London's Friend Party

I spent a lot of time planning, cleaning, and decorating for this party, but not much money. I was very proud of how frugal I was, and how nice everything turned out. I tried to make a cannopy above the main party area with purple tulle, and then some pink streamers and balloons in the other room. London thought it looked really cool, and I guess since it was her party that is all that really matters.

When the guest arrived they decorated there own crowns. I had some stickers and glitter glue. The kids all loved this part. I made my crowns out of card stock that I had on hand for my scrapbooking.

After everyone's crowns were made we played pin the lips on the frog. I also made this game up with some card stock. I love the internet. I found a great picture of a frog, and all I had to do was make it bigger and trace it onto my card stock.

Next we sang to the birthday girl.

Then we opened presents.

The girls then had time to play dress up while I got things cleaned up and the cake and ice cream served. I think this is my favorite picture from the party. A big thanks to my friend Laura for helping me out with some extra dress up clothes.

Everyone enjoyed some cake ...

... including Guinevere. She does not like to be left out when it comes to food.

I did not get any pictures of it, but after cake the girls made princess play-dough. Each girl got a ball of pink and purple play-dough, and then they kneaded fine glitter into it. This was my first attempt at making homemade play-dough, and I thought it turned out really well. (Just a side note, if you do the cook play-dough, don't warm the mixture up too much. The recipe just said to warm it, and I got it hot. I ended up burning my palms and finger tips trying to knead the flour in. Not really bad, but learn from my mistake.) The girls loved adding the glitter to it.

As each girl left she got a party bag with her princess play-dough, and this cute princess hair tie. I forgot to take a picture of them all make up before the party, so luckily a couple girls did not show up, and I was able to take a picture the next day when I remembered. I did not plan it that way, but Joseph, London, and Jacob's crowns that they made are in the background. These bags were supper easy to make, all you need is some card stock, a hole punch, and some yarn or ribbon for the handles.

I thought that the party went really well, and all the girls seemed to have fun. Hopefully since I have one childrens party under my belt I won't stress out as much for the next one.

London is 5 now

My little girl is 5. London is helpful, sweet, sensitive, smart, and very talkative. She has a wonderful memory. I am constantly amazed at all the things that she remembers. She loves going to preschool, and she enjoys being a Sunbeam, so that she can be in Primary with all the older kids. She definitely got Rob's outgoing genes, she is not afraid to make comments in class, or at church, and she will volunteer get up and say prayers in from the the whole Primary with out any help. Don't get me wrong, she is a typical 5 year old, we have temper tantrums and plenty of crying, but for the most part she is a joy to have around, and I simply could not imagine life without her. It will be a little hard on me when she goes to kindergarten in the fall.

We had a family party and friend party this year. I will talk about the friend party in a different post. She was really happy with all the gifts that she got. She got some harder puzzles (she was breezing through the ones that we had), some games, 3 new dresses, and some ponies.



She has really enjoyed playing with everything that she got, but she loves her ponies. They came with combs and lots of hair accessories. Don't you just love the holes in her leggings. I stitched them early on, but she wears them so much that they just kept ripping. I have tried to get her to throw them away, but she "loves" them.

Christmas Morning

They are a little late, but I wanted to make sure I posted some pictures from Christmas before we got too far into the new year. We enjoyed a nice Christmas at home. My mom and sister came over and enjoyed the festivities with us.

We don't have a fire place, so the stockings were hung from the stairs. Santa worked extra hard to get the toys popping out so that I could have this wonderful picture.

And here is a picture of the tree after Santa arrived.

This remote control motorcycle from Aunt Barbara was Jacob's favorite toy by far.

London loves the princess castle that she got from Nana. Since the gift was for both Guinevere and London, London lets Guinevere pull all the purple flags off the top and chew on them, but she really does not like it when Guinevere touches anything else.

Joseph liked most of his toys I think, but he plays with these cars he got from Aunt Barbara the most.


These large dump trucks were gifts for the boys from Nana, but we quickly found that the babies enjoyed them the most on Christmas morning. After being pushed around in them Guinevere and Jalynn were both content to just sit in them and play with other toys they were given.

