Birthday Pictures

Let me warn you from the beginning - there's gonna be a lot of pictures in this blog!

We went and had Grace's 5th birthday pictures taken yesterday, and boy did she ham it up!!! We didn't have to tell her to smile once. She posed, the photographer shot, we were done. Then came the difficult part of deciding what poses to get...

I know I might be a bit biased, but is she not the cutest thing you've ever seen???

We also treated her to her birthday ice cream at Cold Stone the other day.

Birthday cake flavor with Oreo cookies mixed in.

Mmmmm mmmm good!

Grandma's Handiwork

My mom has been busy since she stepped foot off of the airplane! She finished up the dinner gloves to the Belle dress just in time for Grace to ask her for some nightgowns...

And since Grandma doesn't know how to say "no" to her granddaughter's requests, she's been slaving over the sewing machine for days. Grace requested 10, but Grandma decided that 5 would be plenty! This is just one of the nightgowns she made for her. David says they remind him of Little House on the Prairie nightgowns.

The finished product - Belle with blonde hair.

Dancing with the Beast

Another success

David was voted Instructor of the Quarter for his Battalion this last quarter, and will now be competing for the Instructor of the Quarter for his Brigade. Instructing is his favorite part of his assignment here at Fort Huachuca.

We are so proud of him!

Happy 5th Birthday, Princess!

We celebrated Grace's 5th birthday on October 3rd. We woke up to a gloomy, rainy day, so I was really concerned about what I was going to do if I had to have 35 people in my house. It did clear up long enough to dry out the bouncy house and allow the kids to jump awhile before it got rather cool and wet again. We all had a good time and the kids (all 17 of them!) ran around the house and had a great time playing with each other.

As is becoming a tradition in our home, I made the cakes for Grace's birthday. Grace had said after her last birthday that she wanted an Aurora birthday this year. So, as requested, she had another Princess themed birthday party, and I made her an Aurora cake, and a castle cake (I was afraid one cake just wouldn't feed 30+ people). The castle didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but I did have fun making them.

It was the first time I used fondant, so I was a little nervous about how they'd turn out, but I did find that it's a fun material to work with. I did learn though that the cakes needed to be heavily coated with butter cream prior to putting the fondant on because it is not the best tasting stuff!

Supper time!

And on to everyone's favorite part of a party...

Can't go wrong with Princess stuff!

The one request that Grace had is that she wanted to have a Belle dress up dress. So I put a call into Grandma since she had already made her a beautiful Aurora dress.

She made it complete with dinner gloves.

Needless to say, I think that was Grace's favorite gift.

We need to work on the candle blowing out...

All in all it was a great party - and all the kids were happy, so all was good!

Help from Grandma

My mom arrived the afternoon of October 2nd, and as soon as I picked her up, I drug her around Tucson with me while I tried to get all the last minute things I needed before Grace's party the next day. We then came back home, emptied the car and went to go get the kids from school, and when we got home I immediately put her to work baking cakes and cupcakes and making my frosting for Grace's cakes (I honestly don't know why she comes back because she does nothing but slave away while she's here). The kids had to help her, so they took turns on the stool making the cakes, and then took turns licking the beater and spatula...

What can I say - making cakes with Grandma is SO much more fun than making them with Mommy!

A Special Assignment

Our Preschool Sunday School Champion knows Grace is a "crafty gal," so she approached me a couple of weeks ago to see if she might ask Grace to decorate the offering box for her Sunday School class. I agreed, and Grace was thrilled to be asked to do such a thing! She was told she could decorate it however she wanted, so when we got home, we got out the paint and some stickers and she got to work.

I think she did a pretty good job! And believe it or not, the only thing I did for this project was rinse out the paint brush between colors, and put a layer of glue over the stickers that wouldn't stay stuck.

Of course, we had to do this while Tristan was sleeping so he didn't feel the need to "help".

Then, of course, they had to get cleaned up...

This is what happens when Daddy is left in charge of bath time...

Birthday Parties

Now that it's been a month since the events, I thought I'd share some cute pictures from two of Grace's classmates' birthday parties! I don't know why, but I just can't seem to find enough time to blog very regularly anymore - hopefully that will change in November after soccer season is over and we'll have a few extra days of free time in the evenings.

The first party we went to was a pirate themed bowling party. They decorated "treasure boxes" and then did some bowling. Surprisingly Tristan did pretty darn well!

We also had another party to go to immediately following the first. They had a pinata at this one, and the kids loved taking a whack at that!

My big guy was the first to whack off a piece of it!