Guess Who......

..........Just turned 5!!!!

And to celebrate, we had an entire weekend of festivities for her. She has been wanting a Tangled birthday since she saw the movie almost a year ago!!! I am always happy to oblige especially when it's a theme I can sew and bake for. To kick it off, we went to the zoo and she got to feed the giraffe. She was so excited and did a great job not dropping the lettuce or jumping back, which is surprising since she is terrified of cats and chihuahuas. It's really hard not to just reach out and pet the giraffe, but I managed. Our entire day was choreographed around the Tangled Soundtrack: in the car, at home, and spontaneously a capella if there were no electronic devices. Amelia is very robust in her singing. After being henpecked all week about when she gets to open her presents, we decided to let her open one present Saturday and Sunday. She basically knew and saw almost all of them, so it wasn't too big of a deal. She was really excited to get a Rapunzel doll from Ben and was a great sport about acting surprised when she opened it, since she had very specific instructions for Ben as to which doll he should get her and how to wrap it up. He was very accommodating (of course). The doll accompanied us on all our activities!!















Next, she got to be recognized at her church class on Sunday. This entails getting to stand up in front of everyone, wear a special birthday hat, have them read special things about her, give her a big birthday sticker, sing to her and give her some candy. Seriously, she thought she was a superstar. She could not stop grinning all day. I didn't see it, but I heard about it and it was pretty cute how excited she was. You can see the sticker in one of the pictures. It stayed on the entire day!! Then she requested that as a family we watch Tangled with previously mentioned doll which she used to reenact all the parts of the movie!!! She loved it.

Since today was her official birthday, we did cake and all that amidst running around getting last minute forms for school (can I just say sending a child to school who requires medicine is a quite a chore and with all her food allergies it is terrifying. You have to totally trust that they will protect her and that they understand how severe it is while also not making too much of a deal so she is not considered "fragile" and left out of everything......hmpf, it's exhausting mentally). Amelia helped me decorate the flowers on her tower cake. She also requested that we eat hazelnut soup, which if you don't know, is Rapunzel's favorite thing and her mother makes it for her on her birthday. Since Amelia is allergic to nuts, we used chicken noodle!!! She knew I made her a Rapunzel costume because she had to have it fitted on her multiple times, but I did all the details while she was asleep, so the final product was a little bit of a surprise. She wanted to wear the dress while she ate her hazelnut soup!!! It was a great day and a great end to our summer.
A few fun things about her:
She is not shy of the camera and hams it up, poses and all.
She loves being fancy and all things girly, pink and sparkly. Think real life Fancy Nancy on our hands!!!
She loves being a "mommy" to dolls, animals and Ben
She may have a bigger sweet tooth than me!!!
I love that she believes I can make or fix anything.
Although she is the first to fight and torture Ben, she is the first to stand up and protect him when we go anywhere.
She has tons of energy and loves learning and life.
She said 0n her birthday questionnaire that she wants to be a mommy when she grows up and her favorite holiday is her birthday. I couldn't agree more!!!
She is so excited to start Kindergarten tomorrow she can hardly sit still. She got to meet her teacher today and see her classroom and she is ready to go to school, without us, she reminded me!! Good, then no one has to see me cry as I watch her grow up right before my eyes.
I love this little girl and will miss her all morning while she's gone (or at least for the first week or so until I realize how easy it is to just have 1 child at home again:)

Green girl

Ben is terrible at remembering names. He can never tell us who he has been playing with. Today he was naming off (in a prayer) who he was glad he played with..."T.J, and green girl". He was referring to a little girl wearing a green dress. It made me stifle quite a laugh!!

Autism Research

My sister is currently doing research for Autism and needs some help. If you or someone you know is interested in completing an online survey to help Autism research please follow the link below

MOMS!! Help us learn more about Autism Spectrum Disorders...Researchers at the University of North Dakota are conducting a research study and would like to ask you about your experience with pesticides and pregnancy complications. If you have a child who has been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder including Asperger’s and Pervasive Developmental Disorders, please consider completing this online survey. Participants will not only have the chance of winning an iPod, but more importantly responses may help prevent autism and other developmental disorders.
Click here to help autism research https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SCX9R2T

Found this

I walked into my "dining room" (it's more like a corner and the only table that fit is my craft table so please don't think this Lifetime plastic table is my idea of an appropriate dining room table....we just make do, and please ignore the gross crumbs everywhere also!!!) Sunday after a little nap to find this. I thought it was pretty great I had to share. I really love my boy and his creative play. And I love when I see that my dollar bin, potty training bribes are totally worth it. We are diaper free (during the day) for a few weeks now thanks to these guys and a pad of stickers!!! Ben reminds us that these are nice army guys and they don't fight with each other. And the ones who are kneeling with missile launchers, those are actually guys who fix your tires or puts gas in your car. The one aiming a skinner gun at hip height lives in a fire station. The other one holding a gun at hip height lives in space and has a gun. The man holding a walkie talkie just always calls his friend. The one on one knee lives on a farm and helps ducks get back in water. How sad will it be if he really learns what they do?!?!

Ahoy you landlubbers!!!

