Archive for the 'Birthday' Category

01
Jun
15

Rilyn’s 11th birthday celebration!

Rilyn had a sleepover to celebrate her 11th birthday!  She invited 5 girls over.

First up was karaoke!

Then a little jumping on the trampoline!

Craft time! Rilyn picked out little lock boxes to paint.

In true tween style, there were makeovers!

Makeovers complete!

Movie time! They watched Kiki’s Delivery Service. 🙂

The next morning we took the girls to Hawaiian Falls Water and Adventure park!

Look at Rilyn go!

Careful Ella!

Look at Asher!

I was so proud of the girls! Rilyn and Ella both went to the top of the five story tower and ziplined down! Here is Rilyn on the third story making her way up to the top! Look at that stretch!

Rilyn and Shaliya at the top of the tower!!

ziplining!

Time for cheesecake!

01
May
15

Minecraft birthday!

Asher loves playing Minecraft, so naturally we had a Minecraft party!

Happy 7th Asher!


The Rock Candy Crystals were diamonds, the Silver Chocolate Rocks Candy was iron,
and Emerald Green Chocolate Rocks Candy Nuggets was emeralds. I made the Creepers by buying Peeps Green Bunnies and turning them upside down, and cutting off the ears a little. Then I took black frosting and did the faces.

I used Con-Tact Self-Adhesive Black to make the faces on the Plastic Fluted Cup, 22 oz, Pearlescent Green. I printed all the 2 liter labels from Pinterest. There is tons of free Minecraft printables online!

Enderman door!

Ella drew this cool Creeper on our porch!

Spider!

Enderman!

First activity was making Creeper keychains out of Perler Beads Green Bag and Perler Bead Bag, Black.

The next activity was a 4 part obstacle course in which we timed each boy! First they had to throw cobblestones to hop across the lava field. If they touched the lava, they had to start over.

The next part of the obstacle course they had to grab the diamond sword from the Enderman, and go on a “minecart” (skateboard) and push themselves on the tracks!

Do you see the Nether Portal over the back door?

After that, they had to mine for diamonds in our sand table.  I bought Diamond Confetti Beads and mixed it in the sand. They used a sifter, and “mined” diamonds until they filled up a cup with diamonds to a certain line.

The last part of the obstacle course was killing the Creeper.  I bought Socker Bopper Power Bag and painted it to look like a Creeper. They had to get the Creeper to the ground three times using their diamond sword. All boys finished the entire course before 2 minutes.

The next activity was blow up the TNT.  Again I found printables on Pinterest to cover up the Diet Coke 2 liters.  I also bought Mentos so the TNT would “blow up.”

The boys loaded up the package of Mentos in a long tube I made out of construction paper. We stuck a toothpick thru at the bottom of the tube so the Mentos would not fall in the Diet Coke until they pulled the toothpick out and they all fell in at one time…

Then for the TNT finale, James and Asher got to blow up TNT together using a Geyser Tube.  This makes the explosion 5 times higher!  I couldn’t even catch the height on my camera because I was too close to the action.

The next game was trying to craft the cake recipe so we could eat!  I blew up white, black, and green balloons and put different papers in them with flour, sugar, wheat, and eggs.  I also taped spider, skeleton and zombie faces to the balloons.  Some balloons had paper with nothing on it too just to make it interesting.  Then, each boy got to go into the trampoline and kill their bad guy using the diamond sword, bottom, nails-whatever.  The boys had a blast doing it, and it was hilarious watching them trying to pop the balloons.  Finally, after all the balloons were “killed”, we gathered enough ingredients to craft cake!

Asher trying to kill a skeleton

another technique of killing a skeleton!

sitting on the skeleton!

Ella helped throw in the balloons, I mean zombies

Using his nails to rip open the zombie!

Using the recipe to craft the cake. Only 5 more ingredients to go!

Finally, it was cake time!

Hershey bars made up the Creeper cake face!

Make a wish!

While the cake was being cut, the boys played a food game called “Digging for Diamonds”!  I dropped some plastic diamonds at the bottom of each jar, and each day I froze a different layer of colored soda.  The goal was for the boys to use their pick axes (plastic knives, spoons) and get to the bottom of the layers to find the diamonds (and eat yummy slushie in the process!)

Time for presents!

While Asher was opening presents, James had Minecraft music videos going on that were hilarious!  You can find tons on Youtube!

The party was a BLAST!  😉

 

 

30
Apr
15

Asher is 7!

Asher turned 7 years old this past week!  He loves to color, jump on the trampoline, play soccer with his friends, and make people laugh, especially his sisters!  He loves his back scratched, and cuddles.  He got “Student of the Month” in April, and is reading pretty well now!  We love our baby of the family!!

Traditional waking up to the family singing happy birthday! Asher had been awake since 5:45 though, so he was waiting about 30 minutes before we came in. He had so much energy, he cleaned his entire room while waiting for us to come in! LOL

Look at the sweet Pikachu Ella made Asher from origami paper!

