Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Westley's Phineas and Ferb Party

If you are familiar with the Disney show "Phineas and Ferb", this will all make sense to you, but if you aren't, you might get confused.

Westley is a HUGE fan of Phineas and Ferb, so he wanted to have that as his theme for his birthday party. He invited a few friends from school and a couple from church. I think I was more disappointed than he was when only four of the nine he invited showed up. But we had fun anyway, and Caleb, Travis and Eliza all participated too.


Poster of Heinz Doofenschmirtz that the kids threw water balloons at after he "kidnapped" Perry the Platypus and they found Perry by doing a scavenger hunt.

Some of the decorations

The balloons are orange and green for the hair of Phineas and Ferb. The streamers are yellow and white for their clothes. They didn't have purple streamers or I would have used purple instead of white.

Pin the Tail on Perry the Platypus

One of the activities was building something out of egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, and shoe boxes, using masking tape and duct tape.

The Phineas and Ferb cake--Phineas and Ferb (and Perry) action figures that Westley got for Christmas under the tree in their backyard.

Getting ready to blow out candles

So we started out by having the Phineas and Ferb soundtrack playing as the kids arrived and playing Freeze Dance. Then we did the building activity. After the building activity, we played pin the tail on Perry. Then, Corey told the kids that Perry had been kidnapped by Doofenschmirtz and we did a scavenger hunt that took them all over the house and outside to the park across the street. After they found Perry the Platypus (we used Westley's stuffed Perry that he got for Christmas), we went over to the park and threw water balloons at the poster of Doofenschmirtz. Then we came back and had pizza and root beer for lunch and then did the cake and ice cream and the presents. At that point, there was some time leftover, so Westley took his friends upstairs and they played until their parents came to get them. It was a successful party, I think, and the kids had fun.

Girls Night Out


On Wednesday, May 4th, I was able to have a Girls Night Out with some high school friends. Actually, the fun thing is that some of these ladies I wasn't really friends with in high school. I knew them, but we didn't hang out with each other or anything. The reason behind this night was because my friend who was my maid-of-honor at our wedding and my best friend in high school, someone I've kept in touch with closely through the years, is now moving from Sandy to Arizona. I'm totally upset about this since we've really gotten reconnected the last 18 months with being so close by each other. We've had play groups, our kids are friends, she was teaching my boys piano lessons, we canned peaches together last fall. She moves in only two weeks and I'm so sad. We didn't live near each other from 2003 until 2009, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but we've really gotten close again this last year-and-a-half, and I am just going to miss her like crazy. Plus, I'm jealous that she gets to be in Arizona!

Anyway, we met at Village Inn and just had pie and chatted until the wee hours of morning. Took me a couple days to recover from such a late night! Thanks to Corey, who held down the fort and got up with Jonah that night so I could sleep.

Principal's Pride

Each month at the kids' school, there is a value theme. One student from each class is chosen each month who exemplifies this value. the value for the month of April was respect, and Caleb was chosen from his kindergarten class because he demonstrates respect. I am so proud that he was chosen for this value since we try really hard to teach our children to respect others. He was awarded a special certificate, a medal, and a pencil by the principal at an assembly in front of the school.

Caleb is in the front row, second from the right, wearing a black school T-shirt.

With his certificate in one hand, pencil in the other hand, and medal around his neck.

Easter

Easter weekend was kind of a yucky weekend for us because both Caleb and I had strep infections. Because of that, Caleb and I stayed home from church and kept Jonah home with us. I also didn't get around to making the special Easter treats that I found on this blog because I started feeling really sick on Wednesday and just didn't have it in me to do. And we didn't make the sugar cookies either that I had told the kids we would make for the same reason. I don't think moms should ever get sick!

The kids are lucky we even managed to dye eggs and have an egg hunt on Easter morning. After doing this, I read on someone else's blog how they always do their Easter egg hunt on Saturday so that they can focus on the Savior and his sacrifice on Easter Sunday and I really liked that idea, so we will probably do that from now on.



Here are the Easter baskets all set out. Corey worked Saturday night, so I did all this myself, filling the eggs and hiding them around the room and setting everything out. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to do it until about 9:30 that night, so I hurried and did it. Having a new baby is so exhausting!

The packages are Easter gifts from Nana (Corey's mom).



Eating the dyed hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. Good thing my kids love hard-boiled eggs!



Caleb, Jonah and I stayed home from church, so there are no pictures of Caleb or Jonah in their Easter clothes from Nana. I love the blue color of the shirts, though, and we will probably get a family picture taken later this summer in these clothes.

Old King Cole

Caleb's kindergarten had a special program on April 19th. It was all about nursery rhymes and each child had to memorize a nursery rhyme to recite during the program. They got to dress as the part. Caleb chose "Old King Cole". He did a fantastic job memorizing it and wasn't afraid at all to get up and recite it.

I made his costume. He wore a crown made out of cardboard, covered in aluminum foil and batting. I sewed his cape from some cheap red fabric I bought and edged it with batting. He loved his costume and now that the program is over, it is part of our costume box.


Jonah, Growing Boy

Jonah is one month old in these pictures. I love the bottom one, with the army pants, because Travis picked out those pants himself for Jonah when he and I went shopping one day about a month before Jonah was born. He really wanted to buy something for the new baby, and this is what he picked. And he was very excited when Jonah wore those pants.




Cold Spring




These are pictures I took on April 8th. We still had snow on and off for about another week and then a lot of rain and cold after that. Actually, we've only had about three or four days of pleasant weather with sunshine in that last four or five months. It's been a long winter. But we took advantage of this late snow and had some fun building snow forts and throwing snowballs at each other.