Monday, April 25, 2011

Happy Birthday to me

Apparently there is a limit to how many candles I can blow out...
And that limit is 29.
Oh so close! Josh threw me a surprise party for my birthday. It was a small party with some of our closest neighborhood friends. He completely surprised me which is amazing. Josh is not known for his secret keeping abilities and he kept this a secret for a long time. I'm very impressed! And I'm once again grateful I got the best husband there is. It was a very fun night and such a great way to celebrate.
Turning 30 was not as big of deal as I thought it would be. The 20s were great and full of changes and new things in life. The 30s will bring a lot of changes too, and the end to many things that I would mind ending - like changing diapers. Hopefully I got that "youth gene" that both my parents seem to have. I don't mind getting older as long as you can't tell I am!

Easter frills

One of my favorite things about Easter is the dresses. I love that we can officially dress in spring colors even though the weather forecast keeps threatening snow. This year I made my girls' dresses. Never done that before! It was a good project to keep me busy, awake, and listening to general conference. I was a little worried about my fabric choice after I made Sydney's, but once I got them all made they worked together. I love them. I'm really digging the teal, yellow, and pink color scheme these days.
I have yet to get a good picture of all of them together, but I did manage to get one decent individual shot of each of them Easter morning. We had a lot of meltdowns that morning. I think they've consumed a bit too much sugar lately.
I'm sure grateful to have such cute kids to dress up. Even if they are sick and tired of me taking their pictures. And I know Easter is about much more than bunnies, candy, and pretty dresses. I am so grateful for the sacrifice our Savior made and for His love. Hope you all had a beautiful Easter!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Tea Party

Last week the girls had a just-for-fun tea party. They had gone to one of these by two of their friends back in February and immediately decided they wanted to host one of their own. And of course they presented this idea to me when I was busy and I said something like yeah , yeah, that would be fun, but not today. So Sydney took a look at the calendar and decided that Friday April 8th would be a good day, would that be a good day mom?
Yeah sure sweetie. (While thinking: you'll never actually remember 7 weeks from now...)
Fast forward 6 weeks on a Monday:
Mom, remember how we are having a tea party tomorrow?
What?! That's uh, not tomorrow is it? I thought that was on a Friday.
Oh yeah mom, it's on Friday, you're right.
Whew! At least I had a few days left. Well if she's got the memory to remember something for 6 weeks I'd better do it!
She remembered because she had made invitations (on post-it notes) for all the friends she wanted to invite. There were 15 of them! And that was just Sydney's friends and none of Natalie's. I told her she had to narrow it down, there was no way we could fit that many girls around our table. This of course resulted in disappointment which resulted in tears which resulted in an ornery mommy. Must we cry over everything?? We finally narrowed it down and added a few friends for Natalie, but still ended up with a pretty full house for the afternoon - 11 girls (12 if you count Camryn, which I do). It was a lot of fun and I had a good time making cute little tea party goodies and getting out my tablecloth (which has never been used in all 8 years of our marriage).
Sorry for the slightly blurry picture. Sometimes I guess I need to just bite the bullet and turn my flash on.
I'm glad it was a cold day. Perfect for hot chocolate, since we weren't going to have real tea. This was a good little warm-up party. Birthday season is nearly upon us! All of our kids have birthdays within a 6 week span. It's going to be party central around here!
Camryn really enjoyed the party too. And the other girls loved giving her more treats and taking turns holding her and carrying her around. This girl gets plenty of attention!