It's a CARNIVAL!

This weekend we had a carnival party for Aidan and Liv's birthday. It is so hard to be excited about planning another huge party when you are still trying to find time to take your Christmas tree down, but they really wanted to have a little friend party. And you know how I roll...as hard as I try to scale things down it never happens because my brain goes crazy thinking up all these things I could do and I can't sleep at night because I'm creating it in my head all night long.

Instead of doing a big elaborate cake this year I did cupcakes. We had all the healthy carnival food...corndogs, popcorn, cotton candy, animal crackers and candy. I made a big red and white circus tent in the middle of the room with a lion jumping through a hoop and made little miniature top hats for all the kids.

I had a lady come to entertain the kids. It is slim pickins here in St. George. I was looking for someone to tie balloon animals. One person never called back and this was the other. She did a little I spy game, a magic show (she is breaking an egg in a bottomless cup over Kelsee's head below), and then she tied balloon animals for all the kids and hats for Aidan and Liv. You could tell she didn't have a ton of experience, but the kids still thought she was great.

I also set up a little photo booth and made little mustaches on a stick for the kids to take silly photos. I enlisted the help of my sweet neighbor Kali to take all the pictures. They turned out really cute and I will post them when I download them from her camera...Thanks Kali!

The star of the show was my stage hand (Al) who always works so tirelessly to help me with all these crazy ideas and gets none of the credit. He spent lots of time helping me set up and then spent the rest of the afternoon tearing it all down and cleaning up while I went to a baby shower. He really is the best thing that ever happened to me and I don't know what I would do without him.

I know I've been awful at keeping all of you updated so I am really going to try and do "flashback Friday's" every once and a while to catch you up on all of the happenings of 2010

I'm 5, I'm 5, I'm 5!!!

That is what I heard as little feet came running down the hall and into my bedroom at the crack of dawn the morning of the big day. You have never met 2 little people so excited to turn 5. They have been talking about it for months. All day long Aidan would say, "Mom, I'm 5. Am I really 5 mom. I mean mom, am I really, really 5?" It was a hard day for me. I hate how quickly they grow and the realization that my babies are no longer babies, but I couldn't stop smiling at their excitement. They still tell every random stranger everywhere we go, " Hey, did you know I'm 5?".

They chose to celebrate by going to "the yummy roll place" (Texas Roadhouse) and because Aidan wanted to sit up on the horse in front of everyone. he asked the waiter as soon as he came over to our table when he was going to bring the horse over for him. Olivia wanted nothing to do with it though. She was just worried about wearing her birthday skirt she picked out and lipstick.

After dinner we came home and opened presents. They both wanted Heely's (thanks Mom and Jamie). Now I just hope they don't break a hip. We plan on taking several trips to Costco where they can hold on to the cart and figure out how to use them.

Aidan got a Nerf laser tag set and as you can see he and Al are already putting it to good use.

Olivia got a play kitchen which I wrote about below.

Thank you to all our friends a family for all the sweet cards, gifts, and phone calls. They loved every one of them!

Who needs Pottery Barn?

Thank goodness I have a husband who is willing to go along with all of my project ideas because I never could have done this without him...thanks babe!

So I really wanted Olivia to have a play kitchen. The girl loves to pretend! I really loved the pottery barn kitchens, but who really pays $750 for that?

So in the middle of moving and just coming off of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I convinced Al to help me build this for Olivia for her birthday.

We started with a couple of sheets of plywood from the hardware store and several hours later this is what we came up with. I can never let go of something until it is complete so in my sleeplessness (is that a word) I would design and build this.

I grew up around power tools and my dad taught me how to use a band saw by the time I was maybe 11. I love the smell of fresh cut wood and turning the pieces into creations...and just in case you were wondering I took best of show in wood shop class in middle school. I also grew up sitting by my mom at her sewing machine and watching her turn fabric into beautiful dresses. So thanks to both of them I learned how to build and sew.

I have to give most of the credit to Al though, he spent hours and hours on this and I did most of the running to store, ordering parts and pieces off of ebay and the "cosmetics" of it. It was really fun to work on this project with him and Liv loves it!!!