Lily's Birthday Party: Part 4

Lily is blessed with an aunt and uncle who spoil her silly! Here she is with Uncle Alan's package.

He sent her this cute dress...

A new outfit....

And an ice cream playdough set...

I forgot to take pictures of what Aunt Becky sent, but it was a new outfit, and a My Little Pony Popcorn Theater. Tyler also through in a bell for her bike. Lily loved all the new clothes and toys. You wouldn't believe how happy I was to get this last package and FINALLY have an end to Lily's birthday. It was drawn out WAY too much! :D

Lily's Birthday Party: Part 3

Today was Lily's REAL birthday. She kept calling it her birthday with the cake on it. To try and help her distinguish her birthday from her "celebrated birthday" we showed her on our family calendar that this is the day we are going to celebrate, this is the day daddy leaves, and this is your REAL birthday. On the calendar her REAL birthday had a birthday cake on it. So that is how she distinguished it in her mind. I must admit it worked fairly well for her.

Before Russ left we agreed that we still wanted to make today special for Lily. We didn't know how to do that exactly so I kind of winged it. I made sure that Russ had signed Lily's card with a letter just like we have done every year since she was one. When Lily woke up this morning I helped her move our calendar marker on to her birthday. It was so fun to watch her face light up with recognition that TODAY was her birthday. She got a great big smile on her face and yelled, "Today is my BIRTHDAAAAAYYYY!"

Allie and clapped for her and got her the card from mommy and daddy. She enjoyed opening it and having me read it to her. For breakfast I made her brown sugar oatmeal (her favorite!) The rest of the day was very low key. We went to McDonald's for lunch, and I let the kids play for about an hour on the playground. This was how I made the day special for Lily. Normally I won't stay more than ten minutes. I get bored, and the place smells like little kid sweat, so I can't staying for long. But this is something Lily LOVES to do. I brought myself some books to look at, and just let her and Allie go. They loved it. Her and Allie had the playground to themselves most of the time, and they played nicely together.

The rest of the day was low key as well. However, right before bed time Lily gave me a hug and told me that this was the "bestest" birthday ever! My heart burned with happiness because we had really tried to help her enjoy her birthday even though Russ had to be gone.

Happy Birthday Lily!

Happy 4th Birthday Lily!
We love you so much, and are forever grateful to have you in our family. Your upbeat personality and ability to show love to everyone are your greatest qualities.

Love,
Momma, Daddy, and Allie

Lily's Birthday Party: Part 2

Even though I couldn't handle having a bunch of Lily's friends over for her birthday, we decided we would still let her do the "activity" we had planned on doing. She had been asking for months to go to Chuck E Cheese again. I told her for her birthday. The day finally came that I HAD to let her do it or else be a horrible lier. In the Sunday paper I found a coupon good for 4 drinks, 1 large pizza, and 30 tokens at Chuck E Cheese. Even though it wasn't the best deal we took it.

Here are Russ and Lily waiting for the pizza. We of course had to order pepperoni so we could pick them off and make cheese pizza for Lily.Allie got lucky and was able to eat before the pizza arrived. Baby's are so lucky they get everything they want almost immediately!Lily did great at eating before getting all bouncy and ready to play. She was very patient which is unusual for her. When we let her loose she headed straight for the monster truck. Russ and I were quite surprised that she wanted to go on this. Last time we tried to have her go on it and she kicked and screamed at us until we let her run away from it. Funny how a few months can change things! Toward the end of the ride we plopped Allie in there to see if she liked it. She was a little nervous but seemed to enjoy it.

Russ and eventually split up. He took Allie and played some games, while I followed Lily around. Lily likes to try out ALL the rides even the ones she is a little big for. I get all cracked up every time I look at this picture because of how HUGE she looks, when actually the ride was just built for someone much smaller than her.

The horse race track has to be Lily's favorite ride they have at Chuck E's. I'm surprised she got to ride it. There is always a line for it, or someone takes like 10 turns on it. Oh, and if you look close you can see the special "Happy Birthday" sticker she got from Chuck E! She was so happy about it. We also got her a Chuck E balloon that she claims he gave her, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

More rides....

Are the tokens gone YET?! This was Lily's last ride by herself. We also had played a ton of SkiBall. She loves rolling those balls even if they only go in the gutter and she doesn't get any points :)

Daddy spent a lot of time on the car video games. Allie was mesmerized by them. Russ told me many times she would walk over to one, pat the chair, and then look back at him. So funny!Lily kept eyeing this blue screen the whole time we were there. I never understood what it did until I saw two other little girls use it. I made Lily go try it out, and she put on quite a show!

