Jacob's Special Day

Jacob wanted to play laser tag for his special day, so we went to a family fun place here. Here we are before we left.

We started out with some mini-golf. Jacob beat me by 8 strokes! He even got a hole in one!
We had fun squirting each other with the bumper boats, but once was enough for me. Jacob rode it 3 times throughout the day.
He was pretty wet every time!
Jacob loved driving the go carts. They had some bigger ones, but he wasn't tall enough to drive those by himself, so since I was driving I couldn't get any pictures.

I wish this picture was more clear because I love his face! Jacob is actually a really good driver and avoided several accidents caused by less skilled drivers.

I couldn't get any pictures of laser tag because it was dark and I gave a worker my purse to stow away until it was over. Jacob had a BLAST with laser tag and would do it again in a heart beat. Out of 25 people he came in 5th! I was more like 15th. He definitely showed me up!

When we were done playing, we went out to dinner at IHOP. Breakfast for dinner is one of Jacob's favorite dinners. The only bad part was that because he went on the bumper boats one last time right before we left, he was a little cold in the restaurant. I guess that's what happens when you're soaked.

Thanks for a super fun day Jacob!!!

Halloween

We have found that it is much easier for the kids to paint pumpkins rather than carve them, plus they last better.

Here is Ally's pumpkin that is just the right size for her. The problem with a pumpkin that is just the right size is that she can pick it up and ended up dropping it the next day and breaking off the kitty ears much to her disappointment. At least it didn't break open!

Here is Bryson's pumpkin and his silly face to match.
Jacob didn't use as many stick in pieces, but made good use of the paint. He really liked how scary it turned out.
Maddy really wanted a pumpkin w/ a unique characteristic. This one had a crease that she turned into his mouth. She decided to make him a zombie that she loving named "Dead Larry". She cracks me up!

Here are all the kids getting ready to go Trick-or-Treating. Ally was Tinkerbell, Jacob was a ninja again, this time red (his favorite color), Bryson wanted to be an alien, and Maddy was an M&M (she was a green one when she was little).

Here they are heading out. Too much fun!

The kids had a great time! Hope you did too!

Maddy's Special Day

I can't seem to keep up with my life, especially blogging! I've been a total slacker so the next few posts will document the fun things we've been up to in the last month.

Last year Travis took everyone out for their very own special day. It was so much fun that we decided to alternate doing it with the kids. He gets the even years and I get the odd years. In October Maddy chose to go to Disney on Ice again. Last year was HS musical and this year it was a combination of Cars, Lion King, Little Mermaid and Tinkerbell.

Here we are before we left.

Before the show.
Mickey and Minnie kicked off the show.
It was pretty cool to see all the "Cars" driving around on the ice.

Next was Little Mermaid. My favorite part was Ursula, but I didn't get a good picture. She had a pretty big blow up costume on that I'm sure made it difficult to skate in, but looked cool.

The Lion King was pretty amazing. The costumes were awesome! I couldn't believe that the Pumba skater was skating on all fours and even did some jumps!

Here is Maddy during the intermission w/ her souvenir lightning bug from Tinkerbell.

Maddy still enjoys Tinkerbell and this was her favorite part of the show. I loved how they were able to make Tinkerbell's tinker-fairy friend's eyes look huge like in the movie.

Maddy enjoyed seeing queen Clarion floating around. The picture isn't the best because I had to take it before they shined the spotlight on her to make her glow or it wouldn't have come out at all.

Tinkerbell was a really good skater!

Maddy and I went out to dinner afterwards and did a little shopping. It was a really fun day! Thanks for spending it with me Maddy!

Maddy's Birthday

Happy 11th Birthday Maddy! (A little late!)

Here is Maddy before school on her birthday. She wore the pin all day, but not the hat. ;)

My kids aren't big cake eaters, so for Maddy's birthday we got a yummy fruit tart. She LOVES fruit and LOVED her tart!
Maddy's birthday was on a Tues., which is a SUPER BUSY day for our family. So we celebrated her birthday the next day. Here she is opening presents.

