I'm not the smartest tool in the box...

So for the LONGEST time I've thought that no one reads our blog any more or comments. However, I just realized that people HAVE commented, I just haven't been receiving the e-mail notifications that I have a new comment! See, my e-mail got hacked a few months ago and I had to get a new e-mail address. I THOUGHT I had changed my e-mail address on my blogspot account, but apparently you also have to change it on your comments account page to receive your comment notifications... umm, yeah... I finally noticed the problem today and I had a LOT of comments that I had never seen! So thanks for all of your comments people! I like knowing that SOMEONE still reads the blog! (And Grandma Becky, I think I fixed my problem now, so you should be able to reply to the posts and I should get them again!).

Random Update

I haven’t posted anything since Makenna’s birthday, yet I still don’t really have anything/pictures to post about!

Let’s see, on our last Play and Learn we had a “Fun Day” and the kids were able to play with all the toys at the center. They had a BLAST playing on the “boat” with their friends:

Afterwards, we went with those some friends to Krispy Kreme to get a doughnut. My kind of outing! : )

We had really beautiful weather for about a week. One day while Makenna was at dance, we went to the park to play. Austin got off early that day, so this was how Max played at the park:

The little goof ball wouldn’t leave his dad’s sight! He just sat in his lap eating snacks the whole time. Way to enjoy the beautiful day, Max! ; )

After dance that day we picked up Makenna and then came back to the park for an hour or so. Some of our friends came to the park with us and we (minus Max who wouldn’t get off Dad still) had a really good time playing in the sunshine.

On Monday night, some girl friends and I went to a later showing of Hunger Games. I REALLY enjoyed the movie and getting to have a Girl’s Night Out. I was super impressed with how like the book the movie was! I was also impressed with the acting. MUCH better movie than the Twilight movies. ; )

This morning, I attempted to do a “Katniss” style braid on Makenna:

 

I didn’t do a great job controlling the flyaways, but still a cute hairstyle on a cute little girl!

This morning we also went to the library to see a puppet show. Once again, Austin got off early and was able to join us.

    

It was actually a pretty cute show and the kids seemed to enjoy it.

Tomorrow Austin leaves to go to Arizona for a test and will be gone until Saturday. Then, on Monday, he starts a new rotation. This time he will be on general surgery and from what we have heard, he will be working from 6 am until 6 pm every day. This is going to be a big change from this month when we had him home so much!!!

Makenna’s Birthday Party, Part 2

Before I tell about Makenna’s birthday party, I have to make a confession: I took about 98% of my ideas for this party from here. Why recreate the wheel, eh? : ) I have to give a big SHOUT out to the girl who’s party I just TOTALLY recreated! Thank you for all of your amazing ideas and for posting them for others to see!

When the girls arrived at the party, their first step was to pick out a tutu and wings and get dressed in them.

Next, they went over to the “Pretty Pixie Salon” to get their nails painted, put on their eye shadow and lip gloss, and put on their crowns.

 

Next the girls went over to the “Fairy Forest” to get their pictures taken. I will include the pictures of each girl with their thank you card.

While waiting on all of the girls to get dressed and get their pictures taken, the other girls were able to decorate their own little goody bags:

   

Then the girls all sat down and listened to a Tinkerbell-book-on-CD (and played with the baby!):

 

After the story, I told the girls that they were now dressed like fairies, but they were missing something: their magic wands! I presented each girl with her own magic wand and we spun around three times saying, “I do believe in fairies! I do believe in fairies!”

Now that they were dressed like fairies with their own fairy wands, it was time to DANCE like a fairy!

The girls were SO cute dancing to Makenna’s Just Dance for Kids game:

    

After dancing like fairies, they needed one more thing to be TRUE fairies… pixie dust! We used different colored glitter to make our own Pixie Dust necklaces:

 

By this point everyone was ready for a little snack, so we went ahead and stopped and had a fairy picnic.

Makenna’s Tinkerbell cake:

For snack we had cake, ice cream, fairy salad (mini goldfish, mini colorful marshmallows, and flower-shaped fruit snacks), and fairy punch (Sprite with cherry flavoring added):

 

We sung happy birthday to Makenna and she blew out her candles:

And then the girls headed back to the Fairy Forest to have their picnic:

After our picnic, we had one more craft. This time the girls made little fairy  dolls:

Then Makenna opened up all of her presents from her cute little fairy friends:

     

Makenna finished up her party by passing out her “thank yous” to all of her guests:

 

I think the party turned out really nice. Makenna LOVED all of her presents and also she really just enjoyed playing fairies with her friends! Thanks to all of our guests who joined us, and thank you also to all of the moms (and the dad!) who stayed to help with everything!!! Thanks also to Austin who took Max away for the afternoon so we could have the party in peace. : )

Makenna’s Birthday Party, Part 1

Makenna finally had her birthday party today (we were only 10 days after her birthday this year—we are getting better!). We didn’t have it on her actual birthday because we wanted Austin to be able to help out with Max. So that left doing it on a Saturday. But the next Saturday was the Relief Society Conference and then the next I had a baby shower to attend… but today was finally a day that worked for us!

This year we had a Fairy party. For the invitations, we made a fairy doll:

 

The inside opened up to a pop-up fairy:

(The back of the fairy had all of the party info on it, but I’m pretty sure I don’t need my address, phone number, and e-mail address out there for the world to see!)

I had a retreat this weekend for all of the Young Women Camp directors, so I had to set up all of the decorations for the party on Thursday and Friday morning before I left.

The front door:

 

On the back of the front door:

Decorations in the front room:

In the front room we had our “Fairy Forest”:

 

Decorations in the dining room/kitchen:

     

Waiting on the table were goody bags with a Tinkerbell coloring picture on them, Tinkerbell stickers, and crayons:

The food table:

Decorations in the livingroom:

The presents area:

The “Pretty Pixie Salon”:

Finger nail polish, eye make-up, lipgloss:

Fairy Crowns:

For each of the fairies, we had a tutu and fairy wings. Makenna, as the birthday girl, got to pick which ones she wanted first.

She, of course, picked a pink skirt:

We were able to get her name put on her fairy wings:

On the fireplace, we laid out all of the other tutus and wings for the girls to each choose her favorite:

  

Also in the kitchen we had a basket of Makenna’s “thank you” gifts for her friends who attended her party:

Stay tuned for party 2—the party itself!