Two more birthdays...

Since Bella and Garrett share a birthday, I like to split them up and give them each their own day to celebrate. We celebrated Garrett's birthday on Friday the 29th and Bella's the next day. For Garrett's birthday, we took him out to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory and then we came home to have cake and ice cream. Originally, I had invited 5 couples over to help celebrate, but most of them couldn't come because of previous plans. (It was kind of a last minute idea, so I had invited them on Monday; I should probably plan a bit more in advance.) So, it was just us that had yummy carrot cake and ice cream. The kids got Garrett a "rapid fire" nerf gun (which they ALL love). He also got a power washer from me (which he picked out) that he has been wanting for a long time. He hasn't used it yet, but keeps talking about it and all the things he's going to wash with it.

Bella's party was just going to be a family party. But in the weeks leading up to her birthday, she kept telling me about all her friends that were coming to her party. She doesn't really have friends that she plays with, but there are kids her age that she knows. When I asked her what friends were coming to her party, her response every time was "Brooke and David". Brooke is Paige's little friend and David is her little brother. So, I went ahead and made it a friend party and invited David, (Brooke came over as a "helper"). Since the weather has been nice, we've been outside more and have had more opportunities to play with our neighbor friends. Our neighbor has two little girls, Hailey and Holly, so we invited Holly (who is also 3)to the party also. And we invited one more little girl that is in Bella's nursery class, Ji-Su. Her family is kind of new to our ward and Lydia and their oldest boy, Pung are good friends.

We like to have "themes" for our birthday parties and I couldn't really decide on what kind of theme we should have for Bella's party. Nothing seemed to fit. Lately, she's been really loving the color yellow. She talks about it all the time and wants all of her dishes to be yellow and excitedly points out yellow wherever she sees it. So, I thought it would be fun to have a "Yellow Party", so that was our theme.

We started off by making Froot Loop Necklaces. I had each of my older girls be a helper to one of the party guests. It was so nice to have their help--it sure took some pressure off of me.

Bella and her helper, Lydia

This picture is a little blurry, but this is Brooke helping her brother David.
Paige helping Holly
and Maggie helping Ji-Su

At our Valentines Day Party, we played a bingo game and Bella absolutely LOVED it and was very excited by finding the pictures on her card and screaming in excitement whenever she found the pictures and got a bingo. So, I created some "Bella Bingo" cards with yellow objects to play at her party. I think all the kids had a good time and each got to pick a prize when they got "Bingo".

one of the bingo cards
Playing Bingo

Our last activity was a Color Treasure Hunt where they had to follow the color clues to find their ring pop treasures. (Didn't get any pictures of this game)

I scheduled the party to only go 1 1/2 hours, so we were running from one thing to the next. I should've made it two hours, then we could've relaxed a bit more. After the treasure hunt, we opened presents and then had some cake and ice cream.

Paige, Holly, David, Ji-Su, Bella and Brooke

Yellow decorations; waiting for cake

Yellow flower cake. I wanted to make a yellow number 3 cake, but she picked a flower.

Sweet Bella

After the party guests left, we had Bella open family presents. She was so excited that it was her birthday and that she was the one opening the presents. She has been talking about her birthday for months!! Her big present this year was a new tricycle. She was very excited and took off pedaling down the sidewalk. I think she had a pretty good time. I love this kid--she makes me smile every day!

She loves puzzles!

Look at her go!!

Easter

Due to the craziness of April with birthdays and all the other various things going on, I didn't get to do all the fun Easter things that I had planned. So, I don't have a lot of pictures. We didn't do an egg hunt this year and I didn't get the kids pictures taken before/after church on Easter Sunday. We did color Easter eggs on Sunday after church and then had a yummy ham dinner afterward. I guess the most important thing we did on Easter was hear a family home evening lesson that night that Maggie taught us about the Resurrection. She did a great job. So, I guess those other things don't really matter because we were able to learn about why Easter is so important and we were able to remember all that Jesus Christ went through for us.
About a week before Easter, Paige, Bella and I were able to make these bird nest treats. They were fun to make together and are really cute, but they didn't taste that great. So, we probably won't make these a big part of our Easter traditions.
Noah is loving the bunny ears! I think I have about 30 shots of him with these ears on. He was loving getting his picture taken and kept making the funniest faces ever. His grin is so big on some that you can see his three new top teeth. What a ham!

Aww, fun's over...the ears fell off.

This is Bella on Easter morning showing us her very chocolate-y hands after she's eaten some of her Easter candy.

The kids got pillow pets this year from the Easter Bunny and Noah really likes the antennae on Paige's ladybug.

Lydia and her turtle.

Garrett snapped this picture of Noah in his Easter outfit...what a handsome little devil! His arms must've been really moving to look so blurry in the picture.

Dying eggs...Bella really enjoyed it this year!

Paige and Maggie

and Lydia.