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for the money, earrings, and lip gloss. She loves them!

Not sure why this picture turned out so blurry, but it's the only one we had of the skirt that her Grandma made her. She loves the outfit! Thanks mom!
From all of us, Maddy got a "wiggle racer". This one is actually called a plasma car. She has been asking for one for a long time and was really excited!

Wait a minute ... Who's birthday present is this again?

Maddy was very generous and let everyone have rides on her new wiggle racer. For some reason we didn't get a picture of Jacob on it. Maybe he was too fast! ;)

Even Travis and I can ride it! :D

Maddy chose to go to a funny dinner theater for her birthday. All the kids had a GREAT time. They were laughing so hard that they were crying. The actors were great and incorporated the kids into part of the play when they were in the audience. It was really fun!

Thanks for sharing your birthday with us Maddy! We all had a great time and can't believe how old you are! You are such a sweet and responsible girl and we love you very much!

The rest of Jacob's birthday

We opened all the family presents after dinner. This is what Maddy and Ally gave Jacob.

Bryson got him a new Lego Star Wars ship.

My mom gives the kids scriptures when they turn 8. Jacob thought his were cool because they have "gold" pages! (Maddy's are silver and for some reason he thinks gold is way better.)

He loves his shirts from Travis's parents!

He loves his Hot Wheels track too. What could be better than crashing cars?!
He's really wanted an MP3 player and has been using Maddy's old pink MP3 player that is broken. It would only play through the list of songs, you couldn't skip through or pick songs and then when it played through the list you had to remove the songs and reload them - plus it was pink! He is soooooo excited to have his own new RED MP3 player. This boy LOVES music!
Here is Ally getting ready to play dart tag. Silly girl!
Jacob also got to have his special bath in our bath tub. The kids think it's great how deep it is and love all the bubbles!
All in all it was a really fun birthday! We love you Jacob and hope you had as much fun as we did celebrating with you!

Jacob's birthday

It was Jacob's birthday last month and I'm finally getting the pictures up. He wanted to have an "army" party. It was definitely a boy party! First we painted everyone's faces camouflage and gave them dog tags.

Maddy just wanted a little face paint.
Next we had a basic training obstacle course. Everyone loved it so much that we did it again later. Here are the obstacles they had to do.

High knees through the circles ...
Crawl through the tunnel ...
Across the balance beam ...

Across the monkey bars ... Then they had to go up the stairs and down the slide. Jacob is so fast that he beat everyone both times - but at least we warned him ahead of time that he didn't get to get any prizes.


Next we played "Hot Grenade" w/ a grenade water balloon.

We played Drill Sergeant Says.

And we had target practice trying to see who could land the most grenades in the hula hoop. It was more difficult than the boys thought it would be.

After lunch, presents, cake / pie and ice cream, they had a water war. They all had a really good time!

My kids are not big cake eaters. This is ironic because my mom makes the BEST cakes and I've tried to pick up cake decorating as well. Jacob just wanted a pie for his birthday. I convinced him to let me bake cupcakes too since not everyone likes pie. We put tank and star candles on the pie and army men on the cupcakes. The only problem was that I thought I'd just buy a pie to save time and the pie I bought w/a "cherry pie" sticker on it turned out to be apple. At least Jacob likes apple and he wasn't too disappointed. Happy birthday Jacob! I can't believe that you're 8 already!

Just a note to any parents who want to do any kind of armed forces party. If you go to your armed forces recruitment center, they'll give you a ton of free stuff! From the Marines we got 4 posters and some really cool foil stickers. From the Army we got bracelets, lanyards, pens, pencils folders, pins, little American flags, and carabiners. All I did was go in and tell them that my son was have a army birthday party and asked if they had anything that they give out to little kids. I didn't go into the navy or air force because Jacob really just wanted every thing camouflage, but I'm sure they would have had great stuff too.