Alli's Birthday Party

I'm a little late in posting this... Alli had her birthday party with friends last Friday. We did a Pink Poodle in Paris theme and all of the girls had a great time. It took me a couple of day to get ready for the party... I had to make 40 poodle fur cuffs for the girls hands and feet, 10 sets of puppy ears, Alli's birthday dress, cupcakes, food, arrange the games and crafts, stuff a pinata... Thankfully everything got done just in the nick of time.

Alli wanted a real cake for her actual birthday so we made a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. Alli decorated the cake herself. If you look on the bottom she didn't know how to do it until she finally let mom help a little.

For her party she wanted pink cupcakes so she could use the cupcake stand that I bought for Abby's birthday... She didn't ask to help frost them again.


We made pink poodle purses, played a few games, ate dinner, ate cupcakes, had a relay race with doggie bones, and hit the pinata...

Then it was present time and time for the girls to go home. I didn't realize until after a few girls left that I didn't get a picture of all of the girls together... (it sure was fun cleaning up the mess that the party created!)

Happy Birthday Allison!

Our sweet Allison turns six today! It is hard to believe that it has been six years since we welcomed our first little girl into our lives. She is such a caring girl. Chris and I cannot believe the amount of compassion she shows towards everyone she comes in contact with. She is pure girl-- she loves wearing dresses, having her hair done, having her nails painted, and doing everything that little girls do. The only sad part about her turning six is that she is now 10 years away from dating age... Chris better get his shotgun ready!

(this is the "are we done yet? pose)

We are having her birthday party on Friday and she cannot wait!

Thankful Thursday

I saw this on another blog and thought I would post it too...

It's time for Thankful Thursday! List 5 things you are thankful for this week.

1. I am thankful that my one and only son is so excited to be a cub scout. We finally went and bought his shirt from the scout office so he is official now...


2. Even though I love where we live, I can't stand the lack of shopping here. I am thankful that the canyon is so beautiful this time of year so it makes the 45 minute drive to Costco tolerable.

3. I am thankful that I did not crash while trying to take a picture of the canyon with my cell phone.

4. I am thankful that Abby has finally given me a reason to go and buy her some shoes. Before this week, all the shoes did were help to keep her feet warm.

5. I am thankful that my sweet little Alli turns 6 next week and that we get to have her first "friends" birthday party. She wants a "Pink Poodle" theme and I am thankful that Oriental Trading Company carries a lot of poodle "stuff."

She is finally walking!

All of my girls have been "late" walkers. Alli and Anna both walked at 16 months and Abby just started walking right after she turned 15 months. She still prefers crawling but is getting up and walking more and more... especially when she is playing outside.
I have been trying to learn to use my camera better. I am now trying to shoot on manual mode all of the time but it takes quite a while to learn how to do it! I really wish I would have paid more attention in the photography class I took in college. We learned about aperture and shutter speed and the bracketing for them but I didn't pay much attention since my camera I was using also had an Auto switch. Here I was trying to avoid a shadow on her face since the sun was to the left...
Here I was trying to properly expose Anna's face with the sun directly behind her... She gives me the funniest faces and poses whenever I get the camera out...Then Justin and Alli wanted me to take a picture of the butterfly they caught. They had the sun directly shining in their face so I was trying to avoid overexposing their faces and creating shadows on their faces.
This is how the "Auto" setting took the picture... see the importance of using manual settings?
On one final note... these pictures were taken yesterday afternoon. It was beautiful outside... It is snowing right now.... on the 11th of June... pretty much everything in my garden died. Time to start all over again...

Baseball Season

Justin started baseball yesterday after taking 2 years off from it. He is on the Mariners this year and was pretty bummed that he didn't get the Padres. He was so nervous for his first "at bat"...He lined up to take a swing at it...
He hit it! It was a line drive to third base...
Which allowed him to easily get on first base!
We have games every Monday and Wednesday night for a few weeks...

Maybe she is teething?

First she started with her thumb...Then she munched on lip gloss...
And when the lip gloss wasn't working, she moved on to the next best thing...