Party Preperation

I started with a bunch of this.... (to make cotton candy cakes)

(here was one night's baking project)

Then it went like this....

I had no words (well none I can put on here) ..... Michael did.... he said "bakery"......


Moving on from the cakes for one of the party favors, I got some printable shrinky dinks (totally addicted to them now) and printed some free printable disney Rapunzel charms I found... then cut out every single one of them and punched a hole in them.

Lined them up to be baked (we had 5 trays of them).

Isn't it amazing how the object on the right becomes the object on the left and it's hard plastic now!! SERIOUSLY cool!

Then of course the rope I bought to hang them from, didn't fit...so I then put the silver jewelery rings on every single one of these bad boys too.... yes...all 88 of them!!

I loved our goodies this year!

Birthday Party Flash Backs

Birthdays are a good time to look back and reminisce about how fast the time goes and how much these kiddos change in the course of their lives. It never ceases to amaze me how much Mikayla has grown and changed. Even the difference from one year to the next is tremendous. The one thing I find comforting (even though I struggle with her changing and growing so fast) is that the core of her "person" is still the same.... some of the things that haven't changed a bit are:

When she gives you a hug... you KNOW you've been hugged, she hugs you with all of her heart and soul

She is so full of love, sometimes it just spills out of her and I'm so blessed to be one of the recipients

She loves the simple things, to play a game or take a walk.... she doesn't need the fancy stuff

She loves to read, she has always been a "reader" but now that she knows a lot of the words...watch out

Her smile... her single smile can melt my heart...

Her eyes.... she lets me see into her soul

Her genuine spirit

She's funny!!! I love when she either gets a joke or tells one.... it's funny!!!

I really love that some of these things haven't changed!! I pray that as she keeps getting older and growing up, that she can hold onto what is important in life!

Here she is at her first birthday party!!


Second Birthday Party!!


Third Birthday Party!!

Fourth Birthday Party!


Fifth Birthday Party!!

Sixth Birthday Party!!


I am beyond thankful to have this wonderful little girl in my life!!!

It's CAKE time!!!!

I will be the first (of many) to admit that I go crazy about the cake.... I don't know why it became so important to me but it has.... and I'm not sure that all birthdays will make me go cake crazy but well.... I have six years of cake craziness....so we'll see what happens next year ;) (currently I say I'm buying one next year...we'll see LOL)

So the process usually goes like this....

about (at least) 2 months to obsess and "plan" my cake, then the week before the birthday party goes like this:

Monday - make the frosting - at least 3 batches

Tuesday - make first layer/tier of cake

Wednesday - make 2nd layer/tier of cake (or third if necessary)

Thursday - first layer of frosting on ALL layers of cake

Friday (this year Saturday) - decorate/assemble cake (this part usually takes a LONG time) LOL

So here are Mikayla's party cakes starting with her first...(totally not at all even close to professional but it makes me happy to do it...Michael thinks I should call the bakery - one day...yes....I promise I will)

This year my cake mixes gave me a hard time and the bottom layer cracked open on the way there but that's ok... little Miss was happy and that makes me happy (and the people liked it...so that's all that matters!) :)

Little Flower Girls

I am really so happy we joined this club. I was a bit harried this week though LOL. Truth be told I thought the meeting was this week, not last week, so I thought we had the weekend to get done what we needed to.... so she can earn her petals.... and well.... here is really how our Friday evening went.


I picked her up from school at 5:50 pm... we have to leave the house NO later than 6:15 pm in order to make it on time. So I pick her up...I tell her please no challenges, just listen to what I say...do it...and don't ask any questions, it's all to help her earn her petals...


So OH WOW...she did exactly that, on our 2 minute commute from her school to home, she memorized one bible verse (check).... got home, took care of dogs, threw an uncrustable in the toaster, we ran into the bedroom for her to change clothes, all the while repeating memorized bible verse, ran out to kitchen, made her bottle of water, got her a snack, she was getting her Little Flower bag (I leave it packed all the time for circumstances just like this and so we don't lose stuff)... I told her to sit...she did... I said draw a heart...she did... I said write some names of people you love in it (check).... so I spelled some for her and YAY another thing done on the list (see why I needed the weekend to do this).


SHOOT... FOCUS ok, dogs in the house, wrap PBJ up in a paper towel, grab her water, get me a water.... put the dogs up, run to the car..... ACK we're 1 minute behind now... but it's ok....it's going to be fine.....


Ok...now we're on the way...memorizing second bible verse (clearly these petals are very important to me LOL)... and oh oh oh oh oh racing because traffic is heavy but who am I kidding it's always heavy here.... but ok, it's going to be fine, it's OK if we get there within a minute or two....for goodness sake this is the Little Flower Girls Club...surely I should have some sort of calm and peace when we arrive not the franticness of right now. So I make sure she's eating her PBJ....memorizing...then all of a sudden I decide...welp it is what it is...she did everything I asked her to and it's my fault this is happening this way...so she's getting her petals!!!