My baby is 3 now and he is just as adorable and cuddly as the day he was born. He is funny and very into pirates, lasers, cars and anything to do with a movie he has seen even once.
Enjoy this sea of pictures from Ben's pirate extravaganza!!
The day started off with a hunt around the house to find a treasure in the mailbox.....a pirate shirt for his day of pirating. The bottom left pic is Ben giving you the pirate eye and the next 3 beside it is his tough guy/pirate/super hero stance. It's also what he does right before he runs really fast, don't ask me why!!

Next, off to the zoo where Ben got to feed a giraffe lettuce. He was not at all interested in the idea when we first proposed it a week ago. He slowly warmed to it and last night, finally resolved that he wanted to do it. When we arrived at the zoo, he as on a mission: feed that giraffe!!! He wanted dad to go with him (lucky). I love this series of pics. The bottom left picture was right after he fed it the first piece. He is laughing and saying, "the giraffe licked my hand". He wasn't at all scared and was so happy. Look closely and you can see it's long tongue licking him.

Next, a train ride around the zoo (a total lame rip off, but it's his birthday right!!) and cardboarding down the hill. Can't make a trip there without the cardboarding. I can't say it enough, this is the most beautiful zoo ever. The giraffes have beach front property, at noon it was 73 and blue skies. Santa Barbara is what I imagine heaven to be like.

And last but not least, home for birthday cake and presents. Amelia's MM's (see my last post for the explanation). Although Ben doesn't seem excited in the pic (mainly because Amelia was touching him and he didn't want to be touched) he was so thrilled to get his very own bag of MM's. I (with the help of a few little hands that "tested for poison") made a pirate ship cake with a very sorry attempt at cake pop pirates. Borderline cakewrecks people, but I am posting it anyway because who am I impressing. Kudos to bakerella (the creator of cake pops) for the patience and total attention to detail to make these little creations. I couldn't even get my candy melts to melt properly (granted I have no microwave, so I am blaming it on that). Not a skill for me I guess. The ship was a hit. I managed to keep the finished product a surprise from Ben so he is seeing it for the first time in the pic at the bottom right corner. Amelia wrapped his present in homemade wrapping pirate paper and it was too cute to not show her writing and drawings. Ben got a cape that Amelia and I made while he was napping one day (inspired by my sis-in-laws capes she made for her boys while I visited her at the cabin). I was so proud of Amelia not spoiling it for 2 weeks!! He has yet to take it off. The pic on the bottom 2nd from the left is him seeing if it makes him fly!! His response: "it does make me fly!!"

When all was said and done, I have to say, this pirate birthday stuff was one of my favorite to plan and execute. But it's easy to do something to get to see this smiling face!! Happy Birthday Ben!

Chompo bars and MMs

It's Ben's birthday on Saturday and Amelia loves birthdays. Every day she has run to calendar to see how many more days until Ben's birthday and tries to get him excited about it. I think she has enough excitement for both of them!! We took a trip to library last week and got a birthday book, "A Birthday for Frances". If you haven't read this author's Frances series, you are missing out. They are fantastic. here you can look at it more. To sum up, Frances decides to buy her little sister a Chompo candy bar and 2 gumballs with all her allowance for her birthday. On the walk home from the candy store, Frances accidentally eats the gumballs and then decides that her sister is too little for a candy bar and maybe she will just eat some of it and give her what's left. She resists and in the end she gives her sister the uneaten Chompo bar and an IOU for 2 gumballs and is really glad she gave her sister the candy.
Amelia was counting her piggy bank money yesterday and decided that when we went to the store, she wanted to buy Ben a present with her money (she had about a dollar in change). I didn't want to squash her generosity, so I told her she could buy something and I would pay for the rest. Then Phil had a brilliant idea that she buy him some of his favorite candy, MM's is what we call them, like Frances and the Chompo bar. Amelia ran the entire length of the mall to Target to get it. She had her purse with the money inside and the checker was so sweet about it. Then she wrapped it up in a bag and put it in her purse to hide it then ran all the way back to the other end of the mall to find Ben and say she got him a present but he can't look!!! It was the cutest thing I think I have done with her in a really long time. She keeps going to her purse and checking that it's there and then hiding it then changing the location of where she is hiding it so he doesn't find it. Waiting another 2 days is so torturous for her. I am so proud she hasn't spoiled it yet.

I think summer is finally here!!

Anyone who knows me knows I need a minimum of 80 degrees to feel warm and it has only reached that like twice here. I was so excited to see that we are reaching upper 80's this week and then when it hit, I quickly realized that 70 degree weather is probably more comfortable for our house. (no a/c or ceiling fans!!) It was so hot in the house, the only other alternative to napping the day away in a pool of your own sweat while trying to wake from what feels like a comatose induced sleep, was to set up the slip in slide. It was no match to our solar heated pool last year but a bargain deal at Target!!! I took it to UT and tried it out with my friend's kids and the girls had a lot of fun. Ben wouldn't get in because it was too cold. The hose we were using there was irrigation water which I believe is basically snow melt, so it was FREEZING. I don't blame him. It was much warmer here. Amelia had a blast sliding on her butt and army crawling through it and then crap crawling through it. It was almost like she had a work out routine of different moves she had to complete down the slide. Ben sat on the sidelines for the first hour, deciding if he really wanted to get wet.

For some reason telling him he could get his rubber duckies from the bath and put them on the slip in slide was a total deal changer. I think little kids in water of any kind is the cutest.

The best is seeing them all wrapped up in what they call "bear towels". This is them pretending to be bears and growling at each other.

Enjoy keeping cool where you are!!