Birthday Chaos

From the second Emma's 6th birthday ended, she's been telling me that her 7th birthday was going to be a Frozen theme. (I'm not joking, the very second all her friends were gone, and for the entire year.) That is right up until a week before her birthday, she decides she wants it to to be a dragon party.... what?!? This girl always keeps me guessing. Well, here it goes... 

Being new, I didn't know any of her friends from school and only a few from church, and vice versa. So I said she could invite 10 -- thinking not all the parents would be okay letting their kids go to a stranger's house. I was wrong. The all showed up. We had 11 6/7 year olds, and it was pure chaos. This house is not big enough for that much energy!

As they showed up, I had them build towers out of the big foam blocks, and knock them over like dragons destroying them. Then when everyone was here, I sent them to the dragon cave (little play area under the stairs), while I set up a make-shift obstacle course. I was going to have it be much better, but the kids were starting to go crazy in the cave, so I let them out before I had everything set up. They had to keep their sheep (balloon) in the  air as they flew around tables, couches, tunnels, and blocks to get it into the basket, and we let them ring the gong when they made it. 

 It somehow ended in a chaotic room of block throwing, jump-roping, running, laughing, squealing kids...

We had a game of pin the flame on the dragon.

Musical chairs -- which doesn't have anything to do with dragons, but Emma requested it -- and the kids enjoyed it.

 As each kid got out, we had them pick out a cupcake to decorate with different colors of frosting and sprinkles. Take a look at the girl in orange's face... she just noticed the boy a few kids down with a two inch pile of sprinkles on top of his cupcake... I must have missed it while handing out drinks and passing around frosting, but once I did, I dumped the majority of the pile off, and put the sprinkles out of reach... These kids definitely didn't need any more sugary craziness!

 Presents

And as a glorious gift from heaven, as I'm sure He knew I couldn't handle much more, we had a day with fabulous weather outside -- in February-- and I sent them all outside for "dragon races." Once they were all worn out, they wanted to come back in and play with toys for the last 15 minutes before their parents arrived. When they all finally left, I collapsed and vowed never to allow so many kids ever again. I think I may have said that at her last party too...

Good thing you're cute and sweet Emma!

Feb 7, 2015

A drop of Heaven at Seven

That's right. My sweet little baby has turned 7!!! She is such a fun daughter and at such a fun stage in life! She gets so excited about things, laughs and smiles so much, and always has a joyful bounce in her step skip. She's the greatest little girl a mom like me could ask for. She tries so hard to make everyone happy, and is always first in line for hugs and kisses. Happy birthday to my sweet, giggly, tender-hearted, loving, happy, crazy-hyper at times, hilarious, fabulous Emma!

   

1. Favorite Color: Pink

2. Favorite Toy: Disney Infinity (Xbox game)
3. Favorite Book: Princess books
4. Favorite Movie: Frozen
5. Favorite thing to eat for dinner: Chicken and Rice
6. Favorite outfit: Dress
7. Favorite game: Frozen Monopoly Jr.
8. Favorite treat: Chocolate Pie
9. Favorite animal: Kitten
10. Favorite song: Let It Go (Frozen)
11. What would you buy if you had $1000: A Kitten
12. Best Friend: Rees
13. If you had one wish, what would it be: To be a Kitten
14. Favorite thing to do outside: Go to the park
15. Favorite drink: Pink Lemonade (Raspberry)
16. Favorite holiday: Halloween
17. Where do you want to go for dinner on your birthday: McDonald's
18. What do you want to be when you grow up: A Princess
19. What's your favorite thing about school: Free choice centers
20. Favorite thing to watch on TV: Doc McStuffins
21. What are you really good at: Making crafts

If you didn't want to read all the questions -- the general rundown is: Kittens, pink princesses, and Frozen. Definitely a little girl :).

On her actual birthday, we took her to McDonald's per her request, and then home for dessert. I think Emma is tired of me making her cakes, and she wanted to go pick out her cake with Dad at the store. It was quite a delicious chocolate cake - and she even blew out all the candles. 

   

Feb 5, 2015

Avengers Assemble

 I was going through some toys to organize and get rid of others, and Jake and I re-discovered some Avengers toys. Thanks to the Disney Infinity Avengers game, Jake recognized them and was instantly excited and played Avengers the entire day. 

