Happy Birthday to Allison!

Well, today was the much anticipated party day. We had 16 little girls at our home for a garden party. This was a first for us. We usually invite family and a few close friends. This time a fun girly party. Dad was right in the middle of it! It is so funny to me, when I think he doesnt't have an opinion of some things, it is then he has the most opinion. He grilled me this morning on activities, set up, and so on. He said he wanted to make sure HIS little girl was going to have a good party. I'm thinking cute, but the input could have been better like 2-3 weeks ago when the party was in the making! It's okay daddy we love you and we know you adore your little girl who is now 6 years old. Just where has the time gone? We were just saying yesterday that when we brought her home from the hospital, she sure shook things up a bit in our home. She demanded ALL of my attention during the day and cried ALL night long. I'm so sorry now that it is all a blur to me. She is such a blessing in our lives and has a bunch of brothers that will serve as her protection as the years go on. When we told her that Spencer was going to be a boy she said to us, "Mom please no more boys!" She still thinks that there is a little sister out there for her and asks me almost weekly when is she coming. I tell her the odds are just not in our favor and that what would she do with ANOTHER brother. She just shakes it off and then asks again next week.
Okay to explain some of these pictures. We had all the girls put their names on visors and plant their own flower. They also did a watering can relay. After that we had her flower pot cake and opened presents. They all had butterfly and flower sandwiches with watermelon. Allison asked for a cake that was a flower and had a butterfly drinking the nectar out of it. This is what we came up with. Just in case you can't tell it is a flower pot with daisies and a few butterflies flying around it. Yes I made it and it was all edible except for the 3 silk butterflies. Please keep in mind I am no professional and one day will take classes to help me out. For now I rely on my friend Michelle for all of her wisdom and hard earned money spent on classes. Thank you Michelle! I think the girls had fun and mom sure having all those little girls here! Well, I think dad did too!

We LOVE Aunt Jacque!!!!

So Aunt Jacque came down from Oregon to visit for the week. Grandam , aunt Diane, and aunt Jacque had the idea to come out to our house and go to the park for a picnic. So, we did that yesterday and the kids had so much fun playing. We were ther for 4 hours and the best part they were so, so, so tired by the time bed time came. Here are a few pictures of our fun day.


The best part about aunt Jacque being here (besides spoiling my kids rotten) is she sews!!! We have this cape in our home that goes to a costume and Matthew tends to monopolize it and of course this causes HUGE problems. So, I asked her to make the boys each their very own reversible batman/superman capes. Well, Allison heard about this and just absolutley could not be left out. So, she got a girl version. Here are a few attempted pictures of them flying around in their capes...I'm sure there will be more to come. I know that there is not a picture here of Eli, but he was not being very photogenic and was having a very bad day. I think wore him out the day before. I promise there will be pictures to come of him too.

Happy Birthday Daddy!!!!

Today was the BIG day for dad! He actually stopped celebrating at 29, but we have to much fun on birthdays. Craig isn't really big on cake, so cheesecake it was. Honestly by the time his birthday rolls around we are all tired of cake. Lets see, what did daddy get to do for his birthday? Not much. His birthday "weekend" was quite a busy one and no time for celebrating. Saturday was filled with gourmet girls for mom, baseball game for Zach, and the best part(drum roll please)....we got grass in our back yard!!!!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you to Craig for laying the sod for us. We are so lucky to have him as a daddy. The kids looked at it like they had never seen grass before. Actually, we all just sit and stare out the window in amazement. If you haven't ever seen our backyard, you would too. When we moved in it was all pebbles and bark with planters here and there. We tore it all out and put grass and 6 raised boxes for our garden. This is soooo exciting for us. Needless to say we are pretty exhausted from this weekend. That's okay because next month mommy is taking daddy away for the weekend to our favorite spot in Santa Barbara for his belated present. Sssshhhh, don't tell Craig. Happy Birthday daddy, we love you THIS much:)

Lions, and Tigers and Bears...Oh My!

Just so everyone knows it has been a wile since I have made a post. I just sat down and posted 3 or 4 new things, so just keep scrolling down and read about all the fun things we have been doing while we are off track.
Thursday we went to the San Diego Zoo. This time Grandma Nana (Cathy) got to come and be crowd control. The kids had so much fun seeing all the many different animals. Actually we didn't see any tigers but, we did see leopards. We watched a really fun sea lion show, went on the sky buckets to get an arial view of the zoo and took a bus ride to see all that we knew we wouldn't have time to see. If you ask the kids, their favorite part was getting the snow cones and seeing an airplane fly over head about every 5 minutes!

Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday

Between Craig, Allison and my brother Adam we have 3 birthdays with in 5 days. So, every year we either go out to eat or go to someones house for dinner and cake. This year everyone came to my house. We happened to do this on the same day we went to the beach. My mom saw this cake pan in a magazine and thought it would be fun to bake a cake to look like a giant cupcake. I had fun decorating it. Yes, I know a little crazy, but Allison showed me ALL the colors she wanted on the cake. There will be more pictures to come of her "real" party in the next week or so. Of course a different cake for that one too! Just a little side note...Adam is missing from the pictures because he and Brittany had to go back down to the beach to find her wedding rings in the sand. And, YES, they did find them!! Can you believe it?

Beach trip!!!

