Monday, March 31, 2014

Bre-Bre's Birthday Party

 A couple of weekends ago we helped celebrate our sweet niece's 2nd birthday!  Isn't she precious?!! We still call her "Baby Breanna" or Bre-Bre.  We absolutely adore her and were so excited to help celebrate her birthday!
 It was a Minnie Mouse themed party and her mom made this adorable cake!  I was pretty impressed.  (And it did end up being the perfect pink Becca. ;)
 She also made these cute Minnie oreo cookies to snack on and as favors.
 A trail mix.
 Hot diggity dogs and Mickey cheese.  The birthday girl LOVED the Hot diggity dogs. 
 And some Minnie cookies. 
 There was also lots of cute décor.


 The party was at The Wonder Place and the kids had a blast.  Lilly enjoyed cooking and serving lots of meals. 
 Reid did too. 

 Lilly playing waitress to Big Sis.  They took turns doing this many, many times. 
 I LOVE Reid's face in this picture.  He was putting a scarf in the tube and then it goes all through the tubes and comes out at the top.  This was a hit. 
 They have this cool water area too. 
 And a vet area where Lilly snatched this dog up and carried it around to each area.  Eli did a nice photo bomb in this picture.
 Always love a slide. 
 

 Singing Happy Birthday! 
 She didn't want to blow out her candles so, of course, Lilly was willing to help! 
 Playing in the sand.
 Putting together some puzzles. 
The kids had tons of fun at the birthday party.  Can't believe sweet Bre-Bre is already two! 

Thursday, March 27, 2014

St Patrick's Day

 Well I guess I should start by confessing that we are (to my knowledge) 0% Irish and I could not even tell you why St. Patrick's Day is a holiday.  BUT it sounded like a good excuse to have a fun, special day so we jumped in on the fun.  Starting, of course, by wearing some green. 
 Oh mercy!  The cuteness of these two (and the two I can't post on here) is just too much to handle!
 We started the day with some lucky charms and green milk (regular milk with green food coloring). 
 Like I stated earlier--this has never been our thing before so Reid was like why is my milk green??  But he quickly got into the excitement of it all! 

 Lilly is all about some special food! 
 We had "school" that day so I packed us all (even Matt and I) a fun, green lunch.  Pudding, and ham and cheese wraps in spinach tortillas, and a pretzel clover.  The other stuff just comes in a green package (pringles, applesauce, and apple juice). 
 I had to laugh at lunch when I realized the notes I made with clovers and the pretzel clovers were all 3 leaf clovers.  Whoops!  It's the thought that counts, right? 
 I put a note in everybody's lunches and we have this space on our back door where we hang up special work the kids do that they want displayed.  Well I walked out of my room to find out that Big Sis had hung her note up on the door for all to see.  How sweet is that?!? 
 We kept the fun going for dinner!
 We had a fruit rainbow.  Y'all this was ALL gone.  I was shocked.  I thought I would have fruit ready to go for the week.  Not so much. 
 Green eggs and ham.  Also ALL gone.  Lilly wanted me to make more.  Give her regular scrambled eggs and she will eat MAYBE one...give her green eggs and ham and apparently you can not make enough. 
 Asparagus.  I am sad to report that I basically ate all of these except for the ONE they had to eat.  Two out of three ain't bad, right? 
 Not excited about having to take a picture before we ate.  Ha! 
 Every time Reid saw the special food throughout the day he would say, "I love you Mommy!"  Apparently we share the same love language...food. 
 After dinner we had a special green bath with rainbow glowsticks and green bath paint (shaving cream with green food coloring). 
 Here is what it looked like with the lights out. 
 Then we got our pajamas on and went on a treasure hunt for gold coins that they got to trade-in for green gum.  It was super easy to hide the coins because we had stuff all over the floor.  I call it "embracing the mess".  Hahaha! 

Then we read Green Eggs and Ham and went to bed!  Love fun days with my people.  (:

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Frozen Night

 Yesterday Frozen came out on BluRay/DVD!  We were SO excited.  And yes, I mean WE.  It took all of my self-control not to buy this on ITunes a few weeks ago but I knew I wanted to do a special night.  And Matt insisted.  So we waited.  And waited.  And FINALLY yesterday was THE day!!  Matt is such an awesome husband and Daddy and got up early and went by Wal-Mart before he went to work. 
 Lilly woke up saying, "It's Frozen Day!!"  She came out of her room with this outfit and we had the following conversation.
Me:  I think it is a little too cold outside for that outfit.
Lilly:  Yeah it is but it is Frozen Day and Frozen is cold and so that is why I want to wear this and be cold.
 Our Frozen festivities began with a complete Frozen themed dinner.  And because I have been asked I will be giving sources and recipes along the way. It was just a complete bonus that we already had all the dolls.

 Elsa's Stuffed Snowballs.  These are yummy chicken and cheese roll-ups.  This recipe is from my friend Jenna and they are really good--you should make them even if you aren't having a Frozen dinner.  I sprinkled them with some extra Monterey Jack cheese for "snow" on top.  Also this is one of two ideas that I came up with on my own...the rest is from Pinterest.  I love Pinterest. 
 Anna's Frozen Hearts--I cut strawberries in half and then cut a little "V" shape out of the top middle to make the heart shape and then dipped the ends in white almond bark.  (A little tip for dipping strawberries in white or chocolate almond bark--the strawberries have to be dry--they can't be wet because it will ruin the almond bark.  That's free lesson-learned in the past advice folks. Ha!) Then I decided to dip some twisted pretzels in the leftover almond bark, too. 
 Sven's Antler's are just some pretzel sticks in bowl.
 Olaf's Noses, Olaf Treats, and Kristoff's Ice Blocks (blue jello cut into little squares)
 Olaf Treats.  I got this idea and there is a tutorial here.  I did make a few changes because I couldn't find black licorice rope so I just used a black tube of icing I already had.  If you want to do the mouth like they did on the source you would need an icing pen (just a heads up).  I also used the whole graham cracker instead of breaking it and I only had medium and regular size marshmallows.  I just improvised and cut one of the big ones a little smaller for the middle because who needs 3 different bags of marshmallows laying around??  I also just cut an orange fruit snack for the nose.  Really what I am saying is the tutorial gives great instructions but you can just use what you have.  (:  These kids were ecstatic about these so they were worth the work. 
 Olaf's Noses--obviously baby carrots.  (:
 Snow-Cap Punch This is equal parts blue Hawaiian Punch and Sprite topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 
 Ready for dinner! 
 And SUPER excited!!  I wish I could show pictures of our girls because Big Sis LOVED it. 
 He could not wait to get to his drink!  It was gone before he ever took a bite! 

 Here is one of their plates.  The "ice blocks' were probably the favorite--there were none left.  The kids had never eaten jello before. 
After dinner we watched the movie.  I was a little worried I had built it up too much in my mind but it did not disappoint!  It is just such a cute movie!  Afterward we channeled our inner Elsa's and "Let it go" with some crystallizing Epsom Salt painting.  You just mix equal parts Epsom salt and hot water and then they paint and when it dries it crystallizes.  We were all very excited to see them this morning! 
And then to end the night we busted out our Frozen soundtrack and out karaoke machine and sang our favorites.  I love this sassy little singer!  We had such a fun night! 

I came across a few other cute ideas that we didn't do but I am going to go ahead and share them here.
Super cute Olaf String Cheese.
Play Pin-the-Nose-on-Olaf.
There is also a cute build-an-Olaf printable here.