November Birthdays

Lydia and I both have November birthdays and we are a week apart. This year, she turned 8 years old and I turned 35. Wow! My birthday is on the 13th, but since Garrett was going out of town that day, we decided to celebrate a few days early. The girls all made me cute cards and Garrett gave me a great present--something I've been wanting for awhile. He gave me a new camera--a Canon Rebel. He also got me a tripod. I'm so excited about my presents. I've been reading the manual and trying to learn more about my camera; I definitely need to take some kind of photography class--there is so much to learn about.



We also went out to Chevy's for my birthday dinner--it's one of my favorite restaurants! I love their chips and salsa!

Lydia's birthday was on the 19th and Garrett was still out of town. The girls and I and Noah went out and celebrated anyway by eating out at one of her favorite restaurants, Panda Express. We also went to Target and I let her pick out two toys for her birthday. She also got her own set of scriptures and a scripture case from Garrett and I and some chapter books.

We waited until after Thanksgiving to have her friend party. She decided that she wanted to have a Toy Story 3 Birthday party and invite 7 of her closest friends. It would have been much easier to go somewhere for her party and I really tried to convince her of that. But, the last two birthday parties were bowling and roller skating, so she really wanted to stay home and have games and such, so I threw something together. It's fun to do, but SO much work!

Her friends that came were Blake, Rayden, Peng, Elise, Taijah and Riley. Jake was the only friend that wasn't able to come. After everyone arrived, we had pizza for lunch.

Then we started some games. We had 4 in all. At the end of each game, I had my lovely assistant, Maggie hand out 5 pennies to each participant. After all the games were played, they were able to go to "Woody's General Store" and "buy" their loot for their goody bags.


The first game was a stick horse relay, you know because of Bullseye. I had two kids race against each other. Since it had been raining all morning, I was going to scrap that game since it needed to be outside and no one really wanted to go run around in the rain. So, I really didn't have any kind of "course" set up. So, I had them just go up and down the sidewalk. It worked.

Blake and Rayden

Lydia and Taijah

Elise and Riley

Peng and Rayden

The second game was "army men bowling" with a golf ball. The kids really liked that one and wanted to keep getting turns. One of Lydia's friends, Blake, asked that if he got a strike could he have more pennies? So, I told them I would give them 5 more pennies if anyone got a strike. They all tried again and were very determined, but I think there were too many army men and only 2 golf balls. So, no one ever got a strike.

The third game was another relay to see who could put Mr. and Mrs. Potato head together the fastest. All the kids, except Lydia put them together rather silly. But Lyd was very traditional about it.

And the last game I had was an "Alien Shoot-out". I thought this one would be the one that they were all excited about, but it turned out to be a dud. I didn't test it beforehand, so it didn't work as well as I would have liked. Oh well...I had green paper cups that I had Maggie glue 3 googly eyes onto for the aliens. I stacked them up in a pyramid and gave each of the kids a squirt gun and they had to race against another kid to see who could knock down all the aliens. Turns out the the water wasn't spraying with enough force to knock the cups down very easily. They had to be right up next to the cup. Garrett thought I should've used a nerf gun. Oh well, now I know for next time.

The Aliens

Blake and Lydia

Taijah, Elise and Peng

When we were done, the kids lined up to buy their loot. I had different items listed for various prices. Like little Toy Story figures were 4 cents each, stickers and sherrif badges were 2 cents each and army men and left over Halloween candy were 1 cent each. The kids were loving the candy. I thought it was a cute idea.

Next, we had cake and icecream. The only cake ideas that I could find were of Andy's bed with the toys sitting on the bed. I kind of wanted to do something else, but wasn't creative enough to come up with anything else. So, I made Andy's bed. It turned out rather cute, I have to say.

Next we opened presents. After that, the kids just played and watched Toy Story 3. It turned out to be a good party, although if we had ended it about 30 minutes sooner, it would have been perfect.

Teeth

Almost a month ago, we had a dentist appointment for all three girls. They all went in for different things, so I was there for almost two hours. Yikes!

Paige had a couple of cavities to be filled, plus had to get sealants.

Lydia had to go to get two of her baby teeth pulled to make room for a permanent tooth that hasn't come in yet and to make room so she can have braces later. She did really well with the whole experience and she said it didn't hurt that bad.

Maggie went in to get braces. She didn't get a whole set of braces, she just got them on her top four teeth to help her with her overbite. She's actually been begging us to get them for awhile now and was really excited to get them on. They did hurt her for a little while, but she says it wasn't too bad. She'll have to wear these for a year, then wear a retainer until she's 13 and then she'll get a full set of braces.

Cowgirls

For about a year, we've been promising Maggie that she could have horse riding lessons. She's been pretty patient for the most part, reminding us here and there, to make sure that we weren't forgetting. So, for some reason, we started her lessons at the busiest time ever--right around the end of September when we had soccer, dance and piano. Go figure. Since they are kind of spendy, we told her that she could only have 5 or 6 lessons. The teacher also gave a little discount if there were two people in the lesson, so we got Lydia signed up, too. When we first started going, there really wasn't any place to sit and watch them. They had some tables and chairs set up outside of the arena, but the walls were so high that we couldn't see over them. The first week, we hung out outside, but there were these two big dogs that kept following us around and Bella was really scared of them. So, I had to hold Noah and keep the dogs away from Bella. So, from then on we sat in the car during the hour long lessons.

On about the 3rd or 4th lesson, the teacher--Janice, left the girls alone in the arena while they were walking the horses. She was gone for about ten minutes, but in that time Lydia's horse (Tanner) decided to start trotting and Lydia got a little freaked out because she couldn't make him stop and she was afraid that she would fall off. So, Maggie helped her stop Tanner and get her off. After that incident, she didn't want to take lessons anymore. We got her to take one more lesson on a day that Garrett was able to go and watch them. But she wouldn't do any more after that. I think she was really scared that one day. Since Garrett didn't have any kids, he was able to take the camera and get some pictures and videos of the girls.

Maggie absolutely loved every minute of every lesson. They learned how to brush and take care of the horse, how to clean out the hooves, how to put on the sadle and the bridle; the proper way to get on and off the horse; and Maggie towards the end was learning how to trot. She would love to take lessons again and wants to have horses when she gets older. I think it was a good experience for both of them and I'm glad that they finally got the chance to learn; and I'm glad that we are finally done with all the lessons!

Lydia riding Cisco for the day, since she was scared of Tanner

Maggie and Tanner