Happy Birthday to Tyler & Bella

Our family was just sick for a whole 2-weeks. It was seriously no fun & we missed a birthday party for Uncle Tyler & Cousin Bella. Mckinlie LOVES Bella & talks about her all the time.

Now that we are better, we invited them over for dinner tonight. I asked Mckinlie all day if she wanted to see Bella tonight and she said, "Yeah!" "Sure!". When the doorbell rang, she ran to get it and off they went into the bedroom. They played & screamed & ran around the entire time.

I made these yummy sandwiches that I found on Pinterest, along with some even yummier sides that we tried. I have to say that I'm pretty proud of myself. I do something off of my Pinterest boards pretty much everyday. We just got all the materials to make a giant chalkboard with moulding for the kids, I made some busy bags for Mckinlie, I made homemade cleaners and organized them into bins with a binder full of the recipes and a few other things. It really has saved my sanity while I'm stuck in the house all winter.

                                                   Happy Birthday to Tyler & Bella!

Mckinlie is Growing up!

Mckinlie has a binky still for nap-time and bedtime. She will be 2 in March, so we decided that it was time to "trade it in".
Saturday after nap, we got her excited and set-off to Build-A-Bear. We walked in & she was in heaven.
We helped her to choose a cute dog and she ran off to the different stations. She chose a heart for her bear, stuffed it, and gave it a bath. The whole time she was loving on her dog and kissing it. She was in love even when it was flat.

She had to name her dog and we were real original. We called it, "Brown Doggy".

When we got to the counter, we explained to her that she was going to give her binky to the worker and she was going to get her dog in exchange. She took it right out of her mouth and handed it to her.

She walked out of that place a happy girl. I think she loved that I was taking pictures of her the whole time, because she kept stopping and saying, "CHEESE!" and posing. Oh boy!

We went to dinner after to complete her special night. She can easily down a kids meal by herself now.

Kennedi finally woke up and got in on the action! Mckinlie says oh so often, "Oh hello Kenna!".

I was going through my pictures later that night and found this one of myself. I don't know how to use my phone's camera very well and apparently I had hit the button to turn the camera around and I had taken one of myself. How old am I again?

It was a fun night & although it is very very sad to see my baby grow-up and I will miss that cute binky face, we are entering a whole new world that will be equally as fun.

Goodbye "bean-tay" (as Mckinlie would call it) !

 

Bring it on, 2013!

New Years Eve 2012 was a BLAST! We invited Uncle Tyler & Cousin Bella to come celebrate, last minute. I saw some adorable ideas on Pinterest and threw some stuff together for the kids.

Luckily this princess let us prepare and entertained herself.

I made these cute bags that the kids get to open every hour. They didn't come until later at night, so we started the bags and activities at 9:00 so that they had time to play and run around first.

9:00 PM : They opened a craft. I bought them cute little aprons that I stamped their names on and they colored with fabric markers.

10:00 PM: The bag had all sorts of things to decorate mini cupcakes. I included candy, sprinkles, chocolate goldfish, etc. I put all the cupcake ingredients in a bowl and let them take turns stirring it. Bella wanted to make sure that the turns were very fair and equal. Mckinlie didn't want Bella to have a turn. Oh boy...hopefully Mckinlie learns that she will soon have to share..

While they decorated, I helped them fill out their "Year in Review". I interviewed them and asked them questions about what their "favorites" were this year. They also told me what they did this year, and what they want to do next year. It'll be fun to save it and read it at the end of 2013 and see how different they are.

11:00 PM: They had a movie treat bag, next. After I realized how much sugar they had eaten, I eliminated everything but the ring pops and they had that with cupcakes and watched a movie AND had a dance party.

Midnight: They wrote down their wish for the New Year and we intended to send them off on balloons. When I went to buy the balloons, their apparently was a helium shortage. So....we wrote them down on paper and kept them.


It was a fun night. Bella loved on Kennedi and helped with her a lot. It was nice having an extra set of hands, haha. Mckinlie had to copy Bella and take care of her own baby.

We are pretty excited for 2013 & what it'll bring for our family. There's some good stuff in store for us!