our baby turned three.

Violet turned three and that meant a whole lot of celebrating went on around here.  

My side of the family came for a little celebration and Violet got her very own flashlight from Aunt Stephanie and Uncle Dave.  She was pretty happy about it.

And Aunt Beth got her some butterfly binoculars that she couldn't wait to try out.

Grandma made her a pretty dress that she had to wear right away.  Aunt Steph made her delicious chocolate chip cookie bars which made Violet's day.  She took the candle blowing thing very serious.

Apparently she felt like since it was her party, she could cry if she wanted to.

She could not wait to get to presents on her actual birthday now that she had this whole birthday thing figured out.

She requested "Mommy's pizza" for dinner so she got her own little one with just cheese of course.

And big sister made her a puppet that she was not quite sure what to do with.

When she opened up these Barbies, she proclaimed almost immediately that the boy's name was "Shortsy" and the girl's name was "bow".  Makes sense.  She was a bit confused why we got her a boy one and questioned us on it.  We cracked up.

It's so hard to wait for the candle blowing when you just want to dig right in to that blue iced cupcake with sprinkles.

As I mentioned before, she does not mess around with candle blowing.  We loved it so much that we did it several times during her birthday week.  So awesome.

It's no big deal if you get icing on your elbow because it can be licked right off.

She got to go on a date with Grandma & PaPa for her birthday and she thought this was super big.  She wanted to wear Mommy's necklace and a skirt for the occasion.  She was acting so grown up and it was precious but also make my inside hurt a bit.

Then there was the celebration with Daddy's side of the family that began with dress-up time and ended in this ensemble.  Yikes.

Seriously though, she couldn't have picked one of the sweet princess dresses.  I guess it was more of a lime green zebra print sports bra kind of party.  Wow.

She loved having more cupcakes with cousins and blowing out a candle once again.

For her Mommy & Daddy date, we took her to Build-a-Bear for the very first time.  She sucked her thumb for the first half and appeared to be a bit overwhelmed.

She chose her bear and settled on the outfit rather quick and was so happy with her selection.

She loved blow drying the bear's fur and kept going back to do it a little more.

We had such a sweet time with our little Violet.  And I think she had a little bit of fun too.