Birthday Bash (and other tag-alongs)

First-off, we have our annual "Thankful Turkey" which all began with LeAnne. (Thanks for the tradition, dear!)
Some of the more notable things the girls were thankful for:
Olivia--"me," listening to the baby's heartbeat, grandma's and grandpa's, sisters, boxes(?), books, my shoes, my body, watching Chris skateboard, mountains, and Gushers (candy).
Aubrey--(mommy helped) getting bigger, Barbies (she looooves them!), and pretty dresses (she rarely wears normal clothes--she always wants to dress up).

And here she is all dressed up with Daddy on a Sunday.

We went sledding with my (Leah's) family on Christmas Even and then had a nice lunch together and opened some presents. It was nice to spend time all together--too bad I didn't get many pictures!

Awwwww, sweet sisters.

And last but not least, someone had a birthday! This was some of the party of girls (a couple of them hadn't come yet) before the party really got started. Olivia decided to have a ballerina cake, so we made it a ballerina-themed party this year and invited some friends. I saved an invitation as a keepsake because they turned out so cute thanks to Miranda and her crafty supplies (Cricuts are fun!), but the girls found it the other day and put stickers all over it and lost the ballerina's hair, so...oh well.

We played a variety of ballerina games, including musical chairs, during which they were supposed to dance around the chairs to Tchaikovsky and then squish all together on the remaining chairs when the music stopped (that way no one had to be "out.") All the girls were soooo cute dressed up and showing off their ballet skills.

Here they are checking out their goody bags--we put in nail polish, chalpstick, and a "tutu" hairtie so we could do little mini-makeovers. They also had stickers to decorate their bags.

Here is the cake! For anyone who actually read my entire post about Aubrey's birthday cake, let's just say this one turned out a lot better with a lot less stress! I had fun doing it and Olivia loved it. (She actually started to change her mind a little before her birthday and wanted a barbie cake like Aubrey, but then I told her the only way I was buying Twinkies at the store was if she chose a ballerina cake for her birthday like she said she wanted before (because the cake required Twinkies for the legs), and she relented--phew!)

I'm glad she had a good time at her "friend" party, because the next day when we had all of David's and my family (that live close) over for a family party, she got sick and threw up everywhere. The poor thing actually had to stop in the middle of opening presents so she could run to the bathroom! We felt so bad for her and also for all the people who came to have a good time and got close quarters mixed with the smell of hot dogs and puke...(sorry, was that too graphic? I think everyone still had a good time, with the exception of the birthday girl.)

To Olivia!

Happy 5th birthday, sweet girl! There is never a dull moment with you around, and I have to say I have high hopes for this next year. Lately you has been more obedient, less prone to tantrums, and especially a great big sister to Aubrey. You sing to her and tell her princess stories when she is scared at night, let her play with your toys, and you even let her help open your birthday presents! I am so thankful to have you for a daughter!

Favorites at age 5:

To do:

Ride a motorcycle with daddy (especially the one he built for her birthday)

Get tickled

Make crafts for people

Watch PBS/Movies

Bake treats with Mommy

Play in the snow

Play house with Aubrey

Read books!

Perform--singing, dancing, making up stories, really anything in which she gets all the attention!

Color: PINK

Food: Strawberries

Game: Guess Who (Christmas present)

Ice cream: Vanilla with cherry topping

Book: Angelina Ballerina

Movie: My Little Pony (changes daily)

What I want to be when I grow up: "just" a Mommy :) (also changes a lot)

Surprise! (If you didn't already know...)

For many of the people we know, this is not a surprise, but for those of you who didn't know...

We can't believe it, but...

IT'S A BOY!!!

Favorite ultrasound reactions:

David: Wow! (disbelieving) wow! (again)

Olivia: (What do you think of having a baby brother?) I guess I'll love him even if he is a boy!

Aubrey: (What do you think, Peanut?) Mommy? Jelly on your buddha? (We used to tell her we were going to tickle her "buddha" and now she thinks that is really what it is called, a.k.a "My buddha hurts" or "I want to kiss the baby in Mommy's buddha." So much for using correct anatomical terms.)

Where to Begin...

I think this is a record for me for the longest space of time between blog posts. All I can say is...oh well. I put into this post a RIDICULOUS amount of pictures and info in an attempt to update this "journal" of sorts through our summer and fall this year. I "captioned" the pictures and added other stories/memories in between, so there is a lot here--I would promise to be more consistent in the future, but really, why make promises I am so unlikely to keep? :) So without further ado...