Asher’s class singing to him

Chuck E Cheese birthday dinner!

Mega Charizard Pokemon card!

08
Jan
15

Ella’s “Annie” Birthday!

James made a sweet video of Ella’s party day! Check it out!

Since Ella was Annie in the musical this December, she wanted to have an Annie themed 9th birthday party! Makes sense to me!  🙂  Let’s start with the decorations!

I found the original Annie movie poster on Ebay!

I drew this on our kitchen chalkboard.

Rilyn made this out of Wikki Stix! Cute!

I made “mops and buckets” to hold candy at each of their seats!

I made an Annie sign by buying letters and wrapping them with lights! I also printed off famous lines in the movie to make a banner.

The amazing cookie cakes that my friend Jen decorated!

The game prizes: Daddy Warbucks “money”, “coins” (chocolate) and music note journals!

The birthday girl!

Grandma and Ella

me and my baby girl

Ready for this party to start!

The first activity was painting the word “Smile” because well, “You’re never fully dressed without a smile!”

The next activity was called the Hard Knock Life game! Girls got in pairs and were timed to do 3 different “chores”! First chore was “mopping across the floor” like so.

Next the pair had to squeeze all the water from one bucket into another bucket using only sponges! (All the while I’m yelling at them like Miss Hannigan to hurry up!) 🙂

Then their last chore was to each sweep a pile of sand across the floor to the other side. Fastest time for all 3 chores done together wins!

The next game was a scavenger hunt when the girls divided into two teams and had to find Annie’s missing locket! We hid pictures of the characters in Annie around the house and then they used clues to go from picture to picture trying to find the locket! Who has it?!

Here are the girls reading clue #1!

Run Ella to the next clue!

We found the locket!!

Next is was time for cold mush…okay, okay, not cold mush, but ICE CREAM and cookie cake! 😉

Happy Birthday dear Ella, happy birthday to you!

My sweet NINE year old!

The picture captures Ella well- always. a. mess.

Daddy and his baby girl

Time for presents! Ella loves reading her cards!

After eating and presents, we did Karaoke and they sang their favorite Annie songs!

James found an app to put up a “music video” of themselves while singing! 🙂

Ella’s classmates in 3rd grade singing their hearts out!

When the party was over, Ella got to have a few of her best friends stay for a sleepover!

14
Jun
14

Pine Cove Silverado!

The girls left for week long overnight camp at Pine Cove Silverado June 1-7th!  This was their first overnight camp, and they had a BLAST!  Rilyn even got to have her birthday there!  They are definitely going to go back to Pine Cove next summer-Asher will get to join them too!

Waiting to go into camp!

Walking into camp with their friends, Cole and Anna!

Rilyn in front of her cabin-Sunflower 4!

As a parent, I really love that Pine Cove posts pictures of everyday to their blog so I can check what my kids are doing each day! Here are some of the pictures of them doing the fun activities during the week!

Ella and Anna canoeing!

Ella and Anna water ziplining!

They have theme nights every night and this was glow night!

Club is where they have praise and worship! Ella is in the #7 yellow shirt.

Rilyn during camo night (she is in the back holding her arm up)

Rilyn with her counselor, Who Ya Messin’ With, during a water fight!

If it’s your birthday during camp you get to go on stage during lunch and they sing the Birthday Rap to you!

A snowman rapping to Rilyn for her 10th birthday! Only at camp!

Rilyn’s letter from camp!

06
Jun
14

Harry Potter party games!

Click here to see all the Harry Potter decorations!

When the kids arrived we started with the sorting hat.  I bought school rings so after they heard their school, they had to wear their school ring.  We also made wands out of Totally Bamboo Twist Chopsticks, Set of 5 pairs
and hot glue and passed them out at this time.

We taped a phone into the hat and used the app Zello as a walkie talkie. My husband was in another room with a script (we sorted the kids into schools before the party). When I said loudly, “It’s Ella’s turn”, he read the script for her on his phone and the hat magically talked!

Ella is so excited to be in Ravenclaw!

Here is Bellatrix passing out the wands!

The next event was “Bean Boozled”. I bought each child Harry Potter Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans ~ 6 Pack
and they got points for swallowing the “fun” flavors.

I gave them each a dixie cup to spit if they needed. About half of the kids played and then half of those dropped out of the game mid-way! To watch them chew was hilarious though!




Next up was potion class outside!
The “new professor” at Hogwarts was a little ambitious with his potion making skills!



Then it was the kid’s turn to make a “cloud” potion!


I love seeing the “students” faces in this picture! Look at their green clouds!



The potion (baking soda, water, drops of dish soap, and vinegar dyed green) worked so well, that it actually started to rain and we had to run inside for cake! Darn! 😉

Singing to Rilyn!

Cake time!

During cake time, we dismissed the kids one at a time to go to Honeydukes and fill a bag with all the fun candy to take home!

