A party fit for a (three year old) princess

(Ellie's little princess friends. Hailey was there too, but she darted before the picture was taken haha)

Ellie only had one request for her third birthday; that it be "pink princess" themed. Ellie is so completely different than Maisie in that she likes ALL things stereotypically "girly". If it's pink, purple, sparkles or has a Disney princess on it, Ellie is obsessed. So we thought it would be good fun to throw her a little princess party, so that's exactly what we did. It turned out really cute, the girls ate flower cupcakes, danced to Disney music, kissed a frog prince (a pin the tail on the donkey variation, but with a giant cardboard frog and lipstick for kissing) and played with their tiaras, bracelets and scepters.

Ellie ended up unintentionally falling asleep on the couch before dinner time, so I think its safe to say that she had a great time. :)

Catching up: May 14th, 2016 Maisie's 6th Birthday & Tavaci Performance

Maisie's sixth birthday was chock full with excitement. For one Grams and Gramps came to celebrate with us and secondly, Maisie's Tavaci class (performance choir) had their final performance ON her birthday. Maisie loved the excitement, she adores performing so I think that was just one extra gift to her on her birthday. Speaking of gifts, Maisie was very spoiled this year! It was quite the birthday weekend. How in the world is she SIX already?!

p.s We didn't have a birthday party on her actual birthday because she wanted a "Summer party" post on that coming soon :)

First Birthday Shenanigans

A few pictures of Ellie from a little photo shoot we did to celebrate Ellie's first birthday and upcoming Sister's Day- I'll post on that soon.











A few more pictures of Ellie's birthday...

I love how lovingly Maisie watched Ellie open her gifts. Not an ounce of jealously, just happy to be celebrating her sister.

Maisie's special cupcake with "gold pixie dust!"

A picture from our birthday breakfast when we had a couple friends come over and celebrate the birthday baby.

It's still hard for me to believe my little baby, who in a lot of ways still seems so little and baby-like, is ONE. She adds a lot of action and smiles to our day and I couldn't have dreamed how seamlessly she came in to our little family. It's like there was always a space for her from the get-go. She was and is so easy to love and we are all still so smitten with our little Ellie bug.

I loved celebrating this little babe. We had originally planned a party with a bunch of friends and their kids, but it turned out that the weekend we had planned it for, EVERY ONE we knew was out of town, had sick kid(s), or some other plans. So we ended up just having a couple friends of ours come over for breakfast (thanks Caden and Kaitlin!). It was low key and very much Ellie's style. 

Even with how laid back it was, that didn't stop her from being spoiled by our families:

-Austin and I got her a Little Einstein's musical toy and a Hape wooden bench w/xylophone.

-Auntie Katie bought her a set of 8 Babylit books.

-Nana and Papa sent a gift card to Amazon so we bought her some cute shoes- which she needed badly.

-Grandma, Grandpa and Miranda got her a babydoll (which she lovingly carries all around the house), the book "If you give a dog a donut" +  the stuffed animal that goes with it and a poppity-pop. 

Now that Ellie's birthday is over, we have Austin's birthday next month and then starts our birthday drought... confused? Starting with my birthday we have a birthday every two months. March, May, July and September. Austin's mom pointed this out one day and followed the observation with "now you guys need to have a baby in November and another in January!" haha!

Cupcake Annihilation

On Ellie's birthday we picked out a special cupcake (ok two, one for Maisie of course) from The Cocoa Bean and let her go to town. I had no doubts that she would dive right in, but I didn't think she would eat the ENTIRE thing like she did. She didn't hesitate a single second and nearly inhaled the thing. Literally. No joke, we had to confiscate the cupcake to clear her nostrils of cream cheese frosting. She was more mad about us taking the cupcake away for the few seconds than she was about breathing in globs of the delicious thick frosting. Silly girl.

Like I said... inhaled it.

This is her sharing face. She was offering a lick of her sticky fingers.

Trying to eat the wrapper after obliterating the cupcake in a matter of minutes.

Ellie is 1!

Can you believe that Ellie is ONE already? I can't. I keep reminding myself that today is her birthday.  Our birthday plans are to just take it easy today (we will be doing a cupcake smash though) and then tomorrow we will have a handful of friends come by for a birthday breakfast.

In case you find yourself wondering all about Ellie, I made an info-graph* for her first birthday. It's packed with information about Ellie's first year and all of the things she has come to love so far.

*I have seen infographic charts for babies first birthdays on Pinterest and loved them, but they are expensive! So I decided to try my amateur hand at anything computer design-y and actually had a lot of fun learning some new tricks and hopefully will get better with more time and practice.

Big hero 6 Party

Maisie's dream Big Hero 6 Party was a success! With the help from my lovely cousin Kerrin, Maisie's party went smoothly. I was bummed that we weren't able to utilize our backyard with fun activities and decorations, but the weather had other plans (come on SE Idaho... what is up with all this rain!?). We had Maisie's favorite food (Jimmy John's) and other treats that went along with the characters such as:

Freds visable "invisable" sandwiches.

Hiro's kung fu gummy bears

Baymax's healthcare chips.

GoGo's lemon cookie magnetic suspension discs

Honeylemon-ade

Wasabi ranch w/veggies

For favors we made movie watching treats, kettle corn with chocolate covered raisins, m&ms and mini marshmallow Baymax heads.

The main event was our robot fighting activity which turned out to me 100x more successful than I could have ever imagined. The room shook with laughter and screams as the mirco bristle bots buzzed around. We had intentions of making each kid one to take home, but we were only able to complete a few prior to the party. It actually turned out better because it would have been pure chaos with 10 robots running around.

