A Girls' Day Out

This Saturday we got the bad news that daddy had to go into work. Boo )o: To make the best of it, I decided to take the girls to use their free meal coupons they earned from the summer reading program at the library. We went to a fun restaurant and ate outside in the gorgeous weather. Our waiter was great, the food was great and so was the company. The only thing missing was daddy. After lunch we decided to explore the shopping area nearby that seemed to be having some sort of event going on. It turned out to be a summer festival with free bike helmets, free food samples, lots of goodies from the local police and fire departments and some sweet deals on rocks and gems from the local rock museum that we love. We had a great time and came with all sorts of neat stuff. The girls especially liked the rocks we found. And now Angela has a helmet that fits! Yeah for serendipity.

Later that day we went to the mall to visit the Lego store. Across from the Lego store was a dress and gown shop that the girls longed to go look at. I thought it would be fun to let them look around and challenged them to find a modest dress. This peach one below was the only one we could find besides the dresses that looked like "mother of the bride" dresses. There were some gorgeous dresses in there, sleeves just aren't in style. And holy cow were they all expensive. Most of them were around the same price as my wedding dress! I better learn how to sew quick because we could be in trouble!

Silly Loo

Angela fashioned this very silly mask out of a little toy in our messy drawer and some silly putty for a nose. Quite creative and very hilarious! (o: She looks like Gonzo.

Boycott

Sarah told me the other day, "Someday I'm going to lead a boycott, mom."
I asked her what she'd boycott and why.
She said, "I don't know, I just think it sounds so heroic."

A few days before, we were watching Whale Wars on Animal Planet and talked about how the Japanese should boycott whale meat so the whale hunters would stop killing whales. That must be where this train of thought started. (o:

Primary Talent Show

Our ward primary had a talent show last weekend. After discussing different ideas, the girls decided they wanted to dress like princesses and do a princess dance like they do at home all the time. Originally, the idea was for Sarah to play "I Know You" the waltz song from Sleeping Beauty. Angela and Natalie are always dancing while Sarah plays this or other pretty songs on the piano. But as it got closer, Natalie decided she needed the support of her big sister on the dance floor. So we recorded Sarah playing the song and all three girls danced a very professionally choreographed dance routine. (I have about zilch experience with this, so we all just made up very simple steps for them to do.)

It turned out so cute and the girls were proud of themselves for performing in front of such a large audience. They did great. Below is their ending pose! (o: It got lots of claps!

Watching the other numbers was lots of fun too!

Sarah was thrilled to do a special number with her primary Activity Day Girls group. (the 8-11 year old girls get to do bi-monthly activities together) Their awesome leader and one of my good friends, Angie, is so cute - she taught them all a Macarena dance number. Much more sophisticated choreography than I could come up with! (o: They all made matching T-shirts and hair and wristbands. As you can see, Sarah had a BALL! She had quite the moves too. Maybe I should sign her up for a dance class.

Impromptu Water Fights!

Every once in a while, my girls see an opportunity for a water fight and they seize it! It's usually when we are all outside and a friend comes by and we start chatting. On this particular day, we got to have Lauren over at our house for a little while. When Elizabeth came to get her, we got talking (surprise!) and the girls disappeared and reappeared in swimming suits. Lauren did not have a swimming suit, but didn't let that stop her. She got wet anyway and Elizabeth ended up just taking off her clothes and letting her run around in her underwear. It was so cute! (I got lots of cute pictures, but since this blog is public, I didn't want to post them.) Anyhow, the girls had a blast and laughed their heads off. It was one of those wonderful spontaneous moments that was such a happy memory. Plus it gave Elizabeth and I more time to visit! Daddy came home in the middle of all the fun and joined in. What a great night! I think we ended up ordering pizza that night because I didn't get dinner started on time. Bonus! (o:

The Latest Fashions

After school shopping this year, the girls had a fun idea that might become a new tradition. They wanted to model their new clothes for daddy and remembered that we have a Fashion Show curtain thinga-majig from Natalie's fashion birthday party a year and a half ago. So when we got home, we set it up and they modeled away. It was quite entertaining and they got lots of compliments from daddy. The fashion show thing has a sensor that plays upbeat "runway" music as you strut down the pink runway. I can hear it playing over and over when I see these pictures. The girls totally hammed it up as you can see...

It's hard to see, but Sarah is airborne for this picture. What amazing modeling moves.
This is so Natalie and makes me laugh out loud! The scarf is my favorite part of this outfit.

