Happy Birthday Megan!

    

    

I can’t believe my baby girl turned 14 this weekend!  She is the joy of my life… I am so lucky to have her.   Although I wondered if I would survive her two year old phase, she has become a wonderful young woman.  She is caring, loving and thoughtful.  She loves to give me hugs, and not just at home… she’s not embarrassed to be affectionate with her family in public either.  She will still let me go clothes shopping with her, she is a certified book-worm, and she loves to help in the kitchen.  (I should clarify that… she loves to cook and bake, NOT wash dishes.) 

Some of her favorite things:

She loves the Percy Jackson books (R. Riordan), (anything and everything that is about Percy Jackson… she is a HUGE fan.)  She also loves the Mortal Instrument series (C. Clare) the Twilight series (S. Meyer) the Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling), the Narnia books (C.S. Lewis), the Hunger Games books (S. Collins) and many more. 

She loves to eat French Toast for breakfast and Texan Haystacks for dinner.  She even loves to be the one to make them.  She also knows how to make pancakes. tacos, sloppy joes, brownies, cakes, and cookies.  I love when she walks into the kitchen, asks what’s for dinner, and then offers to take over cooking.  (And no, she is NOT for sale… just in case you were wondering!)

She loves Taylor Swift, but NOT Justin Bieber.   Her favorite colors are red and purple.  She loves Texas Roadhouse and IHOP.

She loves to watch Bones, Project Runway, Mythbusters, Phineas and Ferb, and Amazing Race. 

And the thing I loved most about her this month?  She asked for her own digital camera for her birthday.  (A girl after my own heart!)  This is the one she got… For some reason, I missed getting a picture of her with it.  The night before her birthday she had two friends sleep over and early the next morning we took them all up to Flagstaff to play in the snow.  Here’s a sneak peek of her on her birthday… more snow fun to be posted soon!

    

Sixteen

After we all did the triathlon, we came home and got ready for this.  I still can't believe my son is 16.  Honestly... it boggles the mind.  But we threw a party and he had a great time!

We rented a helium tank and filled up about 120 balloons to float on the family room ceiling...

The kids played rock band, jumped on the trampoline....

....and consumed large amounts of mountain dew and helium.

We burned through 4 jumbo sized pizzas from Sam's Club and then had cake and ice cream.  (We are still basking in the world series championship glory around here.)

Happy Birthday Taylor!  We are so proud of the man you are becoming!

Birthday Boy Gets the Party of His Dreams

Finally, a month later, after the actual day of birth is celebrated, we had Ian's birthday party.  When your birthday is less than a week before school starts, it's generally not a good time to try to schedule a party with friends.  Too many other things going on.  So we waited a few weeks, and it paid off well!

Ian has been dying to visit Jump Street, the local indoor trampoline play zone.  Think Pump It Up for big kids.  Let's just say that it did NOT disappoint.  And a tip for my local friends - Tues/Thurs are the cheapest days to go ($10 for 2 hours) and it was totally empty, too!

The Group... all tired, sweaty, thirsty and hungry.  We headed back to my house for Pizza and Cake.

Happy Birthday Ian.  You are such a wonderful kid to have in our family.  You bring much joy and happiness to us.  We can always count on you to make us laugh, usually when we least expect it.   We love you!

Birthday Boy

 Round two of the birthday celebrations... we will have Round Three next Friday when we do the Friend Celebration. 

We did presents first thing in the morning today and I will not make the mistake of making another cake.  We didn't even eat half of the cake I made last week.  Tonight it will be brownies.  I'm off to take Brayden to Burger King for a lunch date, and then we'll hit Red Brick Pizza for dinner. 

Brayden turning five feels like such a big milestone for me.  No more diapers... no more naps... no more preschool and we recently gave up sippy cups!  (The jury is still out on whether or not this was a good idea...)

Things I want to remember about Brayden at this age:
He loves eggo waffles and hot dogs.
He hates bread and most crackers.  Even the smell of them gross him out.
He loves stuffed animals.  He goes to bed with about 20 of them on his bed every night.
He hates taking showers or getting his hair cut.  He would let his hair grow out to his shoulders if he could.
He loves Phineas and Ferb, Thomas, Star Wars and Lego anything.
He hates doing chores or any kind of clean up job.

Brayden makes us laugh every day.  He says the funniest things.  And if what he is saying isn't really funny, it becomes funny because of the way he says it. 

This morning, he climbed into my bed, and I asked him about turning 5. 

"How does it feel?"

"It doesn't feel any different.  I don't think I am five today."

"Yes you are... it's your birthday!  Now you are five years old!"

"Well it still doesn't feel any different from yesterday!"

We love you Brayden!  Happy Birthday!

All About B

On Friday, after we'd gotten home we had a day full of excitement for Brayden.  He had his preschool graduation, which was super exciting!  It was even more fun having a set of grandparents on hand to join us for that event. I still can't believe my baby is done with preschool.  Now onto Kindergarten!

Then on Friday afternoon, we decided to have Brayden's family birthday party.  Why not celebrate a week early while we have grandparents, around right?  So Grandma and I ran to the store to buy gifts, and Megan made a cake... although in my rush to throw together a birthday party, I forgot that he doesn't really like cake.  Brownies would have been more appreicated.  Oh well...

