Addie's birthday and {family} birthday parties

Saturday, we had a birthday party with all of my siblings and Addie's cousins. I decided to do it at my mom's, because there are a LOT of us now!

look-- our family DOES have a few girls :) 

Addie's sand castle cake I made

Dalton and Skylee hanging out

Pirate swords  and gold coins for the boy guests and a mermaid skirt for Taylor 

(I didn't think the boys would want anything mermaid-related)

I brought the Ariel game from her friend party so the kids could play. I wasn't assuming adults would, but Chad and Jason did lol. Way to show up the kids, J. 

Presents!

It took Addie about 2.4 seconds after opening a trunk of dress up dresses from grandma and grandpa to put them on. Along with matching lip gloss, of course.

pinata breaking, princess style ;)

and.....boy style

awesome.

Thanks Rees/Workman clan for partying with us! Addie loved it

 Addison's 4th Birthday!!

She woke up to a room full of balloons on the floor, but randomly only noticed the one I had taped to her drawing board. Funny. She was excited to get a Flynn Rider doll to go with her Rapunzel doll

And REALLY excited when she opened her new Belle doll!!

I didn't snap a picture fast enough, but she totally gasped and stepped back...

 and then jumped up and down....

I guess that was a good call on the singing, story telling Belle doll :)

She immediately changed into her Belle dress up dress and played with her all morning. 

It was very cute.

 I made her some princess pancakes for breakfast too :)

 That evening, we had the Weller side of the family over to continue this 3 day long celebration of Addison

Dalton loves his Ashy

Addie giving Jed a kiss before blowing out her candles, Awww

Tristan was excited about his cupcake (shhh, they were two days old) 

I made pizookies for the adults and the kids had cupcakes and ice cream cones

I tried to b&w this hoping it'd be cuter. Still not a great picture, but oh well. 

Can't blame a birthday girl for not parting with an ice cream cone for a picture.

Poor Dalton wasn't a happy little dude. Found out the next day he had an ear infection :(

More presents....this girl got spoiled!

Great grandma Margaret gave Addie and her bitty baby matching robes and Grammy Dawn and Papa Steve gave her some matching jammies along with some other dolls. She loves them. 

Happy Birthday, Addison!! I can't believe she's 4. She's not a baby or even a toddler anymore. She's, well, a kid. She's independent, smart as a whip and full of life! I can't even let my mind think about next year because as she reminds me ALL the time, "when I turn 5 I go to big school!" 

So I'll keep her close for one more year...I sure love my little girl.

Addie's {friend} Ariel Party!

Addie has been talking about the Ariel party she's was going to have since about 48 hours after LAST year's birthday party. I don't know why Ariel exactly, all I know is that is what she wanted and what she knew was going to happen lol. Kids are so funny and random and specific sometimes.

 So Ariel it was! We had a blast planning and creating an Under the Sea themed party (well parties!)

Since most of her cousins are boys, we do a girly friend party with a few of her favorite friends. 

This way, we still get to party super girly style! :)

When we say girly style, we mean mermaid style. In this case, each girl got her own mermaid skirt and clam hair clip to party in and then take home. I think it made it extra fun for the girls and they were pretty simple to make too. Addie was thrilled about being a mermaid, though I didn't make shells for her aka "boobs things" like she had requested. Hearing her call them boob things just made it too weird. 

The party guests 

They played pin the crown on Ariel

 Then we had a picnic under the sea and ate yummy treats

This is what they were sitting underneath

Some of the under the sea esque treats consumed

I was in love with the clams :) and hello, super easy!

Dipped marshmallows and oreos were also a hit (well we won't discuss how many oreos I ate)

I also loved the star fish rice krispie treats! I swear, these treats were all the easiest and quickest I've done for a party in awhile, but candy eyes make anything cute!

and cupcakes of course!

I didn't do a big cake til the next day/party

I still can't believe my baby girl had 4 candles on that cupcake....sigh.

 The girls all took the party over from there...

they helped Addie open her presents, then they all went up and played in her room for a solid hour! It was awesome. They played without any incidents or fighting. At one point when I went up there to make sure they were all indeed still breathing, I came across this scene: Lucy sitting on a stool coloring on Addie's chalkboard, while Kallie brushed and curled Lucy's hair. Maggie was vacuuming with Addie's play vacuum saying she was cleaning up the mess and Addie and Eden were playing house with a stuffed monkey. 

AWE.SOME. you go girls. They all had a fun time it seemed and Addie couldn't have been happier!

Here's a shot of Dalton among the pre-party set up. He thought the sea of balloons was pretty funny. Thanks Ash, once again, for always co-chairing my party planning committee with me! We had as much fun prepping for the party as we did attending it. We kept things pretty simple, but I was really happy with the way it turned out. Don't worry, we had two other parties as well. Gotta get the families in there too! 

Stay tuned.

Christmas Day 2011

Jed and I set out all the presents, got a breakfast casserole prepared and in the fridge and everything set out for the next morning by midnight. I'd expected to be up much later since we weren't home til 10. Just as we crawled our tired selves into bed, Dalton woke up. Yup. So from 12:30- about 2am ish he played downstairs with Jed. He even played with the new toy of his that wasn't wrapped. Lol, well good to know he approved of it! Needless to say, we didn't end up getting much sleep. We had 9am church though, so we couldn't let the kids sleep in, even if they'd wanted to....such is life with kids. Totally worth it, because kids+Christmas= Awesome.

We  Santa left Addie a note the night before saying thanks for the cake pop. He added a marshmallow to her good girl marshmallow jar too ;) Yes, Santa got a cake pop in our house. 

Santa delivered too. He brought Addie the Tangled Barbie she wanted :)

Can you tell she was excited?

She even sings! (which is a lot louder at home than in Target btw)

Dalton playing with his music table (again lol)

Addie wanted to wear her new dress that matched her doll to church. 

 After church, we had some family over for some brunch. I love brunch. Although I was a little sad that the scrumptious Argentine pastries we got the day before weren't nearly as fabulous a day old. I knew I should have just shoved one of the dulce de leche ones in my mouth the day before...

Bryan and London came up too.

She's sweet. I like her.

Grandpa Rees and Dalton, sportin' his new church outfit. 

We went to Great Grammy Lynette's house and the kids opened more presents.

Dang, they're spoiled! 

Dalton likes Addie's new guitar too. They both love this toy, it's awesome. 

They're now in a band. He plays on his music table and she plays the guitar and they dance. Pretty fantastic.

We stopped by grandma and grandpa Rees's house too.

He was so tired at this point, but still hamming it up for the camera.

Pretty little Skylee.

I sure love these two. They made Christmas what it's all about for me. 

Just as I settled on the couch to chill with Jed after the kids were in bed, the doorbell rang. Um, weird it's 9:30....Santa sent a helper to drop off one more gift for me!

Holy awesome!! 

The next day, we went to visit my grandparents who live in a rest home in Sandy.

The were very excited to see us.

My grandpa LOVES babies, so he was in heaven! Love those two!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!