The Birthday Storm Continues

Well, I was going to blog about each of the fun birthdays and chaos that consumed my time last month.  But, well, I think we better go for the quick recap.
My handsome cowboy's big day...

This was at the beginning of summer and boy! did those boys need haircuts!

  My writing group met the night before Ryan's birthday so I picked him up some yummy pastries at The Pastry Pub and left them as a surprise for him with a note in the fridge.  Yes, if I was a super wonderful wife I would have gotten up at six in the morning and made him a fabulous breakfast.  Alas, I am not that great. 

He had to work...shouldn't your own birthday be a holiday? Although I did buy licorice and a bouquet of balloons which I delivered to the office.  He was still out in the field so he got a nice surprise when he got back to his desk. 

Later we had hamburgers and then it was time for presents and cheesecake. 

Yes, Ryan is always on a mission for his birthday to be simple and easy.  He doesn't want to go anywhere.  He doesn't want me to be busy in the kitchen. He wanted an easy no-bake cheesecake.  He just wants us to have time to hang out.  It doesn't always seem to work out that way.  But we always try. 

His biggest want was a Red Dot Scope.  And, look, I made his dreams come true...

heh heh. 

I didn't know what kind he wanted!  So, he'll just have to go pick out the real thing for himself. 

Zoe's big day...

I made her a Rapunzel dress to wear.  To say she was excited is a MASSIVE understatement.  She has since worn this dress as often as she possibly can.  To bed. To the library. To the Renassaince Faire.  Everywhere.  And then she brings it to the laundry room and asks me to wash it so she can wear it the next day. 

I used the pattern Simplicity 5695 as a starting point for her dress.  I changed it up by sewing the pink strips of ribbon to the sleeves, adding the purple bodice piece to the front and then more pink ribbon criss-crossed over front. I only sewed the ribbon on the sides of the "corset". Next I simply added the purple over skirt. Also, instead of making casing for the elastic in the neck and sleeves, I simply sewed the 1/4 inch elastic right into the neck and sleeves. So much easier. Oh, and I serged all the hems. I have to say...I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.  I wasn't sure if it was going to work. I was totally winging it. Oy. I sure love that pattern. 

We had a very full day.  Storytime at the library, picnic and playing at Discovery Park and later pizza, presents and a pretty pink rose cake...

But the biggest surprise for our sweet Zoe was the project my handsome cowboy and I had been working and working and working on.  In fact, Ryan even came down with the flu and he had to paint it and put it all back together!  It was crazy.  But he is an amazing dad and husband, what do you expect? 

Anyways, I found the idea for this on Pinterest, of course.  I made up a series of clues that led Zoe all around the house and into the backyard.  At each spot she found another gift.  And they all were kitchen-related things.  Hmmmm....but she is 4 so she didn't even begin to figure out what we had in store for her. 

Then the last clue led her to the garage because we hadn't brought our project into the house, yet.  And she found this super fun present waiting for her....

It was worth all the time and energy we put into it.  She was thrilled.  And her brothers were, too.  They all instantly began playing with it.  Someone grabbed the play food and pots and pans.  They gathered up her kitcheny gifts.  And next thing I knew the boys were on their scooters and Zoe was "cooking" up food they could "deliver".  So cute, right? 

We have a few things we need to finish on it.  Still.  We need to put on the knobs for the stove burners, a towel rack and...mmmm, wait. That might be all.  Oh, and the curtain up above the sink so it looks like there's a window behind it. 

I'm so happy with how it turned out though. So. Happy.

I did a little Tangled Movie party for her and a few friends a bit after her birthday. 

We made frying pan necklaces (they make an excellent weapon, right? :), ate flowered cupcakes, munched on treats and enjoyed the movie.  I sent the cute kids home with a box of watercolors and pictures to paint. 



The invitations encoraged the girls to dress up. At first I thought this sweet girl, Elina,
decided to wear the baby towel as a cape.  Nope.  It was her rapunzel hair. *grin* At one point, I heard
her telling another child, "don't step on my hair!"  ha! What a cute little character!

 Next up was Weston's big day.  12, wow, right?

Zoe is still wearing the Rapunzel dress.

He wanted scrambled eggs and biscuit ring for breakfast.  That biscuit ring is pretty darn popular in our house. I stenciled him this shirt to wear on his birthday (we like funny shirts)....

