Happy Easter

Last year when my parents came for Easter my mom made these cute little chicky place cards for everyone. This year I decided to make them for my nursery class. I thought they looked so cute sitting in their little basket! When I bought the jelly beans to put in them I bought the ones that were the cutest colors, the ones that matched my chicky paper. What I didn't realize until Mads got hers home and opened her little chicky up is that they were Sweetart jelly beans and they were very sour! May have been a little shocking for those sweet little nursery kids. Sorry!


Since we won't be going to church on Easter Sunday, (it's General Conference and we'll be on the road to Utah!) I had my kids dress up in their Easter outfits this Sunday. Gone are the days of cute, frilly matchy-match for my girls!


This is what happens when a bee flies into the shot!

New Beginnings

This last Sunday was Amanda's New Beginnings program at church. The theme was "Princess for a day, Queen for Eternity. Our Young Women's leaders always go above and beyond for any program that they put on. The decorations were spectacular and the refreshments divine (Four chocolate fountains with four different kinds of chocolate!). It was a great evening for our whole family, especially Madison, that girl can't get enough of the Princess thing!


All the Princesses and their Royal court!


Amanda and her cute, but CRAZY, friend Liberty!

Princess Party for a fourth child

This week after celebrating my teenage daughter's birthday we had another family birthday to celebrate. It was Madison's birthday just two days after Amanda's. Beyond all the St. Patty's stuff and Amanda's birthday and party we had a lot going on this week and particularly this weekend. Because of obligations to church and ball teams and girl scouts we had to miss a lot of fun things like birthday parties, football tournaments, a baptism and piano lessons (the girls didn't mind missing that one so much!). We were almost too busy to even celebrate Mads third birthday! Her birthday was on Saturday, but no one was allowed to tell her that! Since we couldn't cancel her birthday we just had to postpone it a day! Our Sunday was actually a little jammed packed too, but we did find time to have a little family party for her. Sam like her mother, loves planning and carrying out parties, so I put her in charge of this one. I gave her a budget of $20 and told her she could throw Mads a party.Deciding on a theme was a no brainer, it had to be a Princess party. These were the invites that Sam and her able bodied assistant, Amanda made.

While Amanda finished putting together the goody bags for everyone we watched this movie together.



These were some of the other things Sam got for the party. A princess ribbon for her highness to wear.


She got her a princess balloon, a princess table cloth and made her a princess cake.


A close up of the cake. I think Sam with a little help from Amanda did a great job on it!


The cake was a pink cake with pink frosting as per Madison's request.


When it was time for the party everyone but Sam gathered up Madison's gifts and went outside, and then came to the door one at a time for the party. She loved it! She got so excited each time one of us would arrive at the door! When everyone had arrived at the party we got to make crowns.



After making our crowns she got to open up her gifts.


These were some of her fav's!




Blowing out the candles.


I think Madison had a great time at her Princess party even though it was a day late and none of her little friends got to come! Such is the life of a fourth child!

Party time!

On Friday night we had Amanda's big 13th birthday party. I let her invite 13 friends knowing at least half would probably not be able to come. Nope, all but one was able to come! As they got to the party they had to guess how many gumballs were in the vase. The closest guess won all the gumballs. Amanda's friend MacKenna guessed 273 and there were 288. I'm sure MacKennas mom loved me sending home 288 gumballs with her!


After eating pizza and A LOT of bread sticks the girls gathered up to play a little Left-Right-Center. I got two sets of dice thinking that they would split up in two groups. They didn't want to, so the game was a little crazy with all twelve girls trying to play at once!


For her party Amanda had a little Rice Crispie cake. Not only does she not like cake that well these go really good in the chocolate fountain!


This is where most of the party took place. If your wondering, the trampoline can hold twelve 13 year olds, a 10 year old, one 6 year old and an almost 3 year old, no problem! No one got hurt, even if the neighbors thought someone was dying by the amount of screaming going on!


The party was supposed to end at nine, but last girl didn't leave until after 10. You would have thought that getting these little gift bags as they left would have been enough to get them out the door! It really was fun having a bunch of screaming teenage girls at our house! Amanda has chosen some really good friends. They are not only good girls, but a lot of fun!

Lucky #13

If you know me at all you know how much I love baking and making fun treats. So what spectacular breakfast did I whip up for Amanda on the morning of her 13th birthday?! That's right, cinnamon rolls...out of a can. Not my choice. My family LOVES these. I actually refuse to make them. If they want them, that's Shaun's job. So I actually did go out of my way for her birthday by breaking down and actually making them (and by making I mean popping the can open) for her. I did consider making her put her Lucky #13 picks in them that she ripped out of her cupcakes the day before, but I didn't. I really am a great mom. She did have a super fun birthday. A bunch of her friends at school brought her gifts and decorated her locker. But in true middle school style all the stuff got ripped off and stolen before she could get a picture of it!


