Ka-chow! Noah turns 3 with Lightning McQueen

Noah is a huge Cars fan.  Lightning McQueen is his favorite character and he has seen the movie thousands of times.  He loves cars in general, really.  So it was a no-brainer that his 3rd birthday theme would be Cars.  This party was fun to plan and came together fairly easy.  Instead of inviting a couple of friends, which I had planned on doing, we realized that most of Garrett's family would be here on July 1st, so we decided to just have cousins for the party guests.  It was fun to have cousins here to help celebrate!  Another reason why it was nice to have family as the guests was because I didn't have to worry about time constraints.  If they wanted to play with toys in between games, it was ok, because I didn't have to squish everything in during the two hour time limit.  That was really nice!

 It was fun to decorate with lots of checkered flags

 This cute roadway was for a game later, but I thought it added a lot to the fun decorations.  

 I found these cool cardboard trucks at oriental trading co.  

And I loved these trophy cups!  I just printed "Piston Cup winner" on a sticky label with McQueen's picture and voila--Piston Cup Trophies!

 Our first activity was decorating licence plates with stickers and crayons.  

 Celeste and Bella working on theirs.

 Noah really likes doing stickers so he had a fun time!

 This was Lydia's finished licence plate.  

 The next game was a car race.  I made them go 2 at a time, which worked out well since there were 6 kids.  I gave each of the kids a wind-up car that I found at Oriental Trading.  I was skeptical about how good they would race since about 95% of the time things fall apart rather quickly from that store.  But I was so impressed with these little cars.  They are awesome and they haven't broken yet.  And they are FAST!  The kids really enjoyed this game.  

The cute little wind-up race cars.

 Noah and Caleb racing with Hannah looking on.

 Love Noah's face!

watching their cars!

 This next game I really thought the kids would like.  But, I was surprised when they didn't really care for it.  I bought inflatable tires and set up cones in the front yard.  They were supposed to roll their tire through the cones and see who could get their tire back the quickest.  They just didn't seem to care.  Noah and Bella didn't even try.  I'm wondering if the heat had anything to do with it.  It was HOT that day.  

 So, Maggie and I raced and yes...she is cheating and carrying hers through the cones.  Can you believe her?

 So, then we went back inside and tossed bean bags into the same inflatable tires.  They liked this one more. I guess because they got to throw things.  :)

 The last game was kind of like Hide and Seek except you were looking for Cars characters hung around the house.  I glued the characters onto different colors so each kid had a different color to collect.  Bella of course was yellow.  

 Celeste, Amelia and Bella looking for the characters.  

After they completed the search, they were awarded with their Piston Cup Trophy's.  Inside were green, yellow and red M&M's.  Yum!

Celeste, Caleb, Hannah, Bella, Paige, Noah and Miss Amelia down front.  Apparently, she doesn't like to wear clothes.  :)

 The kids were hungry by now, so we stopped for some lunch.  We had bbq'd hot dots, homemade macaroni salad, grapes, apples, cheese cubes, and carrot sticks and peppers.  

The kids played for awhile, and then we opened presents.  

 Sitting in his Cars chair, with his Cars T-shirt on...opening mostly...cars and trucks.  He had a great time!

 Love his faces!

Then we had cake and ice cream.  

The cake wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I was literally out of time.  I had grande plans, but didn't have time to fulfill them. So, I just put 2 9X13 cakes together and made a road.  We put our old beat up Lightning McQueen on (because Noah wouldn't part with any of the newer ones.)  I was just going to have it be just McQueen and Mater, but Maggie printed out the tractors and put them on.  It added a lot I think. 

 The Birthday Boy and his cheesy grin.  

 Baby Luke loved his cake.

These were the goody bags that I put together for the kids.  I put in a matchbox Cars coloring book for the boys and a some other one for the girls, crayons, fruit snacks, some candy, one of the wind up cars from the race and these bean bags that I made.  

That night we all headed back to Jim and Georgia's to hang out and swim.

The End of June

Well, we spent Sat. the 22nd finally adding the finishing touches to the laundry room and Maggie/Paige's room.  And now (after about 3 months) I can finally put up the finished pictures.  I know you were all dying with anticipation.  

So here's the before picture of the girl's room:

and the final pictures:

 In the original picture, they had bunk beds, but since we were completely redoing everything, we took them down.  The above picture is Maggie's side of the room.  We added little shelves so she could put her "stuff" like her phone, books, scriptures, pictures and whatever else she wants up there, so it's not on the floor by her bed.  They each got new bedspreads; Maggie's is yellow and grey and Paige's is orange and grey.

