Grant's 2nd Birthday.....whoa!

Grant has really been into Cars lately. He wants to watch Cars & Mater's Tall Tales everyday......and multiple times if we let him. He didn't have any of the cars from the movie, so we had to get him a Cars cake for his birthday. In Grant's words, here are "Queen" & "May-ner". :) You can see on his cake where he set on of his little "Lou-gees". He was so excited when he saw his cake.

A few more friends from Radiator Springs

This is a picture from the 2nd lighting. He blew out the candles before we finished singing to him, and in his defense, we were singing waaaaaaaay to slow. Slow for anyone, but especially an anxious 2 year old. :) He's been looking forward to blowing out candles & the Happy Birthday song since Caroline's birthday in December. For some reason his little mind understood the whole birthday thing.

Photo op with the cousins.

Cheese! He loves when we get the camera out.

We weren't sure if he would actually eat any of his cake and ice cream,
but I guess this proves that he did.

I know this is a little cliche, but where did the time go???
How is my baby 2 years old now? He's been so much fun.
I'm so glad he came to our family!

St. Patrick's Day

Here are a few pictures from our St. Patrick's Day dinner.

We had our annual St. Patrick's Day dinner, but we added a fun activity this year. I found a list of things that had to do with St. Patty's Day on the internet. The girls went on a crazy scavenger hunt around the house. They were running, and screaming, and laughing. Grant was having a blast watching them.....so was I. I couldn't help laughing myself. The prize was a "pot of gold". I found a mini dutch oven at Smith & Edwards and filled it with chocolate coins, ring pops, and candy necklaces. They were excited for the prize. We didn't do a full green dinner because that hasn't worked so well in the past. We had Turkey Steaks & mashed potatoes, salad with Green Goddess dressing, celery, kiwi fruit, green grapes, green rolls, sprite, and lime sherbet. I also tried something new that I found on a blog.....rainbow cupcakes. I mixed up white cake batter then separated into 5 cups. I dyed the batter red, orange, yellow, green & blue. I layered the batter into the cupcake pans. They ended up looking tie-dyed. I topped them with vanilla frosting for the "cloud" part. The kids thought they were a lot of fun! I have to admit I was excited how they turned out. :) I think we'll have to make those a new tradition. We even had Lucky Charms for breakfast. Gotta keep it simple for mornings at our house. :) I LOVE St. Patrick's Day! I love getting dressed up in green! I get so excited about it every year. Can't wait til next year!

Grant enjoying his cupcake. :)

Auburn & her cupcake flag collection.

Laurens "tie-dyed" cupcake.

Cheese!!!!

Kiss me, I'm part Irish. ;)

Valentine's Day

By the time Valentine's Day rolled around this year, I was getting pretty sick of pink and red. We had been bagging shred for Brook's work since December, and then Mel and I helped them put kits together to ship out to Walmart stores. They sell kits to put gift baskets together. They also do balloon kits...the type that you can put flowers or gifts inside. The kids loved to get in the bagged shred like it was a ball pit. :)

These pictures were technically on Valentine's Day. It was the day before....a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. The temperatures got up to the 60's so we took a walk around the neighborhood behind us, and then up to Grandma Glade's house. All the kids were in the mood for pictures, so I took advantage of the opportunity.

Lauren was kind of sad that they don't do parties at the Jr. High, but I did chaperon at the dance of Friday before V-Day. Her friend talked her into staying for the dance after school. It was the first time she went to a dance at the school. For me it brought back awkward memories. :)

This was a rare occasion. Lauren actually wanted a picture taken with Grant. :)

I went and helped with the V-Day party in Auburn's class on Monday. We borrowed mom's Chinese soup bowls, put candy conversation hearts in them, and raced to see who could get the most hearts out of the bowl with chopsticks in one minute. Most of the kids really had fun and wanted to keep racing.

