B-Day Drama

There's been a lot of celebrating going on over here. Three birthdays down with one more to go in March (Cannon's). I really wanted to take a break from parties this year but after months of intense begging, pleading, tears, and such they wore me down. I gave them 10 bucks and 2 choices: Keep it all for yourself. Or have a party and spend it on your guests. What did they choose? The latter-- way too quickly. Obviously the stakes weren't high enough.

Here's a synopsis of all the events:

Brynn's birthday #7: She invited a few friends over for an American Girl doll party. Everyone brought a favorite doll. They rotated around to different doll stations: hair salon, Dr. office, etc. Brynn spent her $10 on cupcake holders for her guests to take home. The girls ate and decorated cupcakes with gobs of frosting, sprinkles and candy. Brynn and her friends were easy to please and they had a good time.

Adrie's birthday #5:

Breakfast in bed (Trix.)

She had 4 friends over for a candy game. She spent her $10 on beaded bracelet kits. They proved a bit frustrating for some little hands but in the end they had some nice sparkly bling to wear home. They spent the rest of the time happily playing with all of Adrie's new presents. I love this age.

Kate's birthday #9: This is the age where Mom's great party planning ideas come to heads with Kate's great party planning ideas. It came to blows. Kate spent her $10 on storebought invitations and wooden block photo holders that the girls could paint. She also paid for the donuts. That we all agreed on--it was what else to do with 1o 8-9 year olds that we didn't agree on. I found an idea online that I thought was great: send them out of the house on a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood. Only instead of collecting useless things like paper clips they could support our ward humanitarian project and collect a few supplies for the orphans in Haiti e.g. a bar of soap, shampoo, TP, etc. First team back to home base wins--and so do the orphans right? Wrong. Kate thought this idea was HORRID. Maybe you do too... Anyway, at the suggestion of one of her friends they ended up playing a dance freeze tag kind of game. It was a hard crowd. I think they could have benefited from doing a little service but what do I know I'm just a nerdy mom. Sheesh. I know this is just the start of things to come--wait until we have to plan her wedding!@#!*

For her birthday she got a desk for her future room in the basement(pictured above because it hasn't arrived in the mail yet) and my old camera. I upgraded to a Canon powershot 12.1 mpx that was a bargain on amazon for $129.

Seriously next year I'm stickin to my guns. Enough already. No parties. We'll have some happy family times and spend the money on the orphans in Haiti.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALL MY GIRLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do your kids get birthday parties every year or do you pay your kids off and if so how much--ha ha?

A Dose of Vitamin D

It's that time of year when I get a serious case of travel bug and I HAVE TO GO SOMEWHERE.
I shouldn't do this to myself but I browsed the travel section of the paper. Even China was looking good. Pretty much everywhere was looking good except Antarctica (no travel deals there anyway.)

Luckily, we don't have to drive far to experience a complete change of scenery and change of weather. Yes, thank goodness for warm and sunny St. George! We spent an extended weekend with family in one of our favorite spots. The first day we hiked through Zion's National Park--nature at it's finest. The most exciting thing besides all the huge cliffs and water was that we spotted a deer munching on branches. She wasn't but 20 feet from us and didn't even seem to care that we were there! I tried to share the excitement with some other passersby but when I whispered to them and pointed to the bushes they said with an accent, "Is okay, yah!" Obviously, English was not their native tongue and they had no clue what I was saying. They missed their moment with the deer.

Zion's was spectacular. We didn't get around too much with 4 little ones and muddy trails but what we did see was awesome. The girls found quiet spots by the river to draw pictures in their nature journals. I loved Adria's picture of a huge towering rock with an arrow pointing to the top and the explanation, "a place you can fall off."

We had a fun time hanging out with family--Thanks Q and T! Brandon enjoyed golf, the ladies went shopping, cousins played together. We had to go to the cool Euro park again. The grand finale of the weekend was the "Awesome Aquatic Center." This was like swimming pool heaven for our kids: fountains, slides, a lazy river.

Thank goodness we had all these sunny memories to hold on to as we arrived back home to our snow covered neighborhood. Vitamin D sure does a body good.

(Wish I had some photos but I haven't figured out how to download them from my new camera yet... )