Fun hair and first day

Like I mentioned in a previous post, my sister-in-law told me about a fun blog for hair. I have since found a couple of others that I like and have been having a lot of fun fixing Maddy's hair. I love that the hairstyles look fancy, but the ones that I've done are really easy and not too time consuming. We fix it for church every Sunday and when we have time before school. I have found that if I fix her hair while she's practicing the piano in the morning, we kill 2 birds w/ 1 stone and usually have time to get something done.

Here Maddy is before church last Sunday.

This was for school 1 day. The best part about this one is that if she sleeps in the braids, it makes a really cute wavy hairdo the next day.

I did matching hair-dos for Maddy and Ally one day.
I've been hesitant to do much with Ally's hair since she is ALWAYS playing with it. I definitely can not put bows or barrettes of any kind in. She did good with this hair-do though. As long as she can reach some to twirl, she's OK. The right pony did end up more sideways than the left after a little while, but it stayed in good all day.
Like I said, she is ALWAYS playing with her hair.
Here is Maddy for church today.

Everyone has been OOOOing and Ahhing over Maddy's hair at church. A couple of people wanted me to send them the links to the blogs that I've been looking at, so here they are.
http://piggiesnponies.blogspot.com/
http://cute2tryhairdos.blogspot.com/
http://babesinhairland.blogspot.com/

I fixed Ally's hair in cute pony's today too. I did them from the bottom up, but didn't like the pony tails so far front, so at church I fixed them to the middle ponys. She was not cooperative this morning, so I don't have any cute pictures of it. The first picture is before we left. Notice that the right pony is already getting pulled lower than the other one.Here she is after church and a really short nap.

Today was an EXCITING day for Travis and I at church. It was Ally's first day in nursery! YAY! I can actually go to Sunday School now and Travis can go to Elder's quorum! I was a little nervous because she had a rough morning and cried most of it. She did GREAT though! Travis took her in and she couldn't have cared less where he was, so he just left. Other parents were amazed and jealous that dropping her off was so easy. When I went to get her, she didn't even care. She was dancing around the room as a mom in there was singing. I am sooooo happy that she's so happy to be there. It's better for all of us! Thanks nursery leaders!

I really want to ... but I'm scared!

Maddy has wanted to get her ears pierced for as long as I can remember. She went with her best friend a couple of years ago for moral support when her friend got her ears pierced. She thought her friend was silly for freaking out after the first ear was done. Maddy was sooooo excited to get the earrings for her birthday, but when I said, we've got an hour free right now, do you want to run over and get your ears pierced before dad has to leave? She kind of freaked out. She really wanted to get them done, but she was scared at the same time. She really wanted some numbing stuff put on her ears first and wanted to have them both done at the same time. She kind of cried off and on all the way there. When we got there, we found out that they did not have numbing stuff and there was only one person there today who pierced ears, so she couldn't have them done at the same time. She cried again. Travis needed to leave soon, so I couldn't just stay at the store all day. She had to make up her mind. She finally gathered up the courage to sit in the chair.

Here she is in the preparation stages. Her eyes are red rimmed from all the worrying.

Squeezing my hand for courage.
Terrified of the pain that was sure to come.
Extremely relieved that it really didn't hurt that bad at all. "Just a little more than a shot", she said.
An up close look at her Sapphire birthstone earrings.
When she was writing thank you notes to her friends, she wrote us one thanking us sooooooo much for the earrings and for letting her pierce her ears saying, "I love my earrings and my ears!!!" She's so happy to have them pierced and I'm glad that she didn't drag it out forever worrying about it only to find out that the worrying was the worst part.

Monkey'n Around

Maddy decided to have a monkey birthday party this year. We played a couple of monkey games. The hit was "monkey magic". Otherwise known as black magic or anything else magic - The game where 2 people know the secret, the one who is "it" leaves the room and the rest choose a secret object. When the person comes back, the other person who knows the secret points to things around the room saying, "Is it this?". Right before you point to the secret thing, you point to the secret code thing - in our case, a monkey. It took a while before other kids started catching on. We also made little surf board hula monkeys courtesy of Oriental Trading.

Instead of a cake, Maddy chose to decorate monkey cupcakes at the party. Here's what hers turned out like.

