Anarya's 3rd Birthday

Baby girl was glad to have everyone home and then we sang Happy Birthday to her and gave her presents on top of that!

Children's Museum

Joel and the three big girls are at Girls Camp this week. Today is Anarya's 3rd birthday but we want to wait for everyone to get home before we celebrate. Some friends invited us to the Children's Museum. We'd been years ago, but they've moved to a new location and it is phenomenal!

The water room is the first one you come to after you enter and we stayed there for a long time because Anarya loved it! We returned before we left too.

Shinara loved the Animal Hospital room. (Anarya did too since it had stuffed animals in it.)

After coming home from the museum, we went out for birthday doughnuts at Krispy Kreme. As you can see, Anarya enjoyed hers.

Keddi's Texas Trip

The girls are always treated to a good time when they take their 6th grade trip to Texas. If they get straight A's their 6th grade year, we send them on a trip. They can go to any of our extended family members they would like but so far all the girls have chosen Texas. (There is so much family there!)

Keddi's trip was no exception. So many family members took her places and came to visit her while she was there. She had a fabulous 10 days and did not want to come home. That is the only downside to getting to go on this trip.

Larinda Schott

Larinda served as the Young Women's President for a good portion of the time that Mardi and Tersa were in it. Now she and her family are moving to Oregon. Joel and I just started getting to know them better and spend time with them on dates and such and we are bummed they are moving. Debbie is her visiting teacher and threw a brunch for her before she moved. This is the group that came.

Me, Debbie Enniss, Larinda Schott, Jennie Jackson, Renee Brewer and Dawn Robinette

Present from Keddi

Keddi went to Texas for 10 days because she had completed her 6th grade year with straight A's. When she came home, she came bearing gifts!

Keddi has a small Koala bear that Anarya won't leave alone. She made this one for Anarya in the hopes that Anarya would leave hers alone. We shall see.

Shinara's 10th Birthday Party

Shinara wanted a Super Hero party....at the Richardson's. They have a theatre downstairs and she wanted to watch The Avengers on it. The Richardson's went out of town, but they let us use their house!!! Spiderman plates, Batman cups and Avenger goodie bags. Shinara's favorite superheroes are Spiderman and Batman, so they had the distinction of being on the cake.

(The blue on the spiderman part is not a true blue but when I got this color, she liked it and wanted it on the cake. Alrighty then!!)

 The first game we played was a treasure hunt of sorts. I had made everyone a 

treat bag and attached it to different lengths of string. Mardi hid the bags and then unrolled each string all over the living room to make a huge web. On the end of each string was a picture of Batman or Spiderman. They choose a picture and then followed the string to find their bag.

 Then Mardi took their bags and went to the top of the staircase and hung it over the railing and they each had a "piñata" of sorts, which they tried to "smash" with a hulk fist.

 These are the kids who showed up for the party. Olivia Hill, Radley Carter, Coral Redlin, Jade and Kei Kei Agular. Kei Kei's sister Elena and their mom Mrs. Ball (Shinara's 4th grade teacher and Mardi's 5th grade teacher.) stayed at the party too.

 We had pizza and cake and opened Shinara's gifts and cards. Then we put the movie on downstairs. I'd brought some superhero masks that some of the girls decorated and we went them home with goodie bags that had the candy from their piñata in it and some stickers, tattoos and pens with the various Avengers and other superheros.

Happy 10th Birthday Shinara

 It's a birthday party year for Shinara, so we made ice cream sandwiches and gave her gifts from Mom and Dad.

 Swim through rings for the pool, a new cover for her itouch and a spiderman table pinball game. 

And of course there were cards with money in them from Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunts and Uncles.

Wilson-Barber Fireworks

Baby girl didn't mind the big fireworks over at the park, but at first, she wasn't too fond of the ones we set off! She got used to it and was fine after the first few.

After all the fireworks were done, we broke out the sparklers and pop-its. Most of the kids don't care for the sparklers and Anarya wanted nothing to do with them. But she sure enjoyed the pop-its!! All the kids love those and tend to have mini wars with them against each other. What a mess we had to clean up when we were done! Still, it was a great end to a wonderful, stress free day.

Mandy gathered the kids in the dark to take this picture. My camera was being difficult and didn't want to take it. Mandy got this one and I love it.

We love this bunch!!

4th of July- 2013

 I bought all the girls shirts this year and thought Anarya's skirt was so cute I couldn't pass it up. All the big girls have shirts from the Jr. section. They are getting too big!!

We spent the entire day (after nap time) at Wilson's and loved every minute of it of course! When it came time to leave for fireworks, we weren't really ready to go. Mandy had shown me a flyer that said they were doing fireworks at a nearby park. We thought we'd stay at the house and see if we could see them from the yard. It was much better to watch from the balcony and after we enjoyed those, we went to the basketball court at the back of the yard to enjoy the fireworks Joel and Justin had bought when we decided to stay at the house. I think our tradition of going out to Boulder City for their fireworks has been changed!