The last game we played before leaving was this car racing game. With Lily stearing and me pushing the gas we somehow manged to come in 20th out of 43 cars. How does that happen with a 4 yr old stearing?

We came home to cake and ice cream. I made Toodles from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. It was a pain! I piped all that frosting on there. I was too scared and short on time to try out fondant on it, so I got to pipe for 3 hours! And rest assured I cried when I filled in a bunch of it with the wrong color. Russ reassured me that you couldn't even notice. YEAH RIGHT! Lily picked out the ice cream which happened to be Blue Bell Strawberry. For all you Idahoans out there, Blue Bell is equivalent to Reed's Dairy just MUCH bigger scaled. At least I think it is equivalent....

Lily was thrilled with Toodles. I guess that is all that matters right?!

Don't forget to make a wish!

It was a fun day! I'm pretty sure Lily enjoyed it.

Lily's Birthday Party: Part 1

***Due to the fact that A. I take to many pictures and B. Lily's birthday was on multiple days this year, I have had to break it up into parts! Enjoy reading it!"

Today was Lily's "unofficial" birthday. Since Russ is going to be out of town for her birthday we decide to celebrate it today. Originally we had planned on inviting a few family and friends over to help celebrate, but our family members couldn't make it, and I started to feel to overwhelmed to host a bunch of kids out my house two days before Russ was leaving. So we cut it down to just our family celebrating with Lily. Which she was okay with :)

Lily saw me take pictures of Allie with balloons on her birthday, so she requested I take the same type of picture for her. These balloons are so much fun too! The kids played with them all day.

Her pile of presents ended up being taller than her! But what really cracks me up is what Lily is holding. A few days ago she got into our envelopes, wrote something on a piece of paper, and sealed it in the envelope she stole from us. She then placed it on top of the TV stand. A couple of times I tried to sneak it into the trash, but she caught me and would run it back to the TV. This morning Lily ran and grabbed the envelope and squealed, "I got a card from ME!" Yes, Lily had "sent" herself a birthday card in the mail. LOL She was so proud of that card that after she opened it she insisted it be in the picture with her presents.

Before she opened her presents we made her go wait in our computer room so we could bring in one last present. Check out her reaction to it.


And let the opening commence

This girl has a SERIOUS shoe fetish!

These were from Allie.

Grandma Lala and Papa Joe gave Lily the princess dress. She's such a knock out!

We know for a long time that we had to buy this for Lily. She loves to jam out on guitars.Allie preferred to dance with the guitar when she got a turn on it.

Russ got into the jamming out a little too! In case you are wondering that is a tutu I made for Lily's birthday on Russ's head. Not exactly what I though it would be getting used for :(

Then of course Lily wanted to put her tutu on her head.

And jam out...

Allie just thought everyone was plain nutty! Of course she was secretly thrilled that she had received Lily's OLD tutu. She looks like the perfect ballerina!

Oh look at my beautiful ballerinas! Now you can see what the tutu is REALLY supposed to look like! Except the fact that I made it about two inches to big. What can I say, I wanted her to have room to grow. It is on my to do list to fix!

This is a fun video of the girls dancing....

So ends...part 1 :)

Happy Birthday Russ!

For Russ's birthday, I let him sleep in. Okay so he only got to sleep in 20 min. because I freaked out about all the ants I discovered in our house. I had to wake him up and show him. He told me later that he did appreciate those 20 min though!

After examining the ants we opened presents. The girls got him this:

Its a Lego set that you can build three different cars out of. I of course got him this:

That is the first three books of the Fablehaven series. He has wanted these ever since our nephew let us borrow his and read them last year. He was fairly excited about them, even if the stupid UPS man delivered them to him while I was shopping on Friday! Why does that always happen to me?

Immedietly Russ and Lily dug into the Lego's and started building away. Before church Russ had already built one of three cars! LOL! We went to church, and unfortunately Russ had to take care of sick-o Allie. He came home feeling like he was on fire because Allie had generated so much heat from her fever.

The rest of the day was just relaxing. Russ played Wii until it was time for dinner. Of course we had Taco Salad...his favorite! We chilled until we had the Chocolate Mousse Pie I had made him. Unfortunately you can't really put candles in a pie, so yet again he didn't blow out candles on his cake. After the kids were in bed, Russ broke his Lego's and made another car. He REALLY likes their present. It was nice day for him.

Allie's 1st birthday!