The girls also got to make banana splits.

The girls were really looking forward to the desserts. They all only ate one piece of pizza to make sure they had room.

Here is Maddy getting ready to enjoy her monkey cupcake and banana split.

Here is the rest of the bunch enjoying dessert.

One of Maddy's friends got her this cute Littlest Petshop monkey to go along with the rest of her monkey collection. Even though it's "Littlest Petshop", I would definitely not describe it as little! Pretty cute though!

We even had a monkey pinata. We didn't have a good place to hang it, so we just let the girls wack at it on the floor. They managed to break a hole in it, which Travis tore open and then shook candy all over the girls.
What party would be complete w/o some dancing?! The girls had fun playing freeze dance until it was time to go. They danced to "Another Postcard" with chimpanzees .... by the Bare Naked Ladies. It went along nicely with the monkey theme.

Ally thought the girls were being too crazy for a while, but even she couldn't resist the music for too long. You can see the top of her head as she joined in the dancing fun. The other girls thought she was so cute. Little do they know that almost every time I have a meeting, Travis and the kids have a "dance party", so she's had lots of practice already. We have some hillarious video to post of that later.

Maddy had a really fun party and got lots of great presents. She got some more jewelry, a Barbie that you fix her hair, a horse Webkinz (she also really loves horses), etc. I think they all had a great time. Now we're partied out at our house until 2009.

Maddy's birthday - part 1

I can't believe that Maddy is 10 already! Where does the time go?!

Here Maddy is before she left for school on her birthday.

My sister-in-law told me about a blog with tons of really neat hair-dos for girls. It's http://piggiesnponies.blogspot.com/ . Here is a picture of the back of her hair so you can get the full effect. I also tried another really fun one a couple of days later for picture day, but neglected to take a picture w/ my own camera.
Maddy chose to go to Mimi's Cafe for dinner. She loves that she can order breakfast and especially that you can get fresh fruit (her favorite thing) as a side. Here she is enjoying her worms and dirt after dinner. Yummy! They come standard w/ the kids meals, but Maddy ended up with 2 since the waitress forgot to put a candle in the first one. She was excited to get one to take home too!

After dinner we came home to open presents.

Thanks Grandma W. for the Alice doll and cute shirt! Maddy was surprised that it could play music and was thrilled it was Fur Elise since she can play that on the piano. She didn't notice for a long time that her head moved when the music played. She thought that was pretty neat. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa M. for the shirts and money. She can't decide what to spend it on yet!
Jacob got her a monkey webkinz, Bryson got her a fish webkinz, and Ally got her some new headphones since her other ones got stepped on. Travis and I really surprised her with our gift. I wrapped up some earrings and then put them in a really big gift bag. She was surprised to find a little wrapped box inside and even more surprised to find out it was earrings since we had originally decided she had to be 12 to get her ears pierced. Ear piercing was part of the gift. She was pretty excited!
Maddy chose peach pie for dessert on her birthday, but we were all so full from dinner, that we ended up doing the pie the next day.
Maddy had a really fun birthday. Next came the party ... stay tuned.

Just kick'n it

Well, soccer season has officially started at our house. This is Bryson's first year and he was pretty excited. Bryson's team needed a coach, so Travis became the coach of the red team. They try to keep it simple for the youngest group and stick w/ color names. Bryson is so little that they just have practice for 30 mins. and a 30 min. game every Sat. , no weekday practice. Today was Bryson's first practice as well as his first game, so he couldn't wait to get started this morning bright and early at 8 am. All of his games are at 8 am, so there won't be any sleeping in at our house for a while.

Jacob has had practice twice a week for 2 weeks, but today was his first game. He had a great time and loves that his best friend and another boy from our ward are on his team, the Cobras. Most of his games are at 9 am, so we don't have to leave quite as early as Bryson. Plus his games are only 3 mins. away vs. the 15 min. that Travis and Bryson have to go.
It's crazy having 2 boys in sports. Travis can catch the last 1/2 or quarter of Jacob's games and go to 2 entire games. I'll be able to go to 3 of Bryson's games. At least we only have to juggle 2 schedules. We had to take Jacob's best friend to and from the game today because his family has 3 boys in soccer and all the games overlapped today. Crazy! At least the boys are having a great time!