Sunny Days

Hello Sunshine.

Nice to see you.

Even if you've been a bit shy lately.

I usually don't mind overcast skies when taking pictures.

It diffuses the light and keeps me from getting those harsh shadows.

But the sun can give a nice sparkle to the eyes which I love.

And I love how the sun gets my flowers to show off.

According the weather forecast we should be seeing more of you Sunshine!

Rainy Days

It's been raining like crazy lately. It actually snowed for a few minutes on Tanner and Natalie's birthday. Normally at this time of year we are spending all our time outside, so grateful for winter to be over. So what do we do?

We have tea parties. We got Natalie the cutest little tea set for her birthday and we've been using it almost every day. We drink hot chocolate though. And we try to remember to keep our pinkies up and say things like "more tea si'l vous plait." She also got the Fancy Nancy tea party book so we've been learning how to have a proper tea party.

Camryn loves this new daily activity too. The cups are just the right size for her and she loves hot chocolate that is not hot.

By the way, holding a baby and helping her drink hot chocolate from a cup while also trying to take a self portrait is a real trick.

It's party central here

Tanner and Natalie turned 4 today! We had their first friend birthday party for them. It's a little tricky finding a good gender neutral party theme for boy/girl twins. Tanner has been really big into Super Mario lately though and Natalie is not too picky about her princesses. So Super Mario and Princess Peach is was! I had to get a bit creative with this theme since party stores don't sell Super Mario themed stuff. But it turned out cute I think!

The decorations were really fun to come up with. The backdrop was a last minute thing for just if I had time on my hands the night before. I'm glad I did because I think it really made the room look fun. I made the little gold question boxes using my silhouette. The cupcakes were super easy. Just plain old cupcakes with colored frosting and 3 upside-down vanilla candy melts stuck in each one.

After making Camryn's cake I offered Kristin a trade. If she would make Tanner and Natalie's birthday cakes I would sew her girls cute dresses. And we would each just pay for our own supplies. I'm looking forward to paying her back with those dresses because these cakes were SO adorable! She really went all out and the kids just loved them.

This party involved quite a bit of sewing actually. Since the party was tailored more towards Tanner's interests, I made Natalie a Princess Peach dress to get her extra excited. This is a simple t-shirt dress pattern that my friend Shayla came up with. I had to make a few alterations because apparently I can't follow directions. But it still turned out cute and Natalie loves that it's so twirly.

I also made 9 princess crowns and 9 mario hats. This was done quite a bit ahead of time. It was so cute to see all the kids wearing them though. Tanner has loved wearing his while he plays Super Mario on the wii.

This picture was taken right before another little princess arrived. So all in all we had 12 kids at the party. It was way fun despite the rain ruining a good chunk of my plans. I only had a couple of structured games planned. I know the attention span of a 4-year-old when it comes to structured things. Then I planned we would play with the bubbles wands and sidewalk chalk I got for the kids. That was a no-go with the weather though.

So after all the kids arrived and lost interest the the coloring pages I had printed for them, we started off playing a kind of cake walk game with different pictures from the mario games. The kids would win a gold coin when their card was picked. Josh even found the mp3's of the mario music for me to play during this which was so fun.

Instead of doing a pinata we did a Yoshi's egg hunt, which was basically an easter egg hunt. The kids loved this and it gave them some little prizes to play with while Tanner and Natalie opened presents.

Wow that was a lot of presents. They got some very fun stuff. I feel a little guilty that people had to bring two presents to this party. In the future we may do some dividing and have a girl party and a boy party or something. That's a tricky thing with twins.

Next we had cake and ice cream. Natalie was funny about blowing out her candles. She did for separate blows, one for each candle. I guess nobody has told her you're supposed to try to blow them all out with one breath.

After the sugar, the kids went downstairs to watch a Super Mario dvd that Tanner got for his birthday. It was so cute seeing them all lined up on the couch.

Well that was fun! I'm going to take a couple days off and then I'll start planning Sydney's birthday party for June.

My baby is one!

Well I guess it had to happen. I still call her my baby and will probably call her a baby for way longer than I should. I'm trying to squeeze in some of those things I always thought would be fun to do with one of my kids, like cake smash pictures. I wanted to use these pictures for her party invitations. So I made the cake and then Camryn went and got a cold and an ear infection and was pretty unpleasant for a couple days. The cake wasn't gonna last forever in the fridge and I only get good lighting in my kitchen for a few hours a day so we were limited on when to do this photo shoot. She was pretty somber and not as excited about the idea of having an entire cake all to herself as I thought she would be. My kids just don't always catch my vision. But we did get some cute shots.

So that was the fake cake. Another thing I've wanted to do is learn how to make cool looking cakes. I always buy cakes at Sam's Club for our birthday parties. But many episodes of Cake Boss have motivated me to learn some cake decorating skills. My friend Kristin kindly offered to teach me. I'm thinking maybe this is not a good hobby for me. The cake turned out super cute but in the process I probably ate an entire week's worth of calories in cake batter and frosting.

Camryn definitely enjoyed eating it...

We had as much of our family over as could make it for some cake and ice cream the Saturday after her birthday. It was fun to have everyone over since we are not typically the party hosts. Camryn loved being the center of attention and opening her presents.

She's growing up so fast. She's even starting walking! My earliest walker by far. She just wants so much to be like her older siblings. She's only 17 lbs. though so she's trying really hard to stay small for me forever. I don't think it's going to work though. She's going to grow up anyways. We're sure happy this little stinker came into our family!