Maisie was a lucky girl and got all of her items she asked for this year. Her picks this year... a Baymax stuffed animal from me and Austin, a sleeping bag from Grandma and Grandpa, a scooter from Nana and Papa,  roller skates from cousin Kerrin and Salt Water sandals and a yellow dress from Auntie Katie.

It was a really fun day. I am sad and yet relived it's over. Maisie is already talking about next years party... oh boy!

Maisie is 5!

It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that my little Maisie is now five years old. It seems like just yesterday that I first held her, but yet at the same time it seems like a century ago, like I have always known her. 

My heart swells with love for my Maisie. Austin and I have tried to come up with a word to describe her in the past and the word we always come back to is... sunshine. She is sunshine. She exudes light where ever she goes by being funny and happy nearly 100% of the time. She's quick to forgive and the first to give encouragement. She fills our lives with songs, laughter and love. And even though she has tried (and continues to try) every last inch of patience in my body, I am better because of her. 

Five years ago she flipped my life upside down, but Heaven knows I needed her to give me new perspective on life and for her and the incredible blessing she is to all those around her (especially to me, her daddy and sister), I am eternally grateful. 

Maisie's Special Birthday Surprise

Maisie's Grams and Gramps (Austin's parents) were planning on coming for Maisie's actual birthday, but with Andrew graduating law school that weekend, they decided to surprise her a little early. They drove alllll day Friday to get here around 10:30 that night. Maisie was already in bed, we tried to wake her up, but the poor little thing was exhausted and refused to open her eyes (I guess the first week of preschool will do that to you). So Austin's parents decided to set up camp and have Maisie stumble upon them in the morning. Maisie was so surprised! And so so happy! She was ready for adventures with her grandparents.

Maisie and "Grams" camping in the circus tent.


Trying hard to take a selfie haha this is the best one we could manage. Haha Ellie's head looks giant!


Ellie waiting in the car with me and Grandma while the men (and Maisie) exchanged something at Sam's Club before we went out for Maisie's birthday dinner in Idaho Falls.

Gramps- fire truck. Ellie- rocket. Maisie- bumble bee. Daddy- green VW. Mommy- blue star wand. Grams- pink star wand.

A picture from our traditional glow stick party where Maisie picks glow sticks out for each of us and then we run around outside like crazy people. Our last one was in November and it was freezing! Ellie was only 3 months old!

Yellowstone National Park

-Mt. Haynes-

Yellowstone Grand Canyon:

-Yellowstone River-



-Upper Falls-

-Lower Falls-
I have seen a lot of waterfalls, but both the Upper and Lower Falls were both the most intense and powerful ones I have ever seen.

Upper Geyser Basin / Biscuit Basin:

Midway Geyser Basin:

Madison River:

Lower Geyser Basin / Fountain Paint Pot
(our favorite area)

If we had one goal this summer other than having Ellie join our family, it was to visit Yellowstone -especially to see Old Faithful. So we finally made it happen on Austin's 27th birthday! We rented a hotel in West Yellowstone, Montana (about an hour and a half away from our house) and after checking in and eating a delicious pizza dinner, we made the 5 mile trip to the West Yellowstone National Park entrance and entered into Wyoming. Upon entering and paying the $25 park pass and driving through I became unimpressed. Oregon is such an incredibly beautiful state, that the first section looked so much like it that I felt guilty spending money to see something we essentially were surrounded by in Oregon, but the deeper we got into the park the more stunning and amazing it became. We spent that first evening in the park with the goal of getting to Old Faithful, but we were so enamored with all the geyser basins leading up to Old Faithful that we didn't make before the sun went down. We spent the chilly evening mostly at the lower basins and paint pots. It was amazing (and amazingly cold).

The next morning we woke up early, ate breakfast at the hotel where we were surrounded by foreign tourists (mainly of the Asian decent, but tons of English and Australian folk as well). Austin and I cracked up while reading all the signs the hotel put up around the dining area, one translation in English and the other Chinese, one read: "do not stick metal tongs in the toaster" and the other more hilarious "do not microwave hard boiled eggs". Austin and I were laughing that it must have happened enough times to warrant a sign for both, dare I say, common sense scenarios? Gah, could you imagine the smell of hard boiled eggs in a microwave?! I could gag and laugh right now just thinking about it.

 Anyway after breakfast, we made our way back into the park to make our date with Old Faithful. We got there and had about an hour to kill before Old Faithful was due to erupt. We spent that time wondering about the museum and gift shop where we bought Maisie an adorable stuffed buffalo who we named Buddy (I wanted Buffalo Bill, but both Maisie and Austin refused). Finally it was the time we were waiting for, Old Faithful was about to blow. We anxiously waited while freezing our tails off and then it went off. I mean it was cool and all, but Austin and I were both kind of underwhelmed by it. We are still happy we have seen it though- it's just there are so many awesome, more beautiful and less crowded geysers/ hot springs worth spending more time on, but we are thrilled that we finally crossed it off our bucket list. The rest of the day we drove towards Canyon Village and stopped many times inbetween. We also made friends with a buffalo who came right up to our car. My window was down and no joke if I reached out I could have touched him, but we read that a surprising amount of people die per year in Yellowstone from bison/buffalo so I decided to keep my arms in the car.

The trip was so much fun and I am so glad we got to go on a fun adventure as a family of 4 before the summer ended. Until next time Yellowstone!