On Your 9th Birthday

I had a LOT planned!

Everything Outside

It would be your very first SleepOver

I was nervous, excited, ready for my impending night of non-sleeping.

You could hardly STAND to wait for Saturday to come.

The boys were to come at 3pm for WATER WARS

Capture the flag watergun style

Then we'd play

badmitton

basketball

ladderball

maybe even slip-N-slide

HOWEVER

weather had a different opinion of how the day would go.

Serious threats of tornodos surrounded us

Everyone was nervous considering what happened last year.

The boys eventually came but, not til 5:30

We DID manage a few games of Capture The Flag (minus the water guns)

You guys LOVED it

You Strategized

And made Secret Sneak Attacks

And took your Flag Guarding

VERY seriously

But it got dark quick and we had to retreat.

Ohhhh Mother Nature

Why do you test me so!?

Many MANY video games were played

You wrestled and fought and made faces on silly stinky boys make

Cake & Pizza were consumed

and so was

HELIUM!

Yep, and I think I actualy started that one.

WHOOPS sorry parents.

They all began busting the balloons and talking like cartoon versions of themselves.

I made an attempt to corral the boys for a fun game of

CHARADES

But it didn't go so well.

I think you guys finally drifted off around

2 AM

We gave out water guns, blow pops and

SILLY BANDZ

For party favors

Wake time was somewhere between 5 & 7.

I can't be too sure exactly

I was a tad tired.

BUT YOU

had a blast!

And so did your friends!

Can I jus say how awesome these kids are!

Yes, they're rowdy at times

But they're also kind and respectful and encouraging to others

We Survived! Your First Sleepover!!

Love you Buddy

Happy Nine Years of Life

*sappy post from mom to come*

Pickles & Ice Cream Shower

Last weekend we had a fabulous shower

for a dear friend

Carol.

She's adding a new baby girl to our mix!

Baby Macy

{love that name}

Me & the girls brainstormed ideas for the shower.

First it was just gonna be an

Ice Cream Sundae Shower

Then We thought

Pickles & Ice Cream!

Brilliant!

Above is the adorable invite *ahemthatimadeahem*

Below is probably my favorite thing from the shower!

I designed these little onesies on the computer and printed them on

Iron On transfer paper

Iron them on, hang by cutsie ribbon & voila!

A cute decoration AND she can actually use them!

Close up of my favositest little onesie for my favoritest new little girl!

The Sundae Buffet in all it's glory.

Mmmmmm I'm getting hungry just looking at it!

In the back you can see the Sundae Glasses.

We gave those out as favors *they're from the Dollar Tree*

and attached a cute little saying to the bottom

with adorable ribbon of course.

In the very back is a hand painted canvas *by the oh so talented Julie*

that we all signed and wrote well wishes on.

Just wanted to make sure I made you good and hungry...

Here's where the pickles come in.

Jamie brought her mother's homemade pickles to go with the cravings above!

Really, who doesn't like pickles!?

Pink Carnations stuffed in ice cream cones.

Another hand painted canvas by the talented Julie.

Seriously, she needs to go into business doing this stuff!

If she had a blog I'd totally link to her.

I've got her working on something for my bedroom as we speak!

Had to throw in a shot of this adorable little gal and her mama!

I love a good chunk baby and she fits the bill.

Group Shot
Can't wait to meet you Baby Macy!!
Brynn has lots planned for the 2 of you.

8 is Great!

I had to share the crazy awesomeness that was Logan's 8th birthday. This post is going to be a picture explosion! I had a hard to even narrowing it down to these so Enjoy!

Invites By Me

Annual Cinnamon Roll Birthday Breakfast. What can I say,

the boy loves him some cinnamon rolls.

Of course we had to take cookies to school and the boys were sooo excited and hopped up on sugar their faces contorted. Thankfully they returned to prior form before their parents picked them up from school.
Saturday we headed to the place of Logan's dreams...Go USA. This place has been there for years. No tellin how old it is but he looooves it.

Games were played.

Tickets were won.

Go karts were raced

Presents were opened.