The girls requested our annual Valentine's Day breakfast. We had heart shaped pancakes, well at least the few that worked out, bacon, and home-made hot chocolate. One of the pancakes turned out funny and looked like a picture, and when I went to get my camera to take a picture of it, Grant snatched it up and ate it. Crazy kid! For dinner we got heart shaped pizzas from Papa Murphy's and I made raspberry jello jigglers and heart shaped ice cubes for our root beer.
We decided after all of the work we did for Brook's work, we would do the kids each a Valentine's gift in a balloon. We just had simple things like gum, chocolates, a dvd, and a cd for the girls. Auburn got a milk chocolate Lindt bar, the Veggie Tales dvd, Sweet Pea Beauty, and the first Selena Gomez cd. Lauren got some milk chocolate Lindt truffles, the Despicable Me dvd, and Selena's 2nd cd. Grant got gummi bears and the Mater's Tall Tales dvd, which he is addicted to now. :)

Arizona or Bust

My parents are heading to Polacca, Arizona for their mission today. I feel a little like an orphan even though they're coming back in 8 months. I'm really excited for all the amazing experiences they're going to have. They're going down there to live among the Hopi people to teach them how to grow their own gardens, can, and do family history. It's the perfect mission for my parents. I have a feeling that they're going to have a hard time coming home when it's over. Last night Auburn said she already missed them even though they hadn't left yet. Thank goodness for letters, email, Facebook, and Skype. :)

Grant's 1st Birthday

My baby boy turned 1 yesterday. I can't believe how quickly this year has gone by. He has brought a lot of joy to our family. He has such a cute smile and funny laugh. He loves to make messes....it seems like he enjoys emptying out laundry and toy baskets. He also loves his bottle and always has to mooch off of anyone with a plate of food. I love that he isn't a picky eater, (at least not yet) he'll eat almost anything. We went to a buffet place the other night because I was craving soup, and he was eating vegetables of all sorts, chicken, rolls, mac & cheese, etc. He started walking recently, and still gets excited when he can walk across a room. I love his wobbly little walk. He digs his toes down into the carpet to try to keep his balance. He loves to be tossed in the air, and he loves to play in his play tent. He scratches the sides of the tent just like Lauren used to. He gets so excited that he knocks it over and laughs. Even though Lauren doesn't pay much attention to him, he loves to follow her around and smile at her. Just like Auburn, he adores her. :) His nicknames are: bubba & tootie. I call him tootie bootie a lot.....poor kid is going to grow up thinking his name is tootie. He says dada, mama, hi, and hot. We love him so much. Happy Birthday little Grant!!

(Since I only have a film camera right now, I'll have to post his birthday pictures after we get them developed.)

Happy St. Patrick's Day

May those who love us, love us

And those who don't love us,

May God turn their hearts

And if he can't turn their hearts,

May he turn their ankles

So we will know them by their limping!

I saw this Irish Blessing ages ago and loved it. I was looking for it so I could post it on Facebook on St. Patrick's Day. Luckily I found it today on my first search. :)

We had a pretty nice day today. I thought about making green eggs and ham for breakfast, but the girls won't eat eggs anymore. Plus I didn't have any ham at home anyway. :) Tonight I thought it would have been fun if I would have thought ahead and bought Lucky Charms cereal. Oh well.

One year I made a green dinner with green mashed potatoes and green gravy. The kids wouldn't eat it so I decided to try a different approach this year. I had a nice green salad, green grapes, celery and dip (Grant loved the grapes & celery), green kool-aid with lemon lime soda, green jello (which we haven't touched yet), green rolls (that I bought at the grocery store), mashed potatoes, and ham. I told the kids that we had potatoes because of the potato famine that brought millions of Irish immigrants to the US. I never got around to telling them about the ham (you know....the whole breakfast idea). If was fun to be around the table with my family eating on green plates and drinking from green cups. I want to do more things like that for them. I like St. Patrick's Day because it's a holiday that doesn't hold huge expectations, but you can make it a lot of fun with little effort or money.

I always love to see people dressed up in green. Everyone becomes Irish on St. Patrick's Day. I'm proud to have a little Irish blood in me.....even if St. Patrick was English. :)

Auburn's 9th

Auburn turned 9 back in December. Since her birthday was on Sunday, we took her to Build-A-Bear on Friday, which was actually Brooks birthday. She got a Polar Bear with Eskimo clothes. She wanted to go to Golden Corral for her birthday dinner on Saturday....I guess because then everyone can choose what they want to eat. There was a really bad snow storm that day. On the way to the restaurant, we saw a ton of accidents and slide offs on the freeway. We even watched an SUV spin around on the freeway and then roll off on the side of the road.....scary. She loves chocolate, so she picked out this chocolate on chocolate cake with chocolate icecream. Auburn is such a joy to have around! She loves Grant so much, always keeps her room clean, and homework done.

Since Auburn's favorite color is constantly changing,

she got a big pack of beads to make a plethora of bracelets.

She's been wanting one of these for a while. :)

A polly pocket set, of course. This one had umbrellas and rain coats....cute.