The kids were fairly well behaved, and enjoyed playing with there toys all day long. In the afternoon we all went out to help London learn to ride her bike with just two wheels, and so London could show off her new helmet. We enjoyed a nice dinner that evening, and all went to bed pretty early, Christmas is exhausting.

Visiting Santa

I could not believe it, but I actually found a place that would give you a picture, and let you take your own picture for free with Santa. There have been a few years where I didn't get any pictures of the kids with Santa because they were too expensive.

Last year when we went to see Santa London was the only one who would willingly go and sit on his lap. This year all four kids sat with Santa, and Jacob and London actually talked to him.

London said that she wanted more ponies to play with.

Jacob asked for cars and airplanes.
Joseph said nothing, but did steal a few glances at the big guy before getting off of his lap.

Guinevere stared at me the whole time. I don't think she even realized she was sitting on someones lap. As I put her down I assured Santa that she had a dry freshly changed diaper, he gave me a little laugh at that.

Guinevere's Birthday

We recently celebrated Guinevere's 1st Birthday. I can not believe how quickly this past year has gone by. Perhaps I will be saying this forever, but it feels like just yesterday that we were bringing her home from the hospital. I am amazed at how quickly she is growing.

I love the dirty look she is giving the candle in this picture. She just stared at it for the longest time, and then right on cue for the end of the song she tried to grab it.

This is one of the only pictures that we got of her actually looking up at the camera.

She was not a big fan of the cake. She tried some of it, and sort of pushed it around on the tray, and then cried to get down.


My grandma is frequently out of town, so we were pretty excited that she was able to be here for Guinevere's first birthday. This is her with my Aunt Brenda.


It was a short, quite, simple party, but that was all right with me and the birthday girl.

Christmas Cookies

On Friday I decided to be brave and dareing by make sugar cookies with the kids all by myself. Some of you that don't know me that well probably think this is not really that big of a deal. For those of you who know me, you know that I can be quite annal about how my cookies turn out, and anything less then perfection in this area can put me in a bad mood for a few hours at least. Fearlessly I embraced the Christmas spirit and started making the cookie dough. Guinevere was the first to protest, and insisted on being able to see what was going on. Having a baby on the kitchen counter made this process much slower then I would have liked, but I pressed on.


Having plenty of open counter space and two new small rolling pins I put aprons on all the kids, let them flour there work area, and gave them each a ball of dough. My grand plan was that London and Jacob would do fairly well with minimal supervision while I worked on the other side of the counter with Joseph and the big rolling pin. The minimal supervision thing went right out the window, but with a lot of help they did manage to roll out there dough to varying thicknesses and then begin cutting out the cookies.


Joseph it turned out was not too happy that I would be helping him. He thought this was going to be more like playing playdough, where you roll it out cut out some shapes and then roll it out again. He was none too patient, and while I was on the other side of the counter he started to collect all the dough back into a ball before I was able to get the cut out shapes on to a pan to bake. After that I gave him a much smaller ball of dough and just let him have fun.


As I tried to help the kids with there dough I accidentally sat my cup of flour too close to Guinevere, who insisted on still sitting on the counter, and she promptly dumped it all over herself and the counter.

After each of the children had rolled the dough out a few times I felt that dough and my nerves could not take much more, so I sent them all to wash up while I cut out the remaining cookies.

That afternoon while Guinevere was asleep I allowed the kids to decorate the cookies how ever they wanted. I only intervened here or there when the frosting was so thick that it looked like it might break the cookie, or the sprinkles so thick that you could no longer see the cookie.

London was very proud of the cookie that she decorated to look like her. Can you all see the likeness? The huge eyes, and the two green dots in her hair as rubberbands.

Overall, everyone had a good time, and I survived with my sanity. Even though the cookies do not look perfect, and some are a little thicker then others, they still taste really good. Let this be a lesson to me that perfection is not necessary. Hopefully this posting has encouraged, not discouraged, others from making sugar cookies with there young children. Happy Baking!

Dance Recital

This is one of the clips from the dance recital that London and Jacob were in. They were showing off the basic tumbling moves they have been learning (rolling, somersaults, dog with a broken leg, and cartwheels). It is a little long, but I could not edit it.