Logan had a blast with his friends but there was still more awesomeness to come.
We had the family over that evening for some grillin. It was a B-E-A utiful Day!!

Logan wanted a badmitton set most of all.

There was some corn tossin...

And some swingin'

And a "Show Me Your Crazy Face" picture

And a failed attempt by me trying to catch his lil pecks on the cheek.
Happy Birthday you Big 8 year old you!

Book Party

Since little sister's birthday comes not long after Christmas we decided to have a book party. She has soooo many toys and well, I love books! I wanted to get her little library started. I made the invite and I was very pleased with how it came out!

We had the party at my folks (nana & pop) home since it's a tad bigger than ours. Just a smidge. Both mine and Josh's families are close by and between the both of us we've got a lot of relatives! We ended up doing only a family party. It just gets to be so many people if we try to do family and friends. Believe me, I am very thankful for all the people in our lives but all the commotion can stress a baby out.

So I had this brilliant idea to just decorate with pics from her first year and balloons. Good idea right? Not so much. You'll learn why in a minute but first her are a few decor pics. This was a timeline (newborn, 3 mon., 6 mon., 9 mon., 12 mon.) of her stages. 9 and 12 months not shown here.


Since the computer crash of 08 I didn't have ANY pics of her from before 9 months. What does this mean you ask? Well, I had to take pictures of pictures (thank goodness I had some printed), load them, edit them and print them in black and white. I had a BLAST (sarcasm implied). I used these all over the cabinets and balloons like the ones below were every where. Seriously, I had close to 30. You should have seen me fighting with these things as I left Party City. And to top it off, I think a wind storm was blowin through about the same time.


For the goody bags I used scrapbooking supplies that I bought when Logan was a baby. Does he have a scrapbook you ask? No, no he doesn't. But I swear one day I 'm gonna get around to it. I got Books, a Book mark and a Beach Ball from the dollar store to fill them with. Catch the theme?On to the party...I was soooo glad my brother, who now lives in New Mexico, got to be there.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures. Oh, I have dark hair now by the way. She got lots of wonderful books and she's finally starting to enjoy reading! It was very hard to drag Logan away from all the cousins but he did sit for mmmm about a minute. Oh well, I guess a 1 year old birthday isn't really that exciting to a big 7 year old.

Nana made the adorable cupcakes and the box and blocks were a gift from Mimi. They made a great addition to the decor. Thanks Nana and Mimi for helping!


Time for cake and for the reason my decorations weren't so splendid. Little sister was TERRIFIED of balloons! I mean, they're just like floating balls on a string! I don't get it. And they were EVERYWHERE! If she came near one she would stare for a bit like, "What are you gonna try balloon!?" And then wham! A wave of terror would wash over her face. Dear Lord I hope I haven't scared the child for life. I can see it now. Five years down the road and B's invited to a party. I'm sorry but will there be ballons there? She won't be able to make it. Keep us in mind for next year though! And then who forgets to cut the balloons from the back of the high chair? Not me! I would never do that to her! Must have been her dad. HA
PHEW! Now that those strange floating objects with ulterior motives are gone time to enjoy the cake. She really didn't dig in like I expected. Very lady-like about the whole process. Is this not the cutest little face you've ever seen?

Well we did drag Big Brother away for 1 more pic with little sister. This is the same shirt I made for him to wear for the day she was born. I didn't want him to feel left out of the party so I said he needed to wear his special shirt again since he is the big brother and all.

You have no idea how hard it was to get a semi-decent shot of all the cousins. I was sweating afterwards and had to be excused to step out into the wind storm and cool down. Man, that's a good lookin group of kiddos though! The best part was that they all got along and there were NO tears. rare.

We had so much fun and are so glad we have family close by to celebrate these special occassions with us. The day after I set up all her books (for some reason I always do this on birthdays and Christmas) so we could see what she got. Here's the birthday girl with her loot, new eebee doll from big brother and adorable new shirt from aunt kiki and uncle jeff.

Books are gifts that just keep on givin.

It was also her daddy's birthday but he got a little shafted this year. Sorry babe!
He did have a nice carrot cake just for him at the party though!


One last shot of the birthday girl

Til Next Year...