You've Had A Birthday, Shout Hooray!

It was a busy week! Kiera turned 7 and Cambria turned 9! Where does the time go???  I did a post about their parties on my craft blog (which I am happy to say now has 628 followers thanks to Shannon and her advertising!) and copied the html onto this blog but I added a few more pictures. I hope you enjoy!

Malachi with yet another black eye: a word of caution, don't wrestle with your dad on the drive way. He may use evasive maneuvers that make you lose your balance and kiss the cement with your eye that was almost healed from your last black eye. 

Malachi was really wishing that it was also his birthday. It is hard to have two of your sisters get a lot of presents when you do not.

 A lot of my pictures turned out blurry I am sad to say because I used my new 50 mm lense and I should't have. It is great for portraits but not great for a birthday party.
This was Cambria's crew:

 They really got into pin the bow on Hello, Kitty.

 Kiera's party:

 Flowers from Grammy with balloons attatched:

Start of Craft Blog Blurb: I have a confession to make. I ran out of time. Plain and simple. I had a grand plan of amazing birthday decor that would transform our house from ordinary to extraordinary, but alas it was not meant to be. Between the two youngest getting sick and a mid week photo shoot (which I was happy to do) I had to go into necessity mode: meaning kids don't care too much about decor but they do want to eat and they do want to play fun games. Plus I had a handful of my old skirts that I needed to resize to give to my girls as birthday gifts. So while  I had dreams of decor that looked like this and this, it simply didn't happen. Not to worry though! The kids didn't know what was missing and a good time was had by all! 

Here is a small recap! 

 I used the hanging rosette balls that I made for Raia's birthday. You can find the tutorial here. 

Mine are slightly different.

"C" for Cambria's birthday

I tried my hand at some tissue paper pom poms. Find the tutorial here. (Mine don't look like Martha's because frankly, I'm not Martha. It feels good to get that off my chest:)

 "K" for Kiera's birthday.

I put scrapbook letters on skewers and stuck them in a bowl of rice

Here is a close up. You could hot glue them so you can't see the tape, but I didn't know how to do the dot on the "i" I guess I could have done a capital. Of course, you could also cut around the tape better. Ninja vanish!

We played pin the bow on the LalaLoopsy for party number two. I free handed this image onto a poster board after I used my large round laundry basket to trace a circle.

We played pin the bow on the Hello, Kitty for party number two!  I also free handed this.

My hubby provide entertainment while this kids waited in line:)

We had coloring pages . . .(free handed this too)

My dear friend, Ashley, made this little outfit for my Kiera so she could feel like a Lalaloopsy.

back:

We played this AWESOME game. Put a baseball in one leg of a nylon (we used little girl tights) and knock down a row of water bottles. You can do it as a minute to win it game and try and knock them down in one minute, but we did it as a relay. Knock a bottle down, then race back and hand your headwear to the next kid in line. They loved this and wanted to do it again and again.

Then we had another relay. We used two big kitchen serving spoons in which we place an egg. The runners goal was not to drop the egg.

They had to jump over an ice chest . . .

go around the toy car . . .

and drop the egg in the basket before running back to tag their teammates hand. This was also a lot of fun and a big hit with the kids.

We ended the day with ice cream cake a birthday song and lots of presents!

We did the same thing two days in a row with two different sets of birthday girls and two different groups of kids and both groups had so much fun, though the 9 year olds were WAY more competitive. I hope this can give you a few ideas on which to make your own!

Now, I just have one more party to survive throw! The family party that will be in a few weeks. I have saved all the decorations and maybe just maybe I'll get to add a few. We'll see!

Follow my birthday party ideas on Pinterest! There are a million fun ideas out there!

XOXO,
 Amy

Allison Wedding Shoot

I was so happy to take these pictures. We haven't known the Allison's long, but they have been wonderful to know. Angela was Kiera's primary teacher and she was the beset teacher EVER. She gave so many wonderful lessons in such creative ways that Kiera fell in love with her and looked forward to primary every Sunday. Mark served with Kai in Young Men's and was always prepared to teach and willing to help and his experiences in life were a blessing to the boys in the ward. Which made Kai look forward to Young Men's every Sunday.

The Allison's are converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They were married in 2009 and were sealed early this Fall in 2011. They just wanted a few pictures in front of the St. George Temple to take with them on their move to Delaware. They never want to forget where there family became eternal in nature. See more here.

A Garden Hose and A Birthday Party

Remember when all you needed to have fun was a garden hose (and maybe a sandbox lid). I remember spending so many hot summer days in the yard playing with the garden hose or running through sprinklers. Now that we have had some warm weather run through our neck of the woods (excepting today) my two little ones have had a blast playing with water.

Raia thinks it is beyond great to shoot her big brother with the hose and Malachi thinks it is so awesome to wear goggles and stick his head under water:) I think it is great that they know how to make their own fun.
We also had a great time at cousin Kona's birthday party hosted at Gymboree down in Vegas. They rented the place for the party so we got the whole place to ourselves. The big kids liked it as much as the little kids though they weren't allowed on all of the equipment (which made them sad).
Kai kept throwing Malachi onto this covered pole like he was George of the Jungle. Malachi wrapped his body around it perfectly.
Raia and her curls . . .
Starting the activities . . .
Ikaika, Sonny's boy.

This is so blurry but Ikaika was really trying to give Raia a big bear hug and it was really cute!
Kolby, Joey's youngest.
Bubble time!
Kona's Madagascar cake.

He's two!


Charlie, Ben's boy.


The end! Lots of fun had by all! Now go out and make your own fun! Use a hose if you have too!