Happy Birthday!

Dallas had a birthday shout Hurray! My little Dallas turned 11!

I can't believe I have an 11 year old! Where did the time go? I feel like I just posted a birthday post for him a few months ago! This year has flown by!

For his birthday, we did a lot! We don't normally do this much for each child's birthday. Normally we let them pick a place to go eat as a family at and maybe an activity. But this year was a little different.... I am really particular about how we celebrate birthdays at our house~ the whole day is focused on them, they get a mom-made birthday cake that goes along with the theme of their birthday for that year, and then they get to pick where we eat that day and maybe an activity. Up until last year, every child's birthday was in a different month so no one had to "share" their birthday celebration. Well when we told the kids that we were expecting a soon to be Macie, I promised Dallas (because their bdays would be so close) that he would never have to share his birthday with the baby and we would keep them separate.... Well, this year we decided to stay in St George for Macie's 1st bday and celebrate there which meant - no mom-made bday cake, all the gifts I had gotten her were here at the house, we were driving home for almost half the day. We did celebrate it and had fun, but in the end I was sad that I didn't do all those things for her 1st bday.

So we made an entire day of Dallas and Macie birthday celebration!

Here is their mom-made birthday cake!

There are 11 candles for Dallas around a single pink one for Macie.

We started off our day at the Zoo! We have a ton of pictures of this adventure that I will eventually do a blog entry for. On the way, we witnessed an accident that we had to stick around for which was ~fun. The kids had fun seeing all of the new baby animals that they have at the zoo right now.

They have changed the wall by the gorillas! So we had to have a new picture :)

Next we actually went to Wheeler Farms but the pict's didn't turn out very well. Then we went to Pirate Island Pizza! We had went there for Macie's bday in St George and the kids loved it so we tried the one here. The pizza was good but it wasn't as good as in St George. Dallas is pulling his "Arg" pirate face... since his birthday is on National Talk Like a Pirate Day! Seriously!

Pirate Island Pizza is a mixture of Rainforest Cafe and Chuck E Cheese :) They have cool scenery and there is an arcade for after you eat. So this is the little kids on a little ride there.

All of us getting ready to eat our GIGANTIC pizza!

Yes it is REALLY that big! After figuring out the orders for everybody, we decided it was a better deal to get the "Kracken" (sp) size! The kids loved it!

After pizza, we had to hurry home because the BYU game was on. Kim and her family were coming to watch it at our house and had cake and ice cream with us.

Dallas and Macie with their cake

Singing Happy Birthday!

Blowing them out. He got them all out so I hope he gets his wish!

Dallas has out grown all of his fingers.... he now has to have help to hold up his age :)

This year he has added a candle!

Macie waiting to open her presents

Macie and Mom

Dallas opening presents

Sorry this picture loaded sideways, it's not sideways in my picture file... but this is Dallas's friend cake for his party on the next Thursday. They went to a local skating rink and had a lot of fun!

It's a half pipe with skaters on it. The boys LOVED it!

Dallas with his cake

Dallas with his friends

Singing Happy Birthday ... again :)

Having fun skating. He's new at the whole rollerblade thing, but he is getting better.

I hope you had a fabulous birthday Bud! We love you so much and are so proud of you! You are such great kid and help out so much! Thank you for all that you do! I'm so glad that you are part of our family! You are awesome!

4 Girls = LOTS of Hair Ponies!

With so many girls in this house, we were finding ourselves running out of room for all the "necessary" hair care supplies! About a year and a half ago, I saw on a hair do blog that they had used a shoe organizer for all of their bows, ribbons, flowers, .... I thought that would be the perfect solution! But lately the kids have used it as a catch all! Anything in the bathroom when they clean it gets chucked in! A few of the things I found were: Tape- yes, we always need tape when we do our hair!?? Markers and pencils, toys of all kinds, ... you get the picture. Well the other day I decided to organize it so that we could find what we needed in the rush hour morning.

I forgot to take a before of the whole thing but here is a few pockets....

And here is the full before! This works wonders for us!

It's so nice to have it organized and back in working order!

My Cute Girls

We had some extra time before school one day and Brinley and Macie looked so cute I HAD to take some pictures! I love Brinley's bright outfit! Anyway, some of them turned out really cute!The next picture is my favorite. I've cropped it 2 different ways. If you have time, leave a comment and let me know which crop is better, I can't decide :O)

Brin being silly :O)

My cute Macie, I think she looks cute in this shade of green. She has started her love of shoes. She tries to put them on her feet or step in to them when she is standing. And she also LOVES the stairs! She has fallen down a few stairs a couple times and I keep thinking she will learn and stay off, but we have yet to see that happen!

I may be a little bias, but I think I have such cute kids :O)

Brinley's 1st day of Preschool!

Brinley is a funny one! She almost refuses to pose to take a picture. You usually have to get a cute candid of her if you want a picture. If she knows that you are going to take one she will run away, pull a funny face, or put her hands in front of her face. Today was no different. She wanted nothing to do with taking pictures! So.... I had to bribe her :) I told her that I would let her water the flowers out front if when she was done I could take a couple pictures of her.... and she held me to "a couple"! So we have a few candids that turned out cute and then the "couple" that I got.

So- here she is filling up her watering can :)

This is a candid one that just happened to turn out and I love it!

Watering the flowers

Now, for the "couple" I got in our photo spot

The sun was obviously really bright at 12:30 ish, so sorry about the shadows and squinty eyes :)

When she gets there she gets to find her name and flip it over to her picture.

Then she gets to find her box with her name on it and put her back pack on her chair

and do some quiet play till class starts

She loves her new preschool and teacher already! She won't even go to sunbeams by herself so I was curious to see if she would go to preschool by herself ~ But she does and loves it!

So now for a few hours a couple times a week I am down to 2 napping (hopefully anyway) kids! I'm still waiting to get all (even 1 would be nice) of the things on my to do list crossed off. We'll see if we can make it happen in the near future!

Congratulations Dallas!

Dallas earned his Webelos badge and his Arrow of Light on September 3, 2009

It takes a lot of dedication and work to earn these badges and we are so proud of him!

Good Job Dallas!

Dallas "pinning" me with the Webelos pin.

Rich awarding Dallas the Arrow of Light

Good Job Dallas!

Dallas with the rabbit skin and Arrow that the scouts awarded him.

He is pretty proud of it!

Way to go Dallas! We are all so proud of you!

Macie's 1st birthday party

This year we were in St George for a nieces baptism, so we decided to stay an extra day and celebrate Macie's birthday there. We went to Pirate Island Pizza for lunch and arcade games with Rich's sister and her family and his Mom and Dad.

Very Yummy Pizza's!

Macie slept for the beginning... til we got our food :)

apparently she smelled it and decided she was hungry!

Playing arcade games. I didn't get any pictures of the older kids playing games.

I was too busy "counting" little kids making sure we didn't lose any of them :)

Turning in our tickets

Deciding what they all wanted.... that took a while :)

Macie with her birthday cake back at Katie's

"Blowing out the Candles" ... she didn't really know what she was doing but the picture makes it look like she did :)

Enjoying her cake and ice cream, she actually did pretty good!

Opening her presents

Happy Birthday Macie! I hope you enjoyed your day! We love you!