Angela and her new leotard. (o:

Matching hot pink zebra jackets were our splurge. They didn't need them, but have been the biggest hit for these fashionistas. Notice, they even have little ears on the hood. Ha!

Colorful Carnival for Loo

For Angela's fourth birthday, I decided it was time to finally throw her a friend party. Being the third child has perks and disadvantages. I was feeling guilty because Sarah has had birthday parties since she was 1 year old - but then, I didn't have other kids at the time (when Sarah was 1 and 2) and Angela has always had built in friends (her sisters) to celebrate with.

So that mother's guilt kicked in. And this time around I decided to make things "easy" on myself and just rent a pavillion at a park to host the party. I wouldn't have to clean the house or worry about messes there. But then I started thinking about a theme. I LOVE themes. I always have some sort of theme for parties and once I got going with the theme, I can't control myself. My idea for a simple party at the park exploded into a carnival. It's not my fault - I can't help it. I have a problem. These monsters just create themselves in my head.

It started with the idea to order a colorful parachute when I was ordering preschool supplies for the coming year. I thought it would be perfect party entertainment. Then I found cute colorful paper while shopping at the craft store for invitation supplies. The Colorful Carnival idea started coming to mind and here is what the party ended up like. A little chaotic, but tons of fun . . .

This merry go round was one of the big reasons why we picked this park. Angela LOVES it. I wish I got a video of the kids screaming and squealing on it. I'm pretty sure Kaitlin burned about 4,000 caleries twirling this thing around for the first part of the party.

Angela LOVED the parachute games.

One of the carnival stations was a cupcake decorating station. Each of the kids got 15 tickets to spend at the carnival and each activity was one ticket. They could also buy cotton candy for one ticket. Plus most of the prizes for the games were candy. It was a sugar FEST.

"Knock 'Em Down"

"Target Toss"

Yummy green cupcake . . . mmmmm (o:

Disappearing Candy game - a tootsie roll was hiding in one of the moving cups and had to be found.

Face painting fun! I love how Rylan's turned out. (o:

Sarah got a big kick out of getting glasses and a mustache!

Kaitlin at the cupcake decorating station. She was my lifesaver for the party! She helped me set up, take the girls to the bathroom, twirled the merry go round, helped clean up and probably a million other things I can't remember right now. Also, you can see above my centerpieces that I was very proud of, but never got a good picture of. They were big "Popcorn" bowls filled with popcorn, licorice and a boquet of balloons weighted down at the bottom.

Tina resting at the marble painting station because she was helping me so much. Cutting watermelon, picking up parachutes, fetching this and that, keeping me on track, oh, and incubating an 8 month old fetus at the same time! What a good friend! (o:

I also enlisted Tana to come help me at the party. She was great helping set up, running some of the games and cleaning up. I had so many great friends helping and friends' kids, little sisters, etc. Everyone helped make it such a fun time!

Our fun birthday setting. We had a blast!

Kaitlin told me that while taking Angela to the bathroom, Angela said with a huge smile (as her friends were screaming and laughing in the background), "Everyone is having fun at my party!" This made her so happy and that comment made all that work worth it! Most importantly, I think Angela had a pretty great day.

President Monson's Birthday

I read this idea today and wanted to share - it's a wonderful way to celebrate the prophet's birthday. Which is Friday, August 21st. I challenged our young women to do this and plan to do something with my own girls. President Monson's entire life is such a sweet example of Christ-like service to those he came into contact with. Read below his one request he would like for his birthday. Whether your a member or not, it's a great way to make the world a little better!

Picture taken by Chuck Wing, Deseret News

During an interview for an article on his birthday last year, the Church News asked President Thomas S. Monson to describe what he would consider the ideal gift that members worldwide could give him. Without a moment's hesitation he said, "Do something for someone else on that day to make his or her life better. Find someone who is having a hard time or is ill or lonely, and do something for them. That's all I would ask."

What a perfect gift idea.

Mantracker Family

I crack myself up. I wish I could show this picture with my real man, and our actual family, but as you all know, part of the deal of making our family life public was to keep my mysterious husband anonymous. (o: I love this picture of the girls. We were doing family pictures at the beach during the very brief time Hank* was able to come. We got some fun ones and I chose Mantracker for Hank's* face replacement because we are big fans of his show on the Science Discovery Channel. He he. (o:

Yes, I am Still Alive

A few very kind souls who humor me and actually read my blog have noticed that I have been MIA for quite some time. Almost 36 days to be exact. How did this happen? How did that much time pass so quickly and why have I been so lazy? I've kind of been rebelling. I want to enjoy our summer without feeling obligated to document every little thing. Who do I feel obligated to, I wonder? I am not narcissistic (thank you spell check on that one!) enough to think that people, nay, fans, were hounding my blog living in deep depression when day in and day out there was nothing new to satisfy their hunger. I do feel a little obliged to keep in touch with family and friends because I love feeling connected and having them as a part of my life - even if it is in cyberspace.