Then Weston had a band concert since it was the final day of Summer Band Class where he'd learned to play Percussion and LOVED it.  The concert was very fun.  He played the practice pad, bass drum and bells. 

Then it was out to lunch at Pizza Hut.  Weston loves their pizza buffet.  We all got super stuffed on pizza and then the waiters and waitresses came out to sing to him and gave him a plate of chocolate dunkers.  Mmmm, they were very yummy. 

Then it was back home for some down time, nap time and such. He requested French Dips for dinner and then I worked on This Cake that he wanted.  Hmmmm, something must have gone wrong.  Because..erm...well, it was not good.  All of the various parts were good seperately, but somehow together it just didn't work for us. It was way too sweet.  But oddly enough, Sam liked it. 

Next on to the presents. Four of them were clues to a very big present.  It was something he'd been wanting for awhile and he was saving up for it but then the price had gone too high on Amazon.  But I decided to see if I could find a better price on ebay and YAY!  I managed to find it for the original price he'd been saving up for. 

So, I snagged it and it was a HUGE surprise for him.  He didn't think there was any chance he would ever get it. 

The Lego Galactic Enforcer.

I let him stay up late that night and he spent three hours putting it together...until midnight! So. Fun.

He had a water party with a bunch of friends a week or so later.  Weston has such a fun group of friends.  Two older boys even tried to crash the party with a measly collection of water balloons.  But Weston and his friends retaliated and the older boys got drenched.  And then they stayed for root beer floats, homemade pretzel bites and games of water balloon steal the flag. 

One cute girl wrote a funny card about how they were giving Weston Night Cream so he would look radient on his birthday.  Then she gave him a big baby wipes box.  It was super heavy.  He unwrapped it to find a little Burts Bees Night Cream box (with loads of rocks in the bottom).  ha!  Inside she'd put money.  So funny!

The pretzel bites were very popular!

I can't believe my oldest is 12.  It's so bizarre. But also, pretty darn awesome. :)
Wooh.  The Birthday Storm has finally passed.  We are safe for another year.

And it was fun but I'm glad life has returned to normal.  Or as normal as it gets around here.

The Birthday Storm: Sam's Big Day

We've had a lot of birthday fun going on around here.  And when I say a lot, I mean A Whole Ton of Birthday Craziness. 

The first one in our Birthday Storm was Sam's at the end of May. He had a super great day turning 7.  His birthday fell on a Sunday so I made a special tie for him to wear to church. 

Well, I didn't actually make the tie.  I got one from DI and tried to cut it down to his size.  It didn't work the best.  I need to fix it a bit.  It ended up so it was too wide there at the collar.  But anyways, I appliqued the robot to the front of the tie and he thought it was very cool...

I also appliqued him a fun robot birthday shirt. I really love appliquing shirts.  They don't take much time and the results are so great.  They're perfect for when you need a quick Crafting Fix.  Wait.  I'm not the only one that starts to go into withdrawals, am I? 

Sam chose scrambled eggs and Caramel Biscuit Ring for breakfast.  And I picked up Papa Murphy's the day before so we could have pepperoni pizza for dinner.

And he chose Chocolate Trifle for his birthday cake.  Everyone in the family was extremely pleased with his choice.

 

Sam got quite a few sets of legos for his birthday which he was THRILLED about.  Just check out this face...

He loved putting them all together.   

Isn't it great watching your children interact?   

These boys have such a great relationship with each other.  Sure they do a fair bit of fighting, too.  But overall they have such a great time together.  I hope they always stay close.

We let each of the kids choose an activity to do in celebration of their birthday like bowling, a movie, go out to eat or go swimming.  Sam chose to go to the Aquatic Center.  So went on Saturday and had loads of fun.  We tried to set a family record for the number of times we went down the big tube slide.  I think it was 32. Individually, Sam beat us all with 17 times!  I think I did 6, maybe? 

I think Sam had a great birthday.  Even though two of his presents hadn't even arrived yet (great way to give yourself Mommy Guilt...procrastinate ordering gifts on Amazon).  Yes, that is why in this next shot you will notice the two pictures of the items that haven't come in the mail yet....a very cool lego robot book (which he adored!) and a wind-up robot building kit (which he also really enjoyed). 