Becoming a Pre-Teen

Oh boy!! My little Maggie is growing up. She just turned 11. She is way too eager to grow up and be a teenager and wear make-up, babysit for other people, go to Young Women's at church and get a facebook account. I'm not ready for that yet. It seems like just yesterday she was a cute blonde haired little girl with hair sticking straight up everywhere; walking around talking our ears off (well, she still does that) and calling us Mindy and Garrett instead of mom and dad. Where has the time gone? She's a pre-teen now! She likes to remind me of that, often.

Since her actual birthday was on Easter Sunday this year, we had her friend birthday party on Friday the 22nd. She was in charge of planning it since she didn't want me planning little kiddie games for her. Not that I would've done that. :) I have to say that this was the easiest birthday party EVER with hardly any stress on me at all. So nice considering we have 3 birthdays a week apart.

She did a great job with the planning and it was a really fun party. Everyone she invited was able to come, so we had 6 girls over plus mine. When they all arrived, they started playing Just Dance on the Wii. I have a video of it. Its so cute. I wish I could share it! Most of the girls had played it before and really knew all the dance steps. Watching 8 girls dance in unison was pretty cool. Then we had pizza for dinner. Then one of the girls brought a very strange board game over that they played for a little while called Quelf. I had never heard of it before, but it had the girls giggling the whole time.
Next, the plan was to do make-overs on each other. Including nails, make-up and hair. We bought each of the girls a nail filer, some lip gloss and a bottle of nail polish. So, they set to work.

This is Ashlee...I think she asked someone to go really dark with the make-up. I think they succeeded.

Next was present time. She got some earrings, a necklace, a CD, some gift cards, lots of candy and I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

Ashlee still trying to get all that make-up off.

Aurora, Kayla, Ashlee, Emma, Maggie, Rosie and Aiyana.

Then we had cake and ice cream

Maggie requested a peanut butter cake. This has chopped up peanut butter cups on top. YUM!

Beautiful Maggie

After they ate, they turned on the movie RV (with Robin Williams) and watched until about 10:30 when the party ended. It was a fun party and Maggie had a fun time with all her friends.

On Easter morning, after looking at the goodies that the Easter Bunny brought, she got to open her presents from us.

I'm sure she won't be happy with me for posting these pictures. :)

She got a new hat, a new purse and a book: The Tales of Beetle the Bard (Harry Potter). I think it was kind of hard having her birthday on the same day as Easter, because it kind of got lost with all the Easter Celebrating. She still had a great birthday, despite that though.

Big Accomplishments

April has been a pretty busy month. Sooner or later I will catch up on all the blogging that I need to do. For now, this post is all about Maggie and Lydia and their great accomplishments at school. I'm going to do a little bragging here--just humor me a little. Every mom has the right to brag about her kids, right? :)

To begin with, Lydia and Maggie are great spellers. They've always done really well on their weekly spelling tests. At the beginning of April, they had the spelling bee at their school. Lydia came in first in her class and Maggie was the top speller in the older grades. So, Maggie had the opportunity to go on to the district spelling bee to represent her school along with one other person. She didn't win this year either, (she also went last year) but it's pretty cool that she got the opportunity to go. Fortuneatly, it's written and not oral. I think that makes a huge difference. You don't have to deal with the nerves up being up in front of a lot of people.

We got a letter in the mail about a month ago from something called the National Schools Project, that was addressed to Lydia. It turns out that her teacher had submitted a few of her poems and one of Lydia's poems won! It gets to be published in the Young American Poetry Digest. We don't know which poem was selected, but I thought I'd share one of Lydia's poems that she wrote at school, that I thought was pretty cute.

I did not eat your ice cream,
I did not swipe your socks.
I did not stuff your lunch box
with rubber bands and rocks.

We went ahead and ordered a copy of the book, but it won't arrive until October. Anyways, we were pretty excited about her getting "published" so early. :)

Maggie joined choir again this year--she really loves music and loves to sing. They practice every week for a couple of months. This year's theme of their choir concert was all about recycling and helping the earth. We all laughed about that--what kind of songs do you sing about recycling? Anyways the concert was really well done. Maggie has talked for a long time--since last year or so--about wanting to try out for a solo. Well, this year she tried out and got a part. She actually got a duet with one of her friends, but she was okay that it wasn't a solo. Her song was called, "Driving Miss Lazy" and it was trying to encourage people to drive less and to try walking or riding a bike places or catching rides with other people to cut down on pollution. I kept asking her if she was nervous about performing, but she said she really wasn't. She did a fabulous job. She was confident and sang loud and clear. She really enjoyed it. In fact, she enjoyed it so much that she's gotten together with a friend and is now practicing to try out for the talent show, singing a Taylor Swift song. I would post a video of her singing, but I still can't get videos to work. Sorry.

The stage for their concert...

Maggie waiting for it to begin...

Part of the choir concert featured the second graders singing a few of the songs, which meant that Lydia also got to sing for the concert. She is so cute when she's up there singing, she really gets animated and enjoys singing as part of a group. They both did a great job and I am so proud of them!

Lydia is on the second row from the bottom, about in the middle of the row.

After the performance