So we get there.... and well.... the doors are locked... um WHAT!!!!


There is another lady there too and she was thinking the same thing I was that we were late and they locked us out...but no... they just lock the doors for safety so we went over to where our room is...and was able to flag someone down (by jumping up and down and waving our arms in the air) to come open the door for us - SCORE!!


We get in, I find her a seat, she gets to coloring and I plop down in a chair. One of the other moms looked at me.... I looked at her and we BUSTED out laughing... we must have had exactly the same expression on our faces, she said you know, this is the first time I got to just sit today....LOL


So all of that, the instructor was 30 minutes late (I can't imagine how her day went, she has six kids, another due next month and how she gets anywhere I will never know....)!

Here is Mikayla putting the scrapbook page she made in her book.









So PHEW....after all of that we had a great time, we crafted, we colored, we sang, we listened to a story, we prayed, we had a great time!!! I will do better for the next meeting, I will be better prepared!!! And there wasn't a petal ceremony this week because of not having enough time LOL, there will be time next month and she should get 2 petals for her flower :) I can't wait. I'm really meeting some nice ladies, there seem to be 3 of us that gravitate towards each other and have our kids sit next to each other too. It's all good!!


The virtue of the month is initiative....I will work on it too! The first thing on my list is to take the initiative to get our Little Flowers work done the weekend prior to the meeting!!

Halloween Fun!!!

We had some serious Halloween FUN!!!!!

We started our festivites on Sunday at our best friend, Katie's church. The kids had an absolute blast!!! It's really soooo much fun to watch them play together.

Here is Rapunzel right before we left. Seriously - she lets me do anything I want to do with her hair, here she is sporting a waterfall braid.... this is my first attempt and OHHHHH I love it. She was feeling pretty good about the situation too! Here is the prettiest Rapunzel ever!!!

Here is where we met up with Tyler :)

Who doesn't love a train ride. Katie rode the train with the kids (I was going to go too but a little girl stole my seat boo) and while they were out riding, as they went over the speed bumps...Mikayla said outloud and with great (maybe a bit diva'ish) attitude... "ok, no more bumps, it's going to mess my hair up". LOL

Who doesn't love a dolphin ride?

The kids played games and just had an absolute blast!!! (The parents had a lot of fun watching the kids have fun too)

The fire truck was a HUGE hit and a great way for us to leave the fun, they got to hang out there for awhile and sit in all the seats and generally weren't rushed. Which made leaving a lot easier :)

Now it's the real Happy Halloween day!!!! My dad came over to our house (to not have to deal with his own barking dog...he came over to deal with our barking dogs LOL). Here we are just before trick-or-treating or as Mikayla says Chuck or treat!

We were PUMPED up to go!!! I'm really not sure who was more excited, her or me, Michael had a really great time too!!

We went over to Katie's (she's soooo close to us that we decided to go out together and what fun it was for Tyler to have a buddy to go with for his first time, Mikayla had a buddy too I just love that!!)

Here is our first Chuck or treat (that's what Mikayla calls it).

Would you guess they're having fun?? (she kept twirling her bucket and spilling her candy out and Tyler kept falling (poor guy) and spilling his candy out LOL)

I'm telling you, you could hear our group 5 blocks away with the squeels, the happy screeching (not only from the kids...yes...the adults that were with them were egging them on...just a little bit!) ;) but heck that's what it's about, it is SOOOOO much fun to see them have so much fun. Truly, I don't know who had the most fun!!

Here is a quick video of some of the happy screeches...they just couldn't contain themselves...it was awesome, it's dark and all you can see is their blinking safety lights (oooh the lights, Mikayla kept telling Tyler to hold his light up when a car went by so the driver would be sure to see them. So sure enough.... every time a car went by - they were both holding their buckets up. LOL)

After all of that fun, we went to one more house....oh wait...that's our house ;)

Mikayla is beside herself with the candy.... it's so funny, I'm 100% positive we won't eat it all especially considering that we still have Easter candy that I need to purge! LOL

I thought she would be as tired this morning as I am.... but no, she's raring to go and I'm the one with the Halloween Hangover..... (even though not one drop of alcohol was consumed).

The Remodel Reveal :)

So the guest room started like this.....

Of course, this is what I remember....... it seems like it was just last week!

and it now looks like this.....

Total cost for this remodel. Price of paint only!! We already had everything else. In the closet I have another dresser (full of linens - it used to be my mom's mom dresser) and also the full length jewelery box mirror that was Leslie's.

I am sooo happy with this room, I wish the pictures really showed how peaceful and comfortable this room is! I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! Michael and I were teasing that we might end up moving upstairs now!!