The Friday Five: Molly

Happy First Birthday to our wee Molly Monkey!  We started out her day with some little presents....a new dress and shoes!  I started a fun tradition with our family a few years ago where the kids get new clothes as their first present of the day...a birthday outfit.  Her brothers and sister got a kick out of watching her play around with her presents instead of opening them.  In the end we had to help her out a bit.

I wanted Molly's dress to be colorful and bright and I have to say I love the whole Holly Hobbie look.  I made it out of vintage reproduction fabrics I've been hoarding.  Can you guess what pattern I used?  Yep.  The lovely Simplicity 5695.  I'm always making her dresses too long which makes crawling a real pickle.  So, this time I tried really hard to make it shorter.  But.  Well....I think I might add a small ruffle to the bottom.  I was also going to make her some ruffly pants to match. And I wanted to try topstitching the tiers...  Ya know what? There should be some rule.  Some law.  Some kind of legislation...

The more children a woman has the more time she should get, the more hours in a day...right? It only seems fair. 

Sam wanted to feed Molly her breakfast. Mmmmmm, banana chunks coated in rice krispies.  Our Molly really is a monkey.  She LOVE bananas with an insane and crazy passion.  She could easily pick the bananas up and feed herself which she did for a while but then they became slimy projectiles.  So, Sam helping her with her breakfast became a great idea.

So, in honor of our sweet little monkey, five pictures of her birthday morning!

Our Easter Staycation

Usually for Easter we travel to hang out with family, but this year our family's were a bit busy.  At first we considered going camping, but it's still too cold around here at night, so instead we decided to have ourselves a Staycation! 

We had loads of fun.  Here are some highlights:

A picnic at the canyon park with friends (technically before our staycation actually started)...

Pizza and dying eggs...

Sam is concentrating on getting the
rubberbands on his egg just right.



We tried using crayons on the still hot eggs this year. And that
was Crazy Cool. We'll be doing that every year now.



We love using rubber cement
on our eggs. Love those swirls. 

Zoe was very proud that she didn't break
any eggs!

One of the things the kids were really looking forward to was a trip to the Aquatic Center here in town. That place is super fun. 

Then a cookout out at Three Peaks...

Our monkey hung out in her favorite place.
Well, actually I think she'd rather I'd let
her down in the sand. But then...well...
she probably would have tried eating it.
Yum. Sand-wich.



Ryan found helmets on sale so he bought one
for each of the kids. They look a bit funny, but
it's good to be safe, right? We don't want
anything happening to those precious melons of
theirs. But seeing as I could probably run faster
than he goes on that four wheeler with them, I think
they'll be okay.



We love climbing all over those boulders out
at Three Peaks. So fun.

We ate took many marshmallows, filled up on roasted hot dogs and creme soda, sat around the fire and laughed about everything.



I took Molly for a small four-wheeler
ride. You can tell from her face
how much she liked it.

Hunting for their baskets and Easter eggs...

A trip to Zion National Park...

Molly is reading the map for us.
I'm not sure she's the best choice for our navigator.

This wee girl LOVED riding the shuttle around the park! It was such a novel experience for her...no car seat, she could stand up and see what was going on and climb all over our laps. It was the best.

Those sure are some fun boys!

We checked out the Virgin River on the Riverside
hike and naturally we had to stop to throw rocks in.



Ryan ended up packing Zoe for this hike
She'd fallen on got a wee bitty
scratch on her arm and so, of course,

this made her feet completely unusable.

The hike took an hour. Ryan is a VERY
nice Daddy.





This was taken at the end of the Weeping Rock trail. What a
gorgeous view from there! (and not a bad lookin' fam if I
do say so myself :)



And the ghost town, Grafton...



Zoe was sure there were ghosts lurking in this house.

We had to keep reassuring here there

weren't actually any ghosts in the ghost town!



The church/school

My great-grandparents lived in this small town near Rockville. It's pretty cool to walk around checking out the old buildings and imagining the pioneers living and working there. 


















And finally a beautiful Easter morning and church...

Dang. Those are cute kids.

Hmmmmm, I have the best husband.
That's all there is to it.

What a great spring break and Easter!

A Fine & Feathered Family

In an attempt to compile all my blogs together, I'm reposting about this fine feathered family I made for Zoe for Christmas. It would be a fun Easter gift, too, right?

 

Zoe loves babies and mommies and daddies. So, it was only natural that I make her a feathered family...

Baby bird comes with her own little egg that can be popped into either mommy or daddy's pocket.

Interestingly enough, Zoe usually has daddy on baby duty...

I found the super fab tute for my bird family HERE at Molly Chicken.

 

I linked this post up with...

Who wants a boring cast, right?

Ryan took the boys over to Tropic today to help his dad with the cows. Zoe was supposed to go, too. But since she broke her arm on Tuesday, the doctor wants her taking it easy. And chasing around the farm is definitely not that, so she had to say home with me.

Originally she was not too happy about this.  So, it was a great excuse to buy this movie...

Oh! How I love this movie. Great job Disney! (Ok. There are one or two things I wished they'd done differently. But that's the problem with being a writer, right? We over analyze.)

Zoe and I made a fort in the living room with chairs, blankets and pillows. We popped the movie in and ate oreos. Earlier we'd ran into Joann's and Zoe picked out some papers with butterflies and flowers. So, during the movie I also whipped out the modge podge and got busy with her cast...

So fun, right? She was very happy with how it turned out.

Mmmm, I love modge podge.