Our 4 week off track vacation could not be complete with out a trip to the beach. That is my kids favorite place to go. They try to patiently wait unitl it is warm enough every year to go the beach. Last Monday we packed our bags and off to Huntington Beach we went.(Of course with back up again) Brittany and Madisyn came along on this trip too. The kids had so much fun. Spencer ate plenty of sand , Madisyn could not stop throwing it, Eli just wanted to go in the water, Allison had to continue on her shell collection, and Zach sculpted all kinds of things in the sand. All in all it was a great day!

Discovery Science Center

I decided to take the kids to the Discovery Science Center. (It really was all for me) You see, I have always wanted to go there and so I thought I would take the kids for a fun day just so we could see what it is like. Ofcourse, I couldn't go alone with 5 kids under the age of 7. So, I asked my sister in law and 2 year old niece to go with us. We had a blast. We learned about earthquakes, dinosaurs, Clifford, how all kinds of things work, and tornados. By the look closely at Spencer in the tornado booth. He just had to do everything the big kids got to do. Maybe know he will start to rethink somethings...NOT!

Easter Again!!!

Yes, I know that Easter was forever ago, but I have not had a free moment to put anything new up here. We had Easter with my family on the 6th of April. These are before and after pictures of the egg hunt. The kids could hardly wait for their 3rd egg hunt. Spencer surely did not need any reminding this time about what he was supposed to do. Mine, MIne, Mine are 3 of his favorite words. Apparently he thought all the "obvious" eggs were meant just for him. Anyway we all had fun eating, hunting and getting ANOTHER basket!

The power of friends

I don't know why I didn't ever think of this before. My kids are off track and every time they go off track I get the itch to clean things out. You know the thing that you NEVER get to. Closets, cupboards, painting, things like that. I also know that I need to do fun activities with my children, but somehow not many of those happen because I am always cleaning. I clean up their messes so I can get to the BIG jobs, but as soon as I am done another mess has been created. Well, this time it has been different. There is a little girl in Allison's class whose mom had surgery just as soon as we went off track. She asked if her daughter could come play so she isn't so bored at home because mom is down. I said of course. So, I had her 2 days last week and 3 days this week. On top of that Zach had a friend over today and Allison invited another little girl from church who is also in her class. I have never gotten so much done. I have played with them, done my big jobs, and pretty much kept my house clean. We have also been able to go on fun day trips at least once a week! This is so amazing. I just can't figure out why I never did this before while they were off track. I just LOVE having their friends over, well I am sure they do too;)

Wild Animal Park

So we went to the Wild animal with the Fisher family today. For those of you who don't know they also have five kids. Today I had a bonus, Allison's friend McKenna, So I tipped the scales and together we made 11 children under 7. No, Tricia and I didn't go by ourselves...what do you think were nuts??? Well, only sometimes when we are desperate to get out of the house and THINK that our kids will have a good time doing something together. Only to find that we are spending most of our time with one of us watching the big group while searching for one or two strays. Never fails we always get asked the best questions. One day I am just going to say YES to one of them and then see what their response is next!!! Anyway Chris was with us today. So, 3 adults for 11 kids was pretty manageable. They had a butterfly exhibit and boy was it neat. The kids were so excited that a butterfly landed on them. We also saw the monkeys, okay Tricia the gorillas, the lions, birds, ugly, ugly spiders and insects...did I mention they were ugly and BIG? We also had cotton candy which Spencer was not to thrilled when it was gone, but Aiden loved it...his first taste! All in all I think it was a pretty successful day...considering we didn't loose anyone.

Happy April Fools DaY

This year for April Fools I thought it would be fun to feed the kids spaghetti with kitchen utensils. I gave them their food and when I brought the utensils to the table all went silent. They looked at me and Allison said, "What am I supposed to do with this?" I told her that she needed to figure out how to eat her pasta with it. They had so much fun. I got tongs, but of course there is no picture of mom!

I have been tagged

Okay since I am new to the blogging world, I am assuming when you are tagged who have to write about what they wrote about. I will do that, but before I do I must say that I love this ward and the people in it. My friend felt inspired by my entry last night (I think) I called today to take my kids from me. You have no idea how excited I was. Not that I did not want my kids around, but I got to fix everything they undid yesterday and then some!!! Thank you Melissa. Now for the tagging. Becca needs help for ideas on what to cook for dinner. Most of you know I do Gourmet Girls so not much thought goes into dinner for me on most nights. I don't know the last time I had tacos or burritos because of GG. Also, my husband is picky in the sense that he would rather not have anything with hamburger meat...so there goes a lot of things. Somehow I also got the rep for a good cook, but I don't know how true that is. I can just follow a recipe really well. My passion is in baking. I find every excuse to make a new treat! Anyway, here is typical week for me:
Monday- Ritz Cracker chicken (yummy, fast, and the kids love it) corn and rice
Tuesday- Gourmet girls meal, but I love to cook pasta with alfredo sauce (homemade sauce), bread and if we are lucky a vegatable.
Wednesday-GG again, but chicken enchiladas, spanish rice, sweet corn
Thursday- GG yet again, leftovers
Friday- easy lasagna from sauce that I made and froze another day...I make a lot and freeze at least 2 more nights worth.
Saturday- who knows...eat out rumage through things or Craig cooks...YEA!!!
Sunday- Steak, potatoes, vegie or something yummy that Craig came up with.
I hope this helps. You know I also did some "blog hopping" and Nicole Ewell (I don't know her married name) has 3 reciepe blogs. I found her linked somewhere through one of your sisters blogs. Any one else reading this feel free to contribute and I will pass on the info.