Presents and Cake

When Elijah had his party at The Little Gym they set up a platform for him to sit on so he'd be elevated in hopes that the kids could see the gifts. I took that idea and pushed our coffee table in front of the fireplace and had Alia sit on that while she opened her gifts. It worked for the most part :) The girls still gathered around but I think they could all see pretty well...with a few reminders to sit on their bottoms :)

Happy 6th Birthday, Alia!!! I love you dearly!
Right after this picture was taken her hat fell off and landed in the cupcake...and there was still a candle lit! opps! We didn't burn the house down. Ha!

This morning Alia asked if I made her a birthday hat. Her teacher had a hat made for her on her birthday (which was super duper cute!) and she wanted one, too. So this was what I whipped together. Pretty silly, if you ask me, but she loved it.

Such a happy moment.



Here's a group picture!!! The total ended up being 14 girls plus Elijah.

Silly faces!! Hilarious!

Summer Reading Program-Bubble Man!

Today was the kickoff of the library's Summer Reading Program. So after a trip to the gym and rushing home to shower and get dressed we headed out to the library! How does the program work? Each child reads (depending on their ability...Elijah will have books read to him, Alia will read her own books) 5 books, then brings in their book log to the library and gets a sticker and a prize. Then every week they have special performers on Thursdays.

Today's performer was the Bubble Man! I think I might have had as much fun as the kids :) He did some cool stuff with his bubbles.

This is the best I could do at keeping Ethan entertained. He struggled a bit, which means I struggled a bit...but overall he did good.


There were a ton of kids!! Can you find mine? My own version of Where's Waldo.

At the end he picked about 8 kids from the crowd to go into a bubble...amazingly he picked BOTH Alia and Elijah!

Here's Alia in her bubble!

And Elijah...I think he's trying to blow a bubble out of his bubble.

A moment in time

Last week when I was at Michaels I noticed that all of the stone kits were on sale (I think they still are, too!)...I've always wanted to make these of my kids...and so I decided that it would be a good summer project for the kids. :) This is the kit I got.

Notice me mixing the cement in an Easter bucket!? :) That's the best I could find and it worked perfectly! It wasn't too big to pour. Please disregard the mess you see in these pictures...the cleaning lady hasn't been to our house in a while. HA! cleaning lady...that's a good one!


Then you get to smooth out the wet cement...creating a good surface to work with.

Our kits came with stars and moons to put into the cement. I also found some clearance pieces of smoothed glass and let the big kids sprinkle it where they wanted-keeping the center clear for their hands.

Once the cement has hardened up a bit let your kids push their hands in! That's the real fun part!! I had them push pretty hard to make sure their handprints would stay. I don't have a picture of Ethan doing it because I had to hold him and put his hands in the cement QUICK! otherwise he would have cried. It was all over before he even knew what happened!


The final results!! I love them!!! I've always wanted stones like this. And now I have them :)
I might make it an annual tradition!

How cute are those little hands. They will never be that little again. *SIGH*

Rancho Notso Grande

Today's activity was a fun morning of berry picking! However, upon arrival at Rancho Notso Grande in Hanford, CA I opened my van door to this: a flat tire!! BUST! Now...it might not look so flat in this pic...and it wasn't FLAT to the ground...but it was definitely headed that direction! And with 3 kids in tow I wasn't about to take any chances. Thank God for AAA! I called and someone showed up within 30 minutes to put the spare on for me. And thanks to Dwight Hofer for staying with my car so we could get on with our picking!

(I won't mention the state of my backseat when I returned, however. Wasn't so impressed with the tow man's abilities...not to mention he kept insisting the tire was under the car...not on the side, where it was. I had to show him in the manual for him to believe me! But enough about that!)

Here is our MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) group getting instructions about what to do. We had quite a group!



Here's me and Ethan picking blueberries. Alia took this picture, pretty good, huh?

We brought home a small bag of blackberries. YUMMY!

By and far the kids enjoyed picking the blueberries the best! I think because they are easy to pull off...you know which ones to pick (just the blue ones!)...and they were lower to the ground. So we hung around the blueberries for a while.

Poor Ethan...he sat in the stroller for most of the picking. It was me and my three kids and I couldn't figure out how to pick and keep an eye on Ethan. Poor third child :( At any rate...I was super proud of myself for finally taking him out and letting he wander around. He's too little to understand the idea of picking the berries...but he did a good job staying with us. As good as a 19 month old can do.




Elijah was a master picker! He spent a long time kneeling down at one bush and quietly picking! Man...I need a blueberry bush in my backyard! I could just send him out there to pick and he'd spend a good 30 minutes out there! He's such a cutie pie.

And here's Alia with some blueberries (see Elijah in the back kneeling at his bush??)! she kept talking about how good the blueberries were. The best blueberries she's ever eaten!

Oh...my precious ones.

Organize! Organize!

Well...I figured since it's summer and there are moments that the kids actually play nicely together...I figured that I should start organizing the unorganized! :) This morning I was going to make a list of the areas to clean and organize (because...it feels good to check it off!) but as I began to think about the areas I realized...IT'S MY WHOLE HOUSE! The toys in that corner, the toys on the shelves, the toys in those drawers, this closet, this cupboard...the list goes on. So, I didn't write the list...and I decided to start with what bothered me the most (and what people can see! ha!).