ETA:  I forgot to mention he also got the robot quilt I was making for him.  Well, he got most of it and it was in pieces.  Ack!  I had to give him an unfinished quilt.  So so pitiful.  And then I've been so busy with the rest of the birthdays I haven't even been able to work on it.  blech.  Hopefully I'll get it done before he goes to college.

About a week or so after his birthday we finally got around to pulling together a friend's bday party for Sam. Sad, I know. 

I tried to keep it simple and so we had a Robots Movie Party.  We made a robots craft, ate robot cupcakes, opened presents, ate robot snacks, watched Robots, played some robot games and I sent them home with a cute little robot party favor.  And.  I can't say much more than that because I'm planning on writing up some of those ideas for Family Fun (I've been submitting to them quite a bit and they're holding onto a lot of things to see if they'll fit into future issues....yay!).

But here's a shot of Sam enjoying the present-opening time...

Oy, we sure love our Sam.  He is such a fun kid.  He's easy-going and happy. He's a peacemaker.  He's rarely the kid causing trouble.  He's a great helper.  I mean, really this kid is awesome.  I'm so glad this boy is part of our family.



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!

Happy Birthday Zoe!

What a fun day!

Zoe is 2!

We started the day out with scrambled eggs, Zoe's favorite breakfast (although it probably runs a close tie with rice krispies). Then she got to open two presents because I wasn't sure which one of the dresses I'd made for her she'd want to wear. She chose this one...

Oh, she's just the sweetest, smiliest girl!

Before we set out on a bike ride (Zoe LOVES bike rides! She rides in a little seat on the back of my bike and she just adores it) I tried to get some good shots in the backyard of our wee chickadee....

We were originally going to go for a longer bike ride to a park, but the clouds looked fairly ominous and Emmett said he saw lightening. So....we went for a pretty short bike ride to a park very close to our house. But Zoe still had fun on the swings and slide, so that's what matters!

We had macaroni and cheese for lunch (another of Zoe's favorites) and then Grandma Margaret stopped by to bring Zoe a sweet birthday card (thanks Grandma! She'll love picking something out at the store with the moola!)

Later we headed off to two baseball games, Emmett's and Sam's and wished we'd dressed warmer. It was chilly! Then we grabbed happy meals at Mcdonald's (subway for Ryan and I) and came home to nosh.

Of course, the best part came next....

CAKE AND PRESENTS!

Our Zoe loves loves LOVES shoes and strawberries. So, it should be no surprise that I made her a Strawberry Shoecake. heh heh. She even managed to blow the candles out herself (it only took about 10 tries...)

It was very fun watching her open her presents. She got so excited for each one and wanted to stop and play with them right then and there.

Grandma Donna picked out some FABulous pink strappy sandals for the wee girl. When Zoe opened the box she exclaimed, "Shoes!" :)

The boys picked out fun presents for her. Weston got her a little stuffed dog and dog house (she loves dogs), Sam picked out a little people van with a baby and mom(she loves babies) and Emmett got her Playdoh and playdoh toys(she loves playdoh).

If you can't tell, there are quite a few things that make Zoe happy. She is, in fact, a very sweet and sunshiney kind o' girl.

Because of her fondness for babies the scrub a dub baby doll was a big hit. She also enjoyed trying to put on the clothes I made for the baby later.

But, I think the biggest and bestest hit of the evening was the LARGE present that came for her today, just in the nick of time. She's been stealing Sam's whenever she's gotten the chance, so we figured it was time she had one of her own....

A scooter! But, not just any...oh no. It's a pink, flowery, girly scooter!

Boy, that girl took off.

Around the table, the island, back into the living room, back around the table and she even gave her new baby a ride. The only thing she stopped scooting for was to have her new pink strappy shoes put on (oh and to kind of pose for pics for mom...geez! doesn't the lady ever give up??). I think she would have slept in those shoes if I'd have let her!

Notice those bits of pink strappy fun on the girl's feet? Looks like she's showing them off a tad, eh?

Zoe had a super birthday and we sure enjoyed playing with her today. We're so grateful she's apart of our nutty bunch. I just can't even imagine our family without her. She brings so much joy and laughter. And she turns those big brothers of her's into piles of mush. They'll do just about anything for her.