Our Posh Valentines Day Party

Since Valentines Day is so close to mine and Garrett's Wedding Anniversary (Feb. 7th), in my mind, I tend to think that we celebrate our anniversary and Valentines Day at the same time, and then I usually try to focus more on my kids for Valentines Day. Sometimes in the past we've gone camping over Valentines day which is fun. This year, I wanted to have a little party for Valentines Day with dinner and a few games.


One of our favorite books is Fancy Nancy. We just love her and read her books over and over. We love the first one where she teaches her family to be fancy and they go out to eat at King's Crown (a pizza place) all gussied up. For a couple of years now, I've wanted to do that with my family, although I knew that they wouldn't be too keen on going anywhere in public dressed up. So, I changed it up a little bit and just had us stay home instead. I gave everyone these invitations in the morning, so that they could think about what they wanted to wear that evening.
I have to say right here that I have the best husband in the world who really supports me and my crazy ideas. He came home early, picked up food for me and best of all, dressed up and had fun with the girls. AND, he brought me red roses and a rose for each of the girls. He's so sweet! Paige and Bella really had a fun time getting dressed up--especially Paige. This was right up her alley. Maggie and Lydia were kind of embarrassed and didn't want to do too much with their outfits. Oh well, they still participated and had fun. We took a few pictures before we ate.

We had a fun time dressing up, but I was wishing that I had more hats, feather boas, play jewelery, etc. We could have gotten really crazy!! Noah is not dressed up just because we put him to bed right after we took the picture.

Here is Bella at our fancy table.

We found a place that sold heart shaped pizzas for our dinner. We also had pink cherry seven-up with a some-what fancy dollar store straw.

I found these yummy cupcakes on a blog called "Ready, set, craft". They are chocolate cupcakes filled with raspberry jam and have a raspberry flavored buttercream frosting (my frosting didn't turn out so well...I'll have to find a better recipe). My favorite part were the chocolate hearts on top. So fun to make. The kids didn't care too much for them...STRANGE...I KNOW, but I sure loved them. I think I ate most of them! :)

After our fancy dinner, we played Valentines Bingo, which I just printed off of another blog that I read. The funnest part was watching Bella play. She was SO excited everytime she found the picture that I called out on her card and so excited to get to put a heart candy on it. She would jump up and down and clap and cry out "I did it!" Watching her so excited made everything worth it! I love being able to share these fun times with my family!

Whenever someone got Bingo, they got a little goody basket with some candy, playdoh, a notepad, a balloon, etc. plus a little coupon book that I made for them. They really enjoyed that. Some of the coupons were, breakfast in bed on a saturday morning, 1 hour of computer time, ice cream at McDonalds, a hug, play a game together, etc.

So this past Saturday, they all wanted breakfast in bed. I was all prepared to get up and make them breakfast, but Garrett got up with Noah, he let me sleep in and then made breakfast for everyone. Isn't he amazing? I sure picked a keeper! Anyways, these are pictures of them eating their breakfast in bed...

We only have one "breakfast in bed tray," so Paige got lucky and got to use it.

A Few More January Pictures

I just got this cute picture of Noah off of Maggie's camera. This was from when we were driving home from Utah after Christmas. Noah kept holding his foot straight up in the air. Maggie got a kick out of it and took a picture. I love the spit-up all over his chin.

In December, the character trait that the school was focusing on was "compassion". Paige was chosen out of her kindergarten class as a person who shows compassion to other students. She got to go up in front of the whole school (along with the other kids chosen from all the other classrooms) to get her award. I am so proud of her for being chosen for this. She truly does have compassion for other people!

I have to include at least one picture of Scooter so that my family can see how big he's growing.

And this lovely girl is pulling off quite the pose after fixing her own hair. She does this quite often--she is such a hoot!

One Saturday, the girls cooked up Paige's Easy Bake cakes and cookies and had a "Tea Party" in the front room. It was pretty cute.

I love this of little Noah loving his daddy.

Garrett took this picture of a deer in our backyard. I thought it turned out quite clear.

Paige turned 6, Rapunzel Style

Paige turned 6 on January 7th and since we didn't get home from Utah until the 3rd, there was no way I was going to be able to pull off a birthday party for that weekend. So, we had her party on the following Saturday, the 15th. She's been wanting a Rapunzel party ever since she saw the first preview for Tangled, even though at that point, she hadn't seen the movie. It was such a cute movie though, that I thought it would be a fun party theme.

We had a little family celebration on the 7th and took her out to eat at Sweet Tomatoes and opened gifts after.

She got an outfit, some candy, 3 books, 2 Easy Bake cookie/cake mixes and...

...a Barbie Cruise Ship. This kid eats, sleeps and lives Barbie! She loved it!

This was the day of her friend party...

Nicole, Paige, Avery and Ella making tiaras

I found these long haired "wigs" at the dollar store and thought the girls might like to wear them as "Rapunzel" hair, but only Paige, Brooke, Bella and Noah wore them.

The Birthday Girl

Ella, Bella, Avery, Paige, Lydia in back, Nicole and Brooke

playing pin the braid on Rapunzel...Paige was way off!

Brooke was pretty close

Hayden didn't quite make it.

Playing "Tangled" Memory

They all got a kick out of this game. I read a Tangled Book that Paige got from her birthday and every time I said "Rapunzel", they had to pass a present around the circle. The one holding it at the end of the story got to open the gift. Bella especially liked this one and giggled and laughed everytime I said Rapunzel.

Opening gifts

Hayden, Paige, Nicole, Brooke, Avery and Ella

The Rapunzel Tower

Happy Birthday Paige!

Her SPECIAL Day

Since we were going to be in Utah with family and since Lydia had just turned 8, she decided that she wanted to get baptized in Utah with all her family around her. Luckily, in the end it worked out really well and it was a really special day for her. The stake coordinator (Sister White) was a really nice lady who did a fabulous job at getting everything ready.

The only hiccup we had was that we were scrambling to find an outfit for Lydia to get baptized in. I guess it said in the letter that Sister White had sent us, was that WE were supposed to bring an outfit with us, and I must have just skimmed the letter and not really paid a lot of attention to that part. In the end, I ended up buying a jump suit at the Distribution Center as a back-up because Sister White was looking for a dress. She did find a small temple dress, but Lydia didn't want a dress, so she chose to wear the jumper. We really thought that, this being Utah, they would have had plenty of different sizes of clothes to be baptized in that belonged to the Stake. We were wrong.

Lydia was able to be baptized on January 1st, 2011 (1/1/11) at 10 am. How's that for a fresh start and a new beginning? I was so impressed with how organized everything was, how smoothly everything ran and how welcome they made us, and especially Lydia, feel. I had already started crying at the opening song...the spirit was really strong and I knew how important Lydia getting baptized was. I hope she felt the same thing. It was really neat to have all my family there. All of my siblings and their families (minus one sister--who had to leave to go to her in-laws house and my sister-in-law, who had just gotten home from the hospital with her little girl) and my parents, and one of my cousins came.

Thanks for all the support guys!!

Lydia and Garrett pre-baptism

Look how cute she is!

The family

A closer view

My family

Lydia and Grandma and Grandpa Hansen

I love this one!

Freezing cold out in the snow!

We went out to eat lunch at Costa Vida afterwards.

Grandma made Lydia a chocolate cake as a special treat!