Birthday Party for Royalty

This Saturdy we celebrated our friend Ava's 2nd Birthday. It was a dress up party of princes & princess'. The kids were so excited about getting ready for the party.

Cadence has a princess dress that she loves to borrow from Maggie, I told her that she had to ask permission from Maggie if she could wear it to the party. The video is of their phone conversation. They are so cute!

Even Isabelle dressed up for the first time. :)

Here are all the kids at the party.

Ava's grandma made the adorable barbie cake.

Of course what is a prince to do but...sword fight!

Carnival Season

Dylan's school had a fundraiser carnival this week. They had homemade games & food goodies. Israel, Kati, Maggie & Eli all came out for the fun. This picture is of the kids being in jail, they had to wait 5 minutes to get out or pay 2 more tickets. :)

Trailer ride

Both the girls had their faces painted and their nails polished in the "beauty salon".

Last weekend our neighborhood had a block party. They actually block off Indian School road from 32nd st to38th St and they have people with booths set up, food, band playing & some performances. We went with our neighbor Ali and her kids, Ana & Emerson.

It was a lot of fun and the weather was perfect! The picture below is of all of us.

I think this was the first time (at least that I can remember) that Isabelle played with a balloon. She loved it, she would jerk the string all around to make it fly around all over the place.

It was great to do something different and enjoy our neighborhood. I love where we live!

Playground in the Bedroom??

I knew that the day would someday come that I would want to get bunkbeds for the girls' room. Last week I was watching Craigslist for a new dresser and came across a bed for super cheap ($30), so we got a new bed for the girls a little earlier than expected. The picture below is of the girls watching me put it together and loving on each other. :)

The bed is actually a loft bed so it is a little shorter than a normal bunkbed and it has a slide attached. The kids now call the girls' room the playground. It has been hours of fun for them already!


Isabelle looks like she is scared but she actually loves going down. :)

Isabelle is still in her crib for now...She actually loves hanging out in her bed even when she is awake. I plan on taking advantage of her being content in her crib...knowing she can't get out. :)

Tumbling Recital

Last friday Cadence had her tumbling recital. I was really proud of her for always participating in class, I was a bit worried when we started because she is usually on the shy side.

She had a audience of daddy, both grandma's, Aunt Jolene & cousin Janae!

Picture below is of the warm up stretching.

Somersaults!
Balance beam. Her teacher had to remind her to look down instead of at us. :)


Handstands

Graduating certificate!

Happy Birthday Grandpa R

We celebrated Mark's dad's 64th birthday over the weekend.

The kids are checking out his gifts...and wanting some of the See's candy. :)

It is a tradition to have icecream cake for birthdays. Of course the kids love this...even Isabelle had a whole piece to herself (she moaned in delight after each bite :)).

More painting projects

This is my most recent dresser redo. I really like the lines on this dresser and it turned out wonderful...my favorite so far. I distressed the edges with sandpaper & spray painted the handles from a bronze color to silver. I forgot to take a before picture, but it was actually in excellent condition and a nice looking dresser before I painted it (just a bit dated). The best part is I only paid $35 for it!

The two pictures below is dresser #2. It ended up being a bit of work because the drawer slides were in terrible condition...I guess I'm learning what to look for when buying a cheap dresser as I do these projects. :) It was my first try at glazing. It is painted red with a black glaze overlay. I really liked using the glaze (thank you drea for your leftovers :)) and I am sure I'll use it in the future. This one took a bit to sell...but it did eventually sell and the person who bought it thought it was perfect and was so excited about the color. :)

Last is a file cabinet that my parents were getting rid of. I've been wanting one at our house, so I gave it a makeover as well.

Just a simple black with distressed edging & new handles. It works great and looks sooooo different!

Weekend of Candy...

Mark's work had a dress up and bring the kids in to play little games & get candy on Friday. The employees could dress up as well...and as you can see from the picture below, Mark went all out on his "coach" outfit. Complete with shaving his head into a "cul de sac" and a fake mustache! Most people when first looking at him didn't even realize it was him. Needless to say he won 1st place at the work competition ($100 gift card!) :)

Sunday night we stayed home and passed out candy. The picture below is Dylan in the Superman/Ninga outfit and our next door neighbor Emerson. They had so much fun running around and passing out the candy


Maggie came over on Sunday night also. She isn't a princess as you might think...she is Queen Esther, that she made very clear when asked. :)

Isabelle even helped with handing out candy, or at least digging in the bowl and carrying it around with her.

We set up a projector and had a movie showing on the garage door. It was fun entertainment for the kids, some kids that came would get so distracted watching the movie they would forget to pick up the candy :)

We have so many people come to the neighborhood, at one point I looked up and I think there were probably around 30 people in our driveway...no exaggeration!

These two pictures are from Mark's work party on Friday. Maggie came (that day as a princess) and we also ran into our other friends Noah & Ava.

The kids have had their fill of candy and keep wanting more!