Last week, he upgraded from his "stupid" phone to a smart phone.  And he's embraced Instagram!  To see his pictures look for @akaiser47.

Esme and I met Jodie, Annika, Laurel, Andrea and Callie for brunch at The Bulldog Northeast.  The food was yummy and we had a good time.

It was a pretty warm day, I think I saw the temperature at 37 degrees at one point.  Esme, for some reason, thought that meant she could completely ditch the winter gear.  Here was her outfit for the day.

























I actually had to talk her into wearing the leggings.  She just wanted to wear the dress.  AND she wanted to wear little summer shoes.  This girl is embracing the warmer weather!

I certainly wasn't going to argue with her about whether or not to wear a coat.  I decided to let the environment be her teacher for the day.  And it worked - about 3 minutes after I took these pictures she asked for her coat.  :)

We bought Aaron few presents today too.  So hopefully he had a great day!

MOA Celebration

Esme and I had a super fun day today.  I took her out of school early for two reasons.  Number one, Esme got a wristband to Nickelodeon Universe from Uncle Ernie for Christmas that we had to use up.  Second, Esme was chosen to be in a book club at her school.  This is a pilot program and only the top 6 readers at her school Albertville Primary were selected (there are about 400 kids there).  Esme was one of them!!!  That warrants a celebration I'd say!

I picked her up at lunch time and let her pick where we would eat.  It doesn't take much imagination to guess where she picked.  

After that, MOA here we come!  I had heard that Friday afternoons were really slow and a great time to go to the park.  Wow, was that ever true!  We hardly ever had to wait in line.  We did whatever rides we wanted and went back on them over and over again.

 Dancin' on the Ferris Wheel!

On a sad note, one of Esme's favorite rides at the mall has always been the hot air balloon ride.  We found out today that it will be not be there much longer.  They are going to replace it with a Bubble Guppies themed ride.  I'm sure that will be fun, but we will sure miss the hot air balloons.  Esme got a little weepy about it, so we had to ride it a few extra times.

Another big thing for Esme was that she got brave and did the Log Ride and the Rollercoaster.  Before she was always afraid of them but for whatever reason, she decided that today was the day to overcome the fear and go for it.  She loved them both!  

The only thing we did that wasn't really fun for her was to go to the Verizon store.  Aaron bumped up to my iPhone 5 and I got the iPhone 6+.  It's funny because if you look at the pictures from today, some of them are much fuzzier than others.  The 6+ definitely has a better camera!  It took about an hour total to get everything switched over but Esme was very patient and a real trooper.

We just had such a fun day.  I can't wait to take her again sometime very soon!  Love you Esme!