Now I just have to throw together a friend party in the next couple weeks.  I still don't have a plan.  Hopefully today I'll get some inspiration.  He wants it to be Star Wars themed... so far that's all I've got to go on.  I have faith it will all come together, though! 

A Belated Birthday Post

Megan turned 13 on Sunday. It was somewhat anti-climatic, as all Sunday birthdays are, when you are LDS. (Dang that "Keep the Sabbath Day Holy" rule....kidding... kidding...) She had her party a whole week prior to her birthday because she wanted to go to a specific movie and see it on opening weekend. With the assistance of my mom, we took 8 12 year old girls to the movies to see The Lightning Thief. All the other moms kept saying how "brave" I was to attempt such an adventure. Truth be told, it was the easiest party I've ever hosted. We went first thing on a Saturday morning before the theater got busy, and the girls were so well behaved. After the movie we drove them back to my house for pizza and cake. Again, the girls were wonderful. I'll take this group over some 10 year old boys any day!

We didn't have Megan's gift in time for her friend party, so we told her she would have to wait until the next weekend. I spent the week trying to order her gift on ebay and prayed it would make it to our house in time for Sunday. It arrived Saturday afternoon. HALLELUJAH! Eric and I were so giddy to have it a day early (problems with ebay had made it unlikely she would get her gift on time), that we gave it to her on Saturday afternoon. We didn't wrap it or anything. We plugged it in, activated it and hid it under her pillow. Then we sent her to her room to get something and it started ringing! Under her pillow was the gift she was so excited about. She had a babysitting job in an hour, and that would be the perfect opportunity to program in all her contacts, etc. On birthdays, it's a tradition to go out to eat. Since we couldn't do that on a Sunday, I cooked her favorite dinner at home and Megan picked Texas Roadhouse for dinner. It's fast becoming one of our favorites. The food is delicious... they have something on the menu for everyone, and it's pretty cheap. Out the door it was $62 for a family of six (with 4 adult meals), and we brought home leftovers!

We are so lucky to have Megan in our family. She handles having three brothers extremely well, and loves being a big sister. She's talented in many ways... she loves to draw, play her flute and she has a beautiful singing voice too. She is kind and loving to everyone she meets. The night before she turned 13, I asked her if she was going to wake up the next morning and decide she didn't like me anymore. She looked at me in astonishment, shook her head "no" and gave me a huge hug. And she stayed true to her word. I love this girl!

Four Decades

Eric turned 40 yesterday... We have a tradition of opening gifts in our house first thing in the morning. Guess we have a hard time waiting....

I got Eric a new bike helmet. He desperately needed one...

I also made a "certificate" that entitled him to buy a new road bike (with my supervision, of course....)

So, yesterday, snuck him out of work early, we went to lunch, and then went bike shopping. No matter what the budget is, the great bike is always one tier higher than you budget. It's maddening! We went to several shops yesterday, but didn't find anything that Eric loved that stayed close to the budget. Hopefully today or tomorrow, he will find something that we can both be happy about!

After eating ourselves sick at Texas Roadhouse, we came home and had dessert. No cake here... I ended up picking out a chocolate mousse pie at Sam's Club that everyone LOVED. I forgot to buy candles too, so we only had about 10. Much easier to blow out than 40!

A special thanks to everyone who made his birthday so memorable... he had a great day!

My Birthday

My 36th birthday was good to me. No, let me re-phrase that. My great friends and family were good to me! My kids got ready for school on their own without me having to nag them, and my greatest girl friends here in AZ met me for lunch at my favorite BBQ place, which incidentally gave me a free meal because it was my birthday!

Thanks to my awesome and way-too-generous hubby, I have a new baby. A new baby that I've been planning for for a couple years now, but one I didn't expect to actually have in my hands until next summer. He'd been dropping hints that he wanted to get this for me for my birthday this year. I kept saying "NO." I do the budget, after all, and I just couldn't justify it in the pre-christmas budget. In the way that only a husband can do, he wore me down. He took me to the store just to check them out. It was all over after that. Once I played with them, he knew I had to have it. I hadn't even been researching them because I knew it would just make me want to have one, so I was avoiding the camera scene altogether! Once he finally got the green light, then it was the big decision... which camera to buy?

I have had 2 Canon cameras. I have LOVED every single one. In my mind, the question wasn't which brand to buy, but which Canon to buy. But everyone Eric talked to told him he should look into the Nikon D90. So he did the homework, and the research proved the Nikon to be superior camera. So, that's the one we went with. I was nervous about learning a new interface to work with, but so far it's been easy. And it takes AMAZING photos.

I know these aren't super exciting, but since I've been down sick all week, I haven't had the energy to go out for a real photo shoot. Plus, all last week it was overcast. I couldn't get one scenery shot with a stunning blue sky. If I had been more prepared, it would have been the perfect week for our annual kid photo shoot, but I wasn't prepared for that. So, one day when I walked to get the mail, I took the camera with me and got these flower shots. I can't wait to get out this week and really put this thing through the paces!!!!

Of course, I still have a huge manual to get through and Eric bought me an additional book that's twice as big as the manual to help me learn how to use this camera to the fullest. So, I also have a lot of reading to do! Plus, it's time to really devote some energy to learning how to use my photoshop program. I can do the most basic of all basic stuff, but nothing really cool or useful. I think I need a book for that too. This will definitely keep me very busy and occupied for a long time! Yeah!