   

I'm so excited to see him into boy toys instead of the girly pony and princesses, thanks to having a big sister that he absolutely loves to do anything she does. Now Jake and Emma run around the house fighting Ice Giants and such. I love it. 

 This little one should have a better chance at avoiding the girly stuff since he's got a big brother, and loved watching Jake run around making the action sounds with his toys.

Jan 29, 2015

Mom Movie Date

Emma's school had a "movie with Mom" night. All the moms and kids that made it crammed into a small gymnasium, on the floor with a couple pillows and blankets, to watch The Lego Movie. It was terribly uncomfortable, and we own the movie, which we've watched 100 times. BUT I got to spend a couple hours alone with my favorite girl, and that's what it was about. She laughed through it like it was the first time she'd seen it -- she's so fun! I snuck in our own popcorn and drinks, knowing theirs would be terribly over-priced. Emma wanted a little treat, so I let her pick four 25 cent candies. She looked up and said "Thanks! Mom's really are amazing!" Love my sweet girl! She makes me love being a mom!

Jan 23, 2015

The Good, The Bad, and The Utterly Frustrating

There are three reasons I blog.
1. To keep anyone interested (mainly grandparents) updated on the happenings of our family.
2. I was given a box of my childhood photos. Very few have any details of who, what, or when, and my memory is terrible, so I don't remember much about what was happening -- and I wish I did. (Don't feel bad Mom -- you had six kids, worked, and didn't have the technology today that makes it so much easier). But because of that, I want my kids to be able to look back and be able to see/read what was going on and what their lives were like as children.
3. My original goal was to have all our life perfectly scrapbooked and kept up to date. ...Right... So that didn't happen. So, then I made a goal of first getting the first year of each child scrapbooked, and then go back and scrapbook the rest as I had time. With the blog, I could flip back to the date and pictures of the event to be scrapbooked, and I would have everything written down so I could just put it in the scrapbook -- which has worked great.

So, I have digitally scrapbooked a little more than a year with both Emma and Jake. Yay! Goal achieved so far. I wanted to print them into a book so I had something home they could look at and read, and finally got motivated to get it done. I now have two books that cover about a year of our lives (Jake's year). This is "The Good".

I did his first because I knew I wanted to redo a few of Emma's because when I started digitally scrapbooking, I wasn't very good, and I wanted her pages to look a little nicer. So, I started taking a look at them, and was realizing I was REALLY bad back then, and would want to redo a bit more than expected -- more time taken away from starting Luke's and catching up. This is "The Bad".

The Utterly Frustrating? Well, as I took a closer look, I remembered that when I started almost 7 years ago, I had sized my layouts for being posted on the internet because I had planned to have them on a website -- at the time, I thought they would print fine like that also, but the quality is not good enough... So, now instead of redoing a handful of pages, I have to redo about 6 months of her year -- which is when I started doing them in the higher printing quality...  Yes -- I got quite frustrated.

On the bright side, It won't take as long to fix them, as I already have the pictures and words picked out from the previous pages. I'm also much more motivated to get them all done now, as the kids have already enjoyed looking through the two books I printed. Seeing the end product and that they truly enjoy them, will make it worth it.

Laughs

Well, I don't have the squeals yet, but here's some laughs to brighten your day. My appologies for the loud background noise. Jake was playing with those trucks that rev when you push them...

Sometimes I forget how fast these little ones change and grow. Since I did my post on Lucas turning 6 months -- yesterday morning, where he was not rolling and just scooting -- he decided last night to roll over about 4 times, and check him out up on his knees! I'm not ready!

Jan 21, 2015

Progress

Way to go Jake -- learning to write his name! Jake is a different type of learner than Emma, and I'm trying to figure out how best to assist him in this process. He can recognize most capital letters on fridge-phonics or signs, but when it comes to writing them, he can't think of the letter, and asks what it looks like. You have to describe the shape of the letter (up, down, and across for "A"), or he has to watch you write it, while saying the description. With the descriptions, he was able to write his name though! He has the disadvantage of being the middle child, where my attention is on helping Emma with homework, and having to meet a baby's needs. That being said, I'm proud of him for trying so hard to learn his letters. It's definitely difficult for him to sit still and try to focus on learning, but that will come -- he's doing great!