Abree turns 4!

This week Abree had a birthday. My baby turned 4!

I can't believe it.

Some of her favorite gifts were; Dora's twin baby sister/brother dolls, a princess clock from Grandpa Waite, and Snow White dress up shoes.
Abree requested that she have a Snow White cake. (This isn't my best birthday cake decor job. It's far, far from it. I'm even a little embarrassed to show it.)But Snow White is on there. :o) When she saw her cake in the morning, she HAD to go get on her Snow White dress-up.
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On Monday, we all gathered for our monthly big family FHE. We had a lesson on prayer, talked about conference, found out Tim and Karen are going to have their 3rd little girl, Abree opened some b-day gifts and we sang Happy Birthday and had cupcakes.
Then some of us decorated gingerbread Halloween houses. These were fun. Ours had taken a bad fall, so I had to piece it back together. (Kind of a hard puzzzle actually.) But I pretended that it added to the "creepy" affect of the house and covered most of the broken area with frosting.
We are so blessed to have so many great family members so close. We love our family and look forward to each time we get together. We really do like each other and I'm finding out that, that is not always the case in some families. Love you guys! Next get together: Saturday... BSU football game... our house. See you there!

The Long and the Short of it...

The other day, I was on the computer (surprise, surprise) and Abree came up to me and told me she had done her hair. She said, "Look mom, I made my piggytails all by myself!" Wow, she had actually done a very nice 3 year old job of it, so we took a picture. I told you she was 3, going on 13!
Then on Wednesday, we went over to Aunt Tawnya's house and she got a new do. We cut her hair short and gave her bangs. She was SO excited to have bangs (funny pre-pre-teen girl). She felt SO beautiful and kept flipping her hair and smoothing it behind her ears.
She walked around for the next 3 days with an aire about her... the beautiful princess is gracing you with her presence.
It's so nice that her hair actually has a "style" now. It was getting so long and stringy.

Finally!

Last Tuesday, we FINALLY got pre-school started. (I say finally, because Abree was anxious and ready, more than a month ago.) We have 6 cute girls in our pre-school this year. They are all so sweet and have made friends easily and quickly.

This week we learned about the letter B and the number 1.

Abree

"B is for Butterfly". We made butterfly wings using to big letter B's, back to back. The girls decorated them with stickers and then we stapled elastic straps to them, to be worn like a backpack.
Lauren

Josey
Andi
Emylie

Audrey
Each girl brought a towel to sit on for "circle time". This is an awesome idea. Last year, we didn't use towels. It's so nice to be able to say, "Abree, please sit down on your spot." It helps not to be too crowded by little faces, when reading stories or doing activities at circle time.
We all contributed to a pre-school supply bin; crayons, scissors, pencils, glue, weather chart, calendar, ice cream colors, name plates, playdough, etc. This will be passed as each mom takes their turn teaching. I love this idea and think it will be a very valuable thing.

Jaime's Baby Shower/Birthday Party

Last Tuesday, I co-hosted a party for my friend Jaime. It was a Baby Shower AND a Birthday party. (Jaime's birthday is Christmas Eve and never gets to celebrate with friends. Everyone wants to hang out with their families that day, go figure.)
We hung flower balloons from the ceiling.
I made 2 banners. One said, "Welcome Baby Blaisdell" (Jaime's last name) and the other said, "Happy Birthday Jaime".
Yummy refreshments: apples, carmel dip, candies, chocolate, cream puffs, punch and AWESOME pumpkin bars made by my co-host and good friend Mandy. I believe the pumpkin bars were the highlight of the refreshment table.
Great job Mandy! Requests have been made for the recipe.

Since Jaime isn't finding out the gender of the baby, and this is her 4th kiddo, I decided to make a diaper cake and have everyone bring some sort of baby toiletry or toy.
On to the ever FUN baby shower games...
First, we "made babies". I gave everyone a peach-colored ball of playdough and 5 minutes to sculpt the cutest baby they could. Then had Jaime judge the winner.
Here's the winner. I call it "Budda Baby"...just look at that tummy!

After "makin' babies", we had to deliver them. I froze these little plastic babies in a tiny cup. The participants had to melt the babies out of the ice to deliver their baby. It was a "natural delivery", so there was no sucking or biting them out. :o)
Next game, was to find out if Jaime was having a boy or girl. I randomly passed out these little bags of blue and pink jellybeans. Then I had Jaime give a number between 1 and 12 (the amount of bags). Then they opened their bags and looked at the number inside. Jaime guessed #7, so the bag with the #7, is supposed to predict the sex of the baby. It was blue! The person who had the winning number, also shared their favorite baby name.


Jaime is truly struggling with naming this baby, so I thought our last game should help her out. I gave everyone a paper with the letters A-Z. Then I gave them 2 minutes to come up with baby names beginning with each letter of the alphabet. At the end of 2 minutes, we shared our answers and crossed off the ones that were the same (Scattagories style). The person with the most names left won. Our winner had 20 original names!
Since this was also a birthday party, I baked Jaime a huge cupcake cake. We sang her Happy Birthday and had her blow out the candle. When making her wish she said, "And it BETTER come true!" Gee, wonder what she wished for?

I also had everyone donate money toward a gift card to one of her favorite home decor stores... "Graples" or "Real Deals". Jaime chose "Real Deals", so on Thursday, I went and got a gift card there. She had lots of participation/donation toward the gift card, so she'll have a lot of fun spending it. I hope I'm invited to tag along. I'm excited to see what she finds. :o)

Ward Tailgate Party

Last Saturday, our ward had a "tailgate party". We were all supposed to dress up in our favorite sports team attire and decorate our vehicles. Our team was BSU Broncos...of course! This was my attempt to make our van look like Buster the Bronco. Ok, he looks more like a reindeer or kangaroo, but I tried. Unfortunately it was raining so hard that day, we didn't get the decorated car to the church and the party was taken inside. It was a little crowed, but still lots of fun. Our new ward is SO friendly and sweet.
GO BRONCOS!

Cute Lunch Organization

I think we should all do our kids a favor and teach them to be self-reliant. Ok, I have to admit...it benefits me also.

When Rylee was about to go into Kindergarten, I bought her an alarm clock. I told her that when it rang, in the morning, she should get up, get dressed and go eat breakfast. This allowed me to get a few extra ZZZZ's and not to have to nag her out of bed. The other kids are following suit, although it doesn't come as easily to them.

Part of this taught self-reliance is having them make their own school lunches. I provide the food, they make and take the lunch (hopefully not forgetting it in the fridge or on the counter). I was recently inspired by a blog I was reading, about how each child having their own container. So I bought some little crates, from the dollar store, to fit into our kitchen pantry. I fill the crates, at the beginning of the week, for the whole week. So they have to regulate how much or how little they use each day. Once their lunch snacks are gone...they're gone. (Although there are always less fun ingredients on hand like carrots.)

At first there were no names on the crates, so it was easy to "borrow" (or steal) out of one another's crate. I put an end to the no-name crates in a cute, crafty way. Hopefully it will cut down on the "borrowing".

Cute crates



I think Treyson's is my favorite. I like the colors and the buttons.

See how they fit so nicely in the pantry.