***This is a big fat warning that there are a gazillion pictures in this post. I couldn't leave hardly any out. So skip this if you so desire!***

Can it be true? Is my little itty bitty Allie turning 1?! I honestly can't believe it. I still remember very clearly when she was placed in my arms shortly after 3:30 exactly one year ago. She was so precious then, and she is even more now! We of course couldn't let this day pass by without making a fuss. So here is a peek of what our day was like.

I took the picture of the loot last night because Allie gets us up bright and early, and I didn't want to get a picture while she had to wait. The picture is missing one package as well. Uncle Alan's came in the mail today.

I totally forgot that I had wanted to make a tree with the hungry caterpillar to go over Allie's high chair. At the last minute Russ whipped this lovely thing up for me. Well, he did the tree, I did the caterpillar. Oh, and in case you are wondering, we chose the hungry caterpillar because Allie EATS and EATS and EATS, and is STILL hungry! Allie got us up around 7:00. We plopped her down on the couch to take some cute pictures with her balloons. She loved these things!

Where is that balloon going? Where did Allie go?

We let Allie open up her cards and one present. She got dollar bills in her card from Grandma Lala and Papa Joe. She loved waving them around in the air.

Here she is opening her first present.

I love how excited she looks over getting clothes! We let her open this one present so she could where her new birthday outfit. I also had to post this picture because it is the only one I got of her looking semi happy about opening presents.

Allie showing off her knew outfit.

While Allie was taking her morning nap mommy struggles with making her a suitable caterpillar cake. I cry over all my cakes. Something always goes wrong. This year...I got black food coloring instead of red. I ended up making like six trips to the store. I don't know why I can't just let myself make a normal cake for the kids birthdays, but I can't. I guess I want to do SOMETHING special for them, and this is all I come up with. Anyway, here is the finished product of the hungry caterpillar. (My lighting was horrible so the green looks neonish, but really it is a really pretty tree green, and the red was a pretty fire engine red, not reddish-orange!)

Close-up off head.

Close-up of bum so you can see the individual sprinkles that represent the "fuzzy" part of the caterpillar.

Around 4:00 Russ's sister Cori and her family showed up for a small birthday party. We are so glad that we have some family living near by now. One of Allie's favorite things to do beside eat is to go swimming. She totally relaxes when we do go. Russ and I thought this would be the perfect thing to do for her party.

We tried to get pictures of all of us swimming, but since I gave Russ the camera to do that, we didn't get to many good shots. These are a few of the "okay" ones. I love that he caught Lily diving off the side of the pool. Ssshhh! Don't tell the management! There is a strict "no diving" policy! :(

This is one of the only pictures I got of Zion and Enoch. Zion was learning to dive. Sssshhh!

I had Allie duty, which was A-okay with me! Uh please don't linger on this photo, I look horrible in a swimsuit!

The very happy, birthday girl!

If you look really close you can see Cori hiding under the umbrella. She is part albino and burns REALLY easy. There is Jake taking in all the lovely sun!

After a pleasant hour in the pool we trooped back to the apartment for dinner. We settled on making spaghetti, corn, and garlic bread since spaghetti is Allie's favorite dinner. She slurped down TWO large helpings of it. We gave her a spit bath and then redressed her so she looked presentable in pictures.

My mom suggested I help Lily buy something to give her, and I am glad I followed that advice. Lily was soooooooo excited to give Allie her gift from her. Lily requested I get Allie some pink sunglasses. Lily helped me wrap them up. Then after Allie opened them Lily had to shove them on Allie's head! :D

Jake, Cori and family gave Allie a seahorse that lights up and plays music. She loves giving it hugs.

This peek-a-boo thing is so entertaining to Allie.

Grandma Lala and Papa Joe sent three books, a new outfit, and a popcorn popper pusher for Allie. She is reading one of her books in the picture. She loves books!

Alan is an amazing uncle. He really spoils his nieces on their birthdays. He sent Allie this telephone, the shape sorter, a onesie from the baseball team he works for, AND a pair of shorts. He made sure everything was pink for his niece too!

Our big gift to Allie was a Parents zoo. It had those beads you push around on wires, and a few other activities. Allie really got excited when playing with it. This picture is of her unwrapping it. Here is Allie getting sung to with her HUGE cake! LOL!

I wanted Allie to have a piece of cake that she could call her own. I made a small round cake for the head of the caterpillar and called it hers. She is just starting to dig in in this picture. By this time she was clearly confused as to why I was taking so many pictures of her. Yummy red frosting!

And lastly, the birthday girl enjoying her cake. When she started crying at the end of this we knew the party was over. I cleaned her up and put her to bed. She laid down and was asleep in like two minutes. Poor girl had just too much birthday fun!