So while the kids (all three!!!) were napping Jason and I tackled a few things in our living room. We have a train table with two drawers under it. Somehow :) all kinds of toys ended up in the drawers and it was driving me CRAZY! We emptied both drawers, cleaned them and in one drawer we put the wooden train set and in the other drawer we put the GeoTrax trains. Imagine! Trains stored in a train table! Who knew! :) It looks great! Once the kids woke up I gave them the lecture about what goes where. :) We'll see how well they listened.

THEN...we went to our shelf in our family room. It has 6 storage boxes and a drawer on the bottom. As we went through toys we made a variety of piles:

1. This pile was organized so the kids could take the stuff back to their room (where if belongs in the first place). For these piles, after Elijah woke up he took his CARS to the CARS box, the costumes to the toy chest and the Toy Story stuff in it's box. :) That helped them help me! Fabulous! They have hands and feet-why can't they help clean? ;)

2. The second pile is a SELL (translation JBF) pile! I see $$ when I look at this pile, do you?


3. The secret pile: TRASH!!!!!! I did the best I could to throw away stuff...who needs those McD's pieces? I kept this on the counter so no little eyes would see it.

Once all of that was finished I made some tags for the storage bins. Some might say I have a bin problem...and maybe I do...but if it makes me a happy mom, why not?

The tags I made with shrinky dinks. I happen to have some almond color shrinky dink paper so I made tags by writing what is in each bin. Once they were shrunk (is that a word??) I tied them on the appropriate bin with ribbon. If you know me I'll put ribbon on anything. It makes everything so much cuter.

This is the finished shelf. No, I didn't forget the top right bin...there's nothing in it yet! I have a tag ready for when it gets filled...don't worry.

And that's that!!! After the kiddos went to bed we also put away and sorted all of our DVDs and CDs. I didn't take pics (lucky you!) but it looks fresh and clean. Hmm..what's next, I wonder.

Toy Story Mania...oh...Party!

This year, after contemplating a lot of different options for Elijah's birthday we decided to have his party at The Little Gym. Since Elijah has been going there for Sports Class we figured it was a good option. AND IT WAS!! It was great! They organized everything! Lead the activities, set up for the party, cleaned up, passed out the food, wrote down the gift diary and even helped us take stuff out to the car! As a mom of 3 kids it was so nice to feel like I could take pictures and enjoy watching my birthday boy have fun. (They also provide the paper goods...but since Elijah wanted a Toy Story party we brought those)

Here's the table all set up for the party! Their balloons and tablecloths matched perfectly with our Toy Story stuff!

I also brought water bottles for the kids. I took off the wrapping and taped strips of cardstock in its place. I put Toy Story stickers on the cardstock. You can't see it but there's also a Toy Story sticker on the top of the bottle.



The goodie bags. Each friend took one home. Inside was a bunch of Toy Story stuff I found: lanyard, note pad, pencil, stickers, tatoo (what little boy-or girl-doesn't need a tatoo?) and fruit snacks. There's some great Toy Story stuff out there right now...Joann's, Michaels, Target, Dollar Tree!

This was the table everything was displayed on. Instead of cake I made alien cupcakes. See below for more info. :)

I brought the boys' box of Toy Story toys and used them for an added touch. We spread all of the figures around the table and on the extra table, too.

Elijah got a bunch of great things from all his buddies!!! He's playing with his Toy Story bubbles right now!!!



The best group picture I could get :) They were having so much fun hitting the balloons.

The birthday boy blowing out his candles.

All the kids had so much fun running around and doing the group activities! They were all non stop action the whole time...it was hard to take any decent pictures!!! :)

Here is Elijah with two of his buddies from preschool. You can't really see them because, well, they wouldn't stay still for a pic! :) They sure have fun together!

They made a train!


Alia, showing off her moves.

Here's Ethan on the balance beam! He was so apprehensive about walking on it...and once he moved, me moved VERY slowly!

Group time! Miss Taylor lead the birthday party! We love Miss Taylor!

Aliens, anyone?

For Elijah's 4th birthday party he chose the Toy Story theme. I searched the Internet for cute cupcake ideas and found this website with these adorable alien cupcakes! And so that's what I did! I LOVE how they turned out...super cute!!!

Elijah stood next to me this morning and watched me frost each one. He was so excited.



For the eyes I used mint mentos and dotted them with black icing. The mouths were black icing also.

For the ears I used a strip of sour apple candy belt (sort of like a fruit roll up). I cut these into leaf shapes and attached them to the side of the cupcakes.

Sour apple straws cut into 2 inch pieces were used for the antennae.

My first grader!

Today marked Alia's last day of Kindergarten!!! They had a big ice cream party for all the kids and their families. I was helping serve the ice cream so I don't have many pictures.

We were so blessed to have an amazing teacher for Alia! She has since become a friend of mine! A double blessing! Alia exceeded all expectations upon the end of Kindergarten and we are so proud of her. While I am a bit sad that she is growing up I am so eager to watch her become the girl God created her to be!