School Pictures

I hate paying for the school pictures!! They are outrageously expensive and I pride myself on the fact that I can take a picture just as well as they can...sort of. Anyway, these are the pictures I took of the kids today for picture day. I don't have Olivia's yet because she was fighting with me this morning and I had an extremely long night with Zeke so she doesn't get hers done today! Tomorrow maybe...anyway, here they are.

Nate wanted this last pose specifically so he got an extra picture. I teach him preschool at home with a few other neighbor kids so we did picture day for them too. They had a fun time and felt so special!

Happy Birthday Nate!

 After a grand Super Hero party we had a fun family party on his actual birthday. He got an Iron Man suit last year for his birthday and this year he got the complete set! He got costumes for Hulk, Thor and Captain America complete with all the accessories needed! He changes is costume at least three times each a day! It's fun when his friends come over because now everyone can have a costume.

Nate also got some sports things and a new fishing pole with a tackle box to fill. Our family has done a lot of fishing this summer and he couldn't wait to use his new pole!

 I made a strawberry poke cake for him this year and spent along time on the frosting. So many tips, and colors and bags!...I used the method I describe on my Fibbermigee blog with a coloring page.
Only problem...I forgot to put the wax paper on and ended up frosting the glass!!! Doh! But they still looked pretty awesome!

 Fortunately, my sister in-law had asked me a few days before if I wanted to use the cake topper she had saved from her son's cake and I had good enough sense to tell her, "Well I really want to make my own cake topper but I'll take it just in case!" Ya, just in case... more like the inevitable cake frosting disaster that happens every year on every cake I make! :) All in all it turned out to be a fun birthday and one that he will never forget!

Avengers Assemble!

Nathan had his first birthday party the weekend he turned 5! I can't believe my little boy is already 5. We decided to hold him back one more year before he does kindergarten so that he will be the oldest instead of the youngest. He is not very happy about that decision but he'll understand and appreciate it more when he is older. 

Anyway, Nate is really big into super heroes right now. So of course we had to do a super hero party. I made invitations that told the kids that the evil villains had stolen all of Nate's birthday presents and he needed their help to get them back. They were to report at the super hero training center to learn how to become super heroes to get those presents back and save the day!

In preparation for the big day I made superhero masks for everyone to choose. We had Cap America, Thor, Hulk and Iron Man. I made them out of foam because I ran out of time to make them all out of felt and sew them...next time I will take those extra few hours and make them out of felt! The problem was that I needed to make a dozen of everything. We originally had 16 people invited (whew!) but only had 12 of them say they were coming. Anyway, so I made the masks and I made t-shirts for everyone that said "Super Hero in Training!" on the back. Those did not turn out the way I wanted them too, but oh well. I also made a Cap Shield pinata, from a tutorial found here

and Jason made the cute super hero suckers that I found online. 

and I made super hero popcorn from a tutorial found here

I had a ton of other super hero snacks as well but I did not take pics of everything. I bought little water bottles and made labels for them that said Super Hero H20 that I had for them at the training center and we had pop rocks and Spiderman ring pops and just all sorts of fun things. I found some Avenger pens and notebooks at Target and some for the kids and I can't remember it all and Jason had to be in charge of pictures so that I could take care of the party so there's just not that many of them :)

When the kids came in they found this sign to direct them on where to go. I trained my computer to say the names of the children when they did their retinal scan (a cool silvery glittery head band over their eyes) to confirm their identity. Then I told them to choose a mask and a shirt and get ready for their obstacle course.

Jason, my girls (and a few of their friends that showed up to a little boys birthday party :/ ) and a good neighbor friend were the villains and they stole the children's presents and hid them in our tree house. The kids had to go through the obstacle course to try and get their presents back. We had a few things like a punching balloon with a mean face on it,  balloons with mean faces on that they had to shoot with these little ball guns, tunnels to run through, damsels to save that were locked in the highest tower on the playground thing, cap shields to throw through hoops made out of pool noodles and then a "tire run" also made out of pool noodles. Then they had to grab a can of silly string and use their "spidey webs" to get the villains. Once they caught the villain in their web they had to fly off (jump on our little trampoline) and go to the tree house to rescue their present! The kids had a blast. Then we did the pinata and opened presents. I made cupcakes with super hero picks and bought little individual ice cream cups for the kids. At the end I gave everyone a certificate declaring them an official Super Hero! They filled their treat bags with all of their goodies from the pinata and the extra things I had for them. A Super fun day!!...but I'm still trying to recover from it! :)

Lets Just Say...