Here is Olivia looking up at Uncle Chris while wearing one of his shirts to keep warm during an unseasonably cold evening in Boise while we were there visiting for David's cousin Christa's wedding over the 4th of July. (That sentences sounds like a run-on, but I swear it isn't!)
As a side note, she is so impressed with Uncle Chris's skateboarding skills that she put watching him skateboard on one of her "thankful feathers" for our traditional turkey which we put up recently for FHE--pics to come (probably).

Aubrey in, believe it or not, another one of Chris's shirts--I think I would like to see Uncle Chris wear this shirt--it is a lovely shade of pink, don't you think? (Just teasin', Chris.)

We really enjoyed being in Kuna/Boise for the weekend, going to good ol' Melba Days (the fireworks were still as impressive as we remembered them, even after the Melaleuca shows we've seen here), spending time with family, and especially being there for Christa's wedding. You should have seen (or maybe some of you did) Olivia entranced by the flamenco dancer and jumping out onto the dance floor after Christa and Jason's first dance. It was tons of fun!

The next weekend, David took off on a road trip with three of his cop/biker friends to Vegas.

The Grand Canyon, of course.

I had to stick this picture in, because it looks like the friend behind David is taking a picture of his behind. I don't know if that was on purpose or not--they are kind of goofy guys, after all.

David was able to stay and visit with Josh and Helen, who live in Vegas now (over two years now, actually--we still miss you!).

Adventures at home: both of the girls love to put my make-up on, and I usually just pretend to put some on them when I am doing mine. This time Aubrey got into it without my seeing and put a dark color of lipstick all over her eye--it looks like she has a black eye. When asked what she had been doing, her reply was simply: "Nake-up!" (spelling error intended--that's what she calls it.)

The girls have started playing more together this summer, which is really nice. Usually they play pretty well together, too. This time I found them in the toy room with Aubrey in the baby doll highchair and Olivia fixing her lunch. What you can't see is that Aubrey had taken off her pants and put on one of my knee-high pantyhose socks. It was a pretty funny sight. I also like this picture because it shows off Olivia's cute haircut--we chopped it earlier this summer because of the daily battle it was to brush and do her hair. The battles aren't over, but at least they don't last as long since there is about half as much to brush! But I swear it seems even thicker than it was before, and it is still curly-cute!

Oh boy, the story of Aubrey's birthday cake this year is fun. First of all, I knew I had to do a Barbie cake because, number one, Aubrey is absolutely OBSESSED with princesses, and number two, I have this little birthday cake book that the girls can look at and choose thier cake from, and this was in there, so as soon as she saw it, there was no going back. Does that sound ominous? Because it should--it was a fiasco, and here's why...

Olivia helped me decorate the cake, which looked really good at this point. We decided to go camping the weekend of Aubrey's birthday. We thought most of our families that live close-by would be coming with us--isn't it nice that we all get along?--so we figured we might as well just have the cake up there in the mountains and save the trouble of coming home and having a party the next day. Plus, we knew her little cousin Aaron would be there with us, and since they were born only 16 hours apart, we figured it would be fun to celebrate together. Why it did not occur to me that it was the end of JULY and that frosting does not hold up well in heat, I do not know. But here is what happened. First, I was too cheap to go buy the little cake barbie from the craft store. I just figured I could make the cake a little taller and fit in a regular barbie from our extensive collection. Mistake #1. When I baked the cakes I figured I had plenty of time to bake them before Olivia's swimming lessons because I allowed for twice the baking time. For some reason, they still weren't done. Mistake #2. I couldn't just bring her late, though, because I had already arranged with another mom to be there for her while she was finishing up her visiting teaching at the beginning of lessons, so off we went with the cakes still in the oven, hoping that my friend would make it back soon so I could leave her at the lesson and run to take the cakes out in a few minutes. Mistake #3. They were in there for another 30 minutes or so. Yeah. Surprisingly, they were just a little dark and crusty on the outside, but not burned. Thank goodness. They did break apart a little when I took them out of the pans, however, which messed with my theory of making the cake taller since by the time I patched it back together it wasn't tall enough. Mistake #4. Before I realized it wasn't tall enough, I dug out some of the center for the bottom of the barbie to fit in. When it was too tall, I had to take the legs off the barbie (with many assurances to a panicked Olivia that if I couldn't fix it I would get her a new one--so much for saving money). But then I had a hole to fill. So I tried to shove some of the cake back in the hole and around the torso of the barbie. We then proceeded to frost. All went well until the frosting started melting off the cake. Did I mention that I was doing this all the day we left to go camping? So the kitchen was also torn apart in the process of packing coolers, etc, David was trying to load everything up, and I am starting to panic about melting frosting. Aubrey, oblivious to all the drama, was taking a nap. We finished and went to get Aubrey up so she could see it just in case it melted before we were supposed to eat it the next day. Her reaction was pretty priceless:

Look closely--you can see the front of barbie's dress melting off and sliding down the cutting board. That's what it continued to do all the way from Shelley to my mom's house, who was supposed to bring the cake up the next day when she and Miranda came up after work. I had to keep swiping frosting away from the edge of the board before it landed in my lap. (Of course we were in the truck, which doesn't have air conditioning.) When we got there, I begged/instructed Mom and Miranda to refrigerate and then attempt to fix the melted dress before they brought it up the next day. When they did bring it, they held it directly in front of the air conditioner in their car, and it still was melting minutes after they left. Needless to say, we will not be repeating the experience.

The girls ready for bed in the camper the night before we celebrated the birthdays.

Aubrey excited to see her princess cake again.

Aaron and Aubrey checking out each other's cakes.

The two birthday kids. Can you tell we were camping?

Amazingly, it still tasted pretty good and we all breathed a sigh of relief when it was done. (And I now realize that this should have been its own post--sorry.)

Grandpa and Gram with Ethan and Olivia around the campfire.

David then went on another motorcycle trip which looped the state of Idaho. Here is Olivia saying goodbye the morning he left.

I believe this is a view of Hells Canyon. I could be wrong, but I know he stopped there and thought it was beautiful. Little did he know that I spontaneously decided to cut, I mean chop, my hair while he was gone. His reaction wasn't the best: "Whoa." (Note the missing exclamation point.) I liked it at first, but the novelty quickly wore off, and now I occasionally cry over my lost hair like Jo on little women, only I was not selling my hair to send my mother see my war-wounded father. I just wanted to try something new, and it turns out I don't really like it. What can ya do?

At the end of summer we took another camping trip with Sara, Sam, Lincoln, and David's parents. Here the girls are standing in the middle of a tree/five trees? There were a bunch of these around, and they were cool.

When we were on a 4-wheeler ride we saw some fun things, one of which was this old piece of heavy equipment that had been abandoned. We also saw a couple of old cabins and the girls had fun exploring them.

David is always looking for something dangerous, right? So he climbed to the top of one of the old cabins. Meanwhile, Olivia was off on her own, climbing up the mountain. When we realized she had taken off, she was really far up by herself--look for the tiny red speck by the big rocks.

Here we all are:

And that brings us to September, which was a fairly quiet, uneventful month except for our anniversary, on which we found out we are expecting another baby! Of course we are excited. The baby is due May 18th, and has a cousin due May 6th--maybe we'll be in the hospital together!
Finally, October brought preschool and the pumpkin walk, for which Miranda and I worked together (with help from Grandma and Grandpa Harmon and David) to make a Harry Potter scene, and of course, Halloween. Here are my two princesses.

Kiss me, I'm beautiful. Olivia shows off her (REAL) lipstick.

Princess pink. We were lucky enough to be able to borrow some different dress-up clothes from Gram for costumes and my mom gave them each a set with crown, wand, and earrings which completed the ensemble.

Tinkerbell: Aubrey was a little confused about being Tinkerbell--that is the outfit she chose, but I think she just thought it was another princess outfit, so when we told her she was Tinkerbell she didn't get it for a while, and then she kept saying that Olivia was Tinkerbell too.

She also did not like the wings--they were always getting in the way.

Well, that's all folks! I'm sure there's a lot more to tell, but now that I waited to long I can't think of it, and this post if already way too long as it is, so I'll wait for another day...or not...we'll see how it goes...

Easter Angels and More

My beautiful girls--this was actually the week before Easter, as we didn't have formal church on Easter Sunday.
When Aubrey tried this dress on at the store (she had to try hers on just like big sister) she looked in the mirror, clapped, and said "yay!" for the first time--I couldn't help but get it after that!

What a pretty little smile.

I have to admit, I was pretty proud of this hairdo--not that I can take credit for thinking it up--I got it off one of the many "hair" blogs out there and can't remember which one, but didn't it turn out cute?

Awwwwwww...

What a cute little trio! Aubrey's favorite hiding place--the kitchen cabinets are finally done, by the way--pics to come as soon as I remember to take some!

Lunch is just exhausting sometimes!