 Paige's side

 We hung up pictures in white frames (except for their baptism picture because I had just bought new black frames just for those pictures.) and Maggie has a Young Women's print on her wall and Paige has "I am a Child of God" print on her wall.  Then they have their baby picture and their current picture up.  

 Looking into the room from the doorway.  We wanted bright and happy colors and I like how it turned out. 

 Maggie wanted to paint her mirror a bright color.  I loved how Paige was looking in the mirror, so I snapped a picture.  I think it's adorable.  

 Paige's side of the room with her cute pictures.  

Then we added the chalkboard picture frame so they could doodle on it.  

Maggie is still creating art to hang up above the dresser.  I'll have to post of picture of it when she gets it done.  

Here's the laundry room before (when I started):

And here is the final product:

 I love how it turned out!  I absolutely love the stripes!!  They are so fun!  And I love the colors.  I made the curtains and Garrett helped me staple material to these pieces of canvas for decorations! 

Lydia and Bella are patiently waiting for us to start their room now.  I hope I can get motivated again! :)

Now that Garrett's parents live here in Yamhill, we probably go see them about once a week.  We usually take turns hosting/making dinner.  The same day we finished the rooms, we went over to their house for dinner.  They just got a new hot tub and even though it was pretty hot out, we soaked in the hot tub.  They also have a lot of fruit trees, and the cherries were ripe and yummy.  So the kids picked and ate a lot of cherries!

 Picking cherries

 The new hot tub

 Loving the cherries!

 These were taken the next day, after church.  Garrett was playing race cars with Noah and Bella and it was fun to watch them play.  

 Paige and Lydia playing legos

 Then they started trying to get the cars to jump over the kids.  I love their faces.  

 Noah got so excited watching the cars jump over things!

 More practicing on the bikes...

 June 25th--Lydia rides her bike on her own!!!  

SHE DID IT!!

Look at that smile!

I was so proud of her!

Noah's 3rd birthday was coming up the following week.  His cousins were coming in a few days and would be here for his birthday.  Garrett had bought him a battery powered jeep for his birthday and decided to give him his present early, so that he could enjoy it without having to share it right away.  

 He LOVED it and was so excited to drive it!

 Of course, he really had no idea how to steer it, so it took awhile to get used to that.  

 The girls love it too.  They love to ride in it or drive it if they can get Noah out of the driver's seat.  

Notice the pink stroller in the back...

A couple of days later, we all went on a family bike ride, this time with Lydia riding her bike!  

Unfortunately, as we were headed home, Lydia got too close to a parked car.  Her handle bar hit the car and knocked the bike over.  She wasn't able to get her feet down quick enough to stop herself and she fell and hurt her ankle.  She was pretty upset and swore that she would never get back on her bike again.  Since we had company coming and then our big 3 week vacation,  we haven't had the chance to get her back on.  But, before summer is over, we'll have her riding again. (I hope anyways...she can be pretty stubborn when she wants.)

That Saturday, we had big plans to get things accomplished.  I was frantically starting to work on Noah's birthday party--which was happening on Monday (ahhh!) and Garrett had a lot of work to do outside in the back yard.  Unfortunately, Garrett cut his thumb with a big survival knife while he was cutting branches off an old Christmas tree.  He came in the house bleeding everywhere, telling me I had to drive him to the ER.  So, we spent the next 2 hrs at the ER getting him stitched up.  

 This is how happy he was to be in the ER.  

 The pictures are pretty gross, so I'll just post the one.  He cut it pretty deep and severed a tendon.  They stitched it up and gave him pain meds, but told him that on Monday, he'd have to go have it looked at by a hand specialist to see if they could fix the tendon.  Long story short...all 3 specialists that he got names for were out on vacation on Monday and Tuesday.  So, he just let it heal up with out it getting fixed.  Hopefully it won't be a problem later on down the road.  So after we got home, I was working on the party and he napped.  His brother and his family had arrived the night before, so Garrett took the kiddos over to his parents house to see them while I worked on the party some more.  

The next day after church, we headed over to Yamhill again for a bbq and to see Josh and Tanya.  Garrett had bought a pool to take over there for the kids to swim because it was HOT! (and they don't have AC).  It was good to see Josh and Tanya again--the kids had so much fun together!

 Paige, Hannah, Lydia, Caleb, Bella, Maggie

 Baby Luke

 Hannah, Bella, Lydia and Caleb--Noah had no desire to get in the pool.  We think the kids were too rowdy for him.  

 Caleb jumping on Lydia and Maggie's legs

 Baby Luke

Bella, Paige, Hannah, Noah and Caleb

Meggin and her family were getting in really late that night.  

Noah's birthday next...