Let's just say that I am a failure at many things...scrapbooking being one of them. I am great at taking pictures...just not that great at putting them in a book or organizing them. I love to blog about my family...just not that good at keeping up with it. My computer crashed and we had to get a new one. We finally joined the world of technology and got a laptop...I have a love-hate relationship with it! Sometimes while I am typing, I don't know what happens, but my cursor will jump up to a previously typed part and just start typing there. Or I will somehow hit a button or put too much pressure in one spot or something and it will either delete all that I have done or open a different window or try to print something...(which just happened even though you don't  know that it did!)
My mom told me the other day that some of our family friends said that they look at my blog and some other people have told me that they check my blog and even people that Jason works with check my blog. I thought that blogging was passe now and had been overrun by instagram, pinterest, and facebook, none of which I participate in. So I guess I'll try to visit this page every once in a while and post pics of my super cute kids and give you all the details of our crazy life here at the Child house hold!

Back to School!

School started this past Tuesday on the 20th. We are all early birds this year. That means we start school at 8:00 am! Both of the girls got the teachers they wanted. Maddie is in 5th grade now and she has Mrs. Kukahiko. She was a Cougarette and married a former BYU football player. Maddie says she is the nicest teacher in the whole 5th grade! She is a really cute teacher and I think she will be perfect for Maddie this year.

 Emma is in 2nd grade this year. That means she will be baptized this year as well! She is so grown up now (in her mind). She has Mrs. Radulovich, but the teacher said to call her Mrs. Rad! Emma was jumping up and down-pee her pants-excited when she found out who her teacher is. She has a friend from our neighborhood that we carpool with in her class. She came home the first day of school and told me that she had learned "a ton of new songs." One of them is how to spell her teacher's name. I like this teacher already!

 Every year the school has a new theme for the year and they welcome the students back with a big production. This year we have a new principal and I am so glad that he is keeping this tradition. The girls get so excited to see how the teachers are going to greet them every year. This year the theme is "Incredible" and so they did a Super Hero theme. Some of the teachers were dressed up with capes and masks and holding different posters like "Pow!" and "Zing!" and things like that. When the students would walk up to the front door under the balloon bridge the teachers cheered them on. They usually have music pumping loud. I couldn't hear any but I could see the table with all of the equipment so who knows.

I know the girls are so excited for school. It's nice to have my children enjoy going to school ALMOST as much as I enjoy them going to school! I think it's going to be a pretty incredible year!

Where Have I Been?

Wow! How sad is it that I haven't even posted about my beautiful baby boy coming into the world!! Let me tell you-number 5 through me over the edge and I am still tumbling down the hill! I haven't hit the bottom yet but I can't seem to get my feet under me enough to stop tumbling and stand up and walk back up the hill. I guess we'll see which comes first!
Many things have happened since my last post and there will be plenty of time for catch up but one of the things that happened was my computer and modem died and so I had to get a new one. I finally upgraded to a laptop. Not because I'm techno or anything but because sadly, I don't have room for a desk top computer anymore! We are just bustin' out of the seams here and I would love a new house...but that's just not in the works right now. So anyway, I finally have a new computer but now the problem is getting all of my stuff off of the old one and putting it onto another hard drive! Oh, the madness never ends!
I just wanted to take a minute or two to put up a pic of my sweet little boy. Isaac was born Nov. 12, 2012 and he is such a good little baby. He is Mr. Smiley and for the most part is always happy. He eats well and sleeps well. Unfortunately, with this crummy winter we've had, he's been sick with a cough or cold or flu for the majority of his life. So we have a few unpleasant days but most of them are good.

I posted a few of his blessing pics which were actually taken just a few days ago! On top of everything else my camera was dropped the day of his blessing and my husband didn't fix it until a day or two later. I'm just now getting around to taking his pics. So he's 4 months now and in his blessing outfit...but what a great story to tell him when he gets older right!

He's my happy little boy and we love having him here. He's getting so big already and it seems like he hits a new milestone every day. My dad and Nate call him Ike sometimes but I call him Zeke for some reason. He's just so cute! Don't you just want to eat those squishy cheeks? I do...so I think I'll go do that right now!