A picture of Amanda with her birthday cake. What? Both candles aren't lit? How strange.



This is why. Enough said.


Finally got a shot with them both lit!


Can't believe my girl is a teenager, and even more importantly I can't believe I'm the mother of a teenager! She is really such a good girl. She's kind, considerate, loving, smart, helpful, and fun! And I'm not biased at all! Happy birthday to my one and only first born!

St. Patty's Day!

On St. Patrick's Day Lucky the leprechaun came for a visit to our house, again. He caused the usual havoc, making messes, turning the toilet water green and even flipping some of the furniture upside down! He also turned our milk green, but that went well with our St. Patty's breakfast of Lucky Charms and green bagels. On a side note: Madison is my first kid that having a leprechaun visit has freaked out. She wouldn't use the toilet that he turned the water green in, all day. She wouldn't drink the milk or eat the bagels. She called him "The Sneaker", and proceeded to tell anyone she ran into that day that The Sneaker had been in her house and it scared her!


Everywhere that the leprechaun made a mess he left gold coins. Connor loved that!


Connor wondered why the leprechaun didn't leave any gold coins by this mess. I had to explain to him that the leprechaun didn't make this mess. This mess was the result of his littlest sister taking a late nap the day before. A late nap for Madison means she is up for hours past everyone else and this is how she entertains herself in her room, late at night, in the dark.


After I cleaned up after the leprechaun, and Madison, I made some of these, mint chocolate Oreo truffles. Mine were a little different from Bakerella's in the fact that I used regular double stuffed oreos instead of cool mint ones, because the chocolate I dipped them in was mint flavored. I didn't want to over do it on the mint. I bagged them up and delivered to some of my friends.


This is what they looked like on the inside. Two words...sweet deliciousness.


Yesterday both big girls had softball games and we were assigned the post game snack for Amanda's team. How excited was I when I realized that we were assigned on,not only St. Patrick's Day, but the day before Amanda's 13th birthday?! There was not going to be any boring granola bars and water bottles coming from this mom! I had found earlier a recipe for red velvet cup cakes, but they were green and knew this was the perfect excuse to make them! Not only is Amanda's favorite kind of cake (in fact the only kind of cake she likes!) red velvet, they were green! I made up a batch of these, and to make them extra fun added these cute little picks!I lovingly placed them on the kitchen counter for Amanda to see when she got home from school, and then left to go pick Connor up form football.


This is what I found after I got home from picking Connor up. Amanda had gotten home and apparently it's not cool to announce to your softball team that it's your birthday. It's SUPER embarrassing! All I know is that 13 year old softball players can devour 2 dozen cupcakes in no time at all!I also provided green apple juice boxes, but I don't think anyone even noticed that their drinks were green too, they were too taken with the cupcakes!I wish I had remembered to take my camera and get pictures of the girls with their green teeth after eating the cupcakes!

Irish Soda Bread

Last night for our St. Patty's day meal I made stew and traditional Irish soda bread and of course green butter to go on it. (It's not traditionally green, that was just for fun!)If you've never made Irish soda bread before do it. It is very easy. Even a non-bread maker like myself didn't screw this up! Plus it is sooo delicious.



The recipe I used made two loaves. Good thing since I ate a whole loaf myself. OK, not really but I wanted to, even though it looked deceptively like...


...the green play dough I made earlier this week for Madison!

Green Eggs & Ham

I love nothing more than celebrating holidays, and making it fun for my family. Since Connor celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday last week, I took the opportunity to celebrate Dr. Seuss and St. Patrick's Day. That's right Green Eggs and Ham for dinner last night. The ham wasn't green (too gross), but I did make green deviled eggs.


We also had this to drink. I thought it was yummy, and so did Amanda, but no one else was too wild about it. Oh well, it was festive!

Lucky

Last night I was very busy making these goodies...


...into these little treats for my Nursery class at church.


Yep, I made a whole basket full.

Opening Day

This Saturday officially started our softball/little league season. Connor had his opening day first. His was supposed to be last week, but it had gotten rained out so it was moved to this week. That means he had already played his first game and he had a blast, even winning the MVP game ball!


His team running the bases. I told Connor he ran so fast that I only got his back (he's #9). I was just glad that he didn't fall this year, like he did last year!


The girls were supposed to have their opening day today but they cancelled it because of rain. It ended up not raining hard enough to cancel games, so the games still got played! Sam getting ready to bat as a "Bruiser" She had a great at bat!


Amanda had her first game as a member of the team"Squeeze Play" and can't you tell she was excited?!

Potty trained

That's right. My fourth and final child is officially potty trained. You'll not be finding anymore of these at my house until grand kids come along. And that is a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG ways away.