No, I feel obligated to my kids and myself to be better at keeping this up. After rebelling for a while - I only planned to take a two week "vacation" - I got overwhelmed with the prospect. In case you didn't notice I take a ginormous amount of pictures and I tend to blab like theirs no tomorrow. The mountain of memories to sift through has risen higher and higher. But then today as Angela was talking about her new "banastic" outfit (she says the word gymnastics almost like "banana") and I was thinking what a cute way to say gymnastics that was and how I love her funny way of saying things. I realized, it's those cute little things that I miss when I try to recall a month's worth of memories in one sitting.

So I am turning over a new leaf. Until I fall off the wagon again. I am recommitting and ready to climb this "mountain of memories" and take you on a journey of our family summer thus far.

Beach Bums

Recently, I got the idea to try and go tide-pooling at the beach on a particular day when the tide was going to be really low at a reasonable time. (Usually, the really good minus tides are early in the morning.) I made a plan to head to the beach on that day. I invited our friends, the Halls to join us and one of my young women and buddies, Kaitlin. Unfortunately, the morning didn't go quite as smooth as I had hoped and we left later than my original plan. The weather also was not what I envisioned on our beach trip. It was overcast and "misting" almost the whole time we were on the beach. My idyllic pictures of the kids playing in the sand and setting up a big blanket to relax on did not come true.

We attempted to see if we could make low tide, but by the time we got there it was well over. There was no way we were going to sit in the wet weather on the beach, so we mostly just strolled along and let the kids run in the water and get soaked. (o: It wasn't very cold, so they had a blast and they got REALLY wet. It was fun to watch them. The only one who didn't get into the water fun was Angela. She was terrified of the waves and didn't want anything to do with the ocean. My girls have all gone through this stage at about this age. Maybe next summer she'll join in.
Cute, soaked buddies!

Kaitlin was so much fun to have on our adventure. She's such a great sport and was a huge help! We love you Kaitlin!

Angela eventually warmed up to the beach - a very safe distance from those scary waves.

Kaitlin is an elephant ear connoisseur - and apparently these elephant ears ranked pretty high. (Saturday's Market are #1 FYI) This was our special treat to make up for the lame weather and having to do our picnic lunch in the parking lot. (Elephant ears are a northwest thing - basically huge scones with tons of cinnamon sugar, we tried one drizzled with chocolate. So healthy!)

The Hall's cute (and very wet!) cocker spaniel, Dash.

The kids discovered it is very fun to run down huge sand hills. I tried it and they were right!

So even though the day didn't go as I envisioned, we had some fun memories and lots of laughs. It was fun to spend the day with good friends. And really, no matter what the weather, I LOVE the beach.

Lauren's 3rd Birthday Party!

Lauren had her birthday party at the Children's Museum this year. Elizabeth always has the funnest (even though that's not a real word) parties!
The girls had a blast.

Heidi (waving in the back and the tallest below) is the cutest babysitter ever. She came to help and celebrate and made it so much fun for the kids. Look how orderly she kept the kids in line when we moved from one area to another! She got lots of compliments from other parents. She is one of my cute young women and I think she is just awesome!

One funny memory for adults only... During a story time, the girls climbed up in a pretend tree to "listen". I'm not sure why, but there was a wooden stick up in the tree and they could poke the stick through wooden holes in the tree. Natalie was poking her head through one larger hole and then stuck the stick way out at about crotch level and was waving it around. Obviously, not having any clue what this might look like to two "older" ladies like me and Angie - my good friend who was at the party too. We were stifling our giggles like we were in Jr. High again. Pretty funny.

Elizabeth always spoils the kids with tons of food and treats and fun decorations. They were a happy bunch!

After the party, I stayed with my girls and we played all afternoon. We spent about an hour and a half or maybe more in the clay room making creations! We even had them baked so they can be on permanent. Unfortunately, my camera battery died so I'll have to take pictures of our creations and add them later. (o: Thanks for a wonderful day Elizabeth!