The rain was short thankfully, and so after cake, we went back outside for the “Quidditch All-Star Tournament”. Basically, we had four stations set up in our backyard and the four schools had to travel to each one together and try to earn points and be the winning school! The four stations were, “Quaffle Shoot Out”, “Quick Feet, Dead Aim”, “Dragon Egg Toss”, and “Snatch the Sneaky Snitch”. All of these games were designed to assess the skills of a great Quidditch player!
For Quaffle Shoot Out, we used our trampoline and took the net down and made Quidditch hoops. We used Rilyn’s uncle, aka Death Eater to be the goalie and he tried to block the students from throwing balls into the hoops!



The Dragon Egg Toss was a water balloon toss! Every great Quidditch player needs good hand eye coordination!

Quick Feet Dead Aim tested their speed in various obstacles, and then their aim to knock down as many Valdemort faces as they could!


Snatch the Sneaky Snitch was a fishing bob we spray painted gold and threw on the roof. We let it roll down and each student had to catch it! It was tricky because fishing bobs bounce around everywhere as they are rolling down the roof!
As James was tabulating the points, we went back inside for edible potion making! The kids LOVED this! They got to mix various sodas, pop rocks, fruit gushers, Kool-Aid, Tang, etc. We gave them each lots of straws so they could taste each others! Some of them named their potions and wrote recipe cards! LOL

Then it was present time!

James came in with the scores, and Gryffindor won the Quidditch tournament, which happened to be the birthday girl’s team! Can you tell she was excited?!


After the party was over, we presented Rilyn with a ticket on the Hogwarts Express as her gift. What could it mean?!

That’s right! A trip- just me, daddy, and Rilyn- to Universal Studios Orlando Harry Potter land in July!!



The sweetest thing happened during this moment. We told Ella beforehand about the gift (we are going to take all the kids on a special alone trip when they turn 10 years old.) Ella was so happy for Rilyn that she cried “happy tears” for her! She kept saying, “I’m just so happy for her!” Here is a picture of Ella crying happy tears for her sister!

06
Jun
14

Harry Potter 10th birthday!

Rilyn has read all of the Harry Potter books, and she really wanted a Harry Potter birthday for her 10th.  I have only read the first book, and watched the first movie, so I relied on Pinterest to help plan this party!  We started off by sending “White Owl invitations” to her neighborhood friends.

Rilyn drew all the owls herself!

Rilyn running from house to house delivering the invites!

The decorations!

The wall of crepe paper represents the 4 school colors!

I made the floating candles by spray painting cardboard paper towel holders white and putting a Instapark® LCL-24 Battery-powered Flameless LED Tealight Candles, 2-Dozen Pack
in each one. I hung each candle with fishing line to appear floating!

In the dining hall, I replaced most of our pictures with pictures of characters from the movies.

Photo booth op!

the bathroom!

This is Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes joke shop! We let each child pick one joke as a party favor when they were leaving. We found all of these at the dollar store!

Potion class outdoors

Honeydukes table with Cybrtrayd A126 Frog Chocolate Candy Mold with Exclusive Cybrtrayd Copyrighted Chocolate Molding Instructions,
 and acid pops (dum dums rolled in pop rocks!), gummy worms, chocolate wands, and cake!

Rilyn dressed as Hermoine for Halloween, so we just used this picture for her cake! Easy!

The front of our house I hung a sheet that I painted to look like Platform 9 3/4!

Walk through and let the party begin!

When you walk through the wall, you might meet Hagrid! (Rilyn’s Papaw dressed up and looks AMAZING!)

You also might meet Mrs. Weasley, Bellatrix, a Death Eater, and the “new professor-cousin of Snape”

Click here for what we did at the party!

10
May
14

Cake time!

Three amigos! Caden, Asher, and Malachi!

Asher loves Beyblades, so he had Beyblade themed party goods!

present time! He got lots of Lego sets!

Grandma ALWAYS comes to all her grandkid’s birthdays! She gives the best hugs too!

08
May
14

Acrotex party!

We had Asher’s party at Acrotex gym in Round Rock.  He LOVES flipping around on our trampoline, and he is a bit of a daredevil, so what better place to run wild with friends?  This place had a zipline, rope swing, foam pit, lots of trampolines, bounce house, and climbing wall.  Plenty to do to keep the 15 kids occupied!

My SIX year old!

Who says the big sisters can’t have fun too?!

trying out the bounce…

mid flip!

ziplining!

wall climbing!

bouncing with the Cadens

just hanging around



Ella gets in on some bouncing action!

Not sure if this was safe, but he is our daredevil…

You can’t tell from this picture, but our party host picked this ring up and swung it around with Asher in it!

Unfortunately, Asher wasn’t hanging on tight, and flew out! No one was hurt though! Whew!

Hi Rilyn!

Ella’s zipline was going fast and she thought she was going to crash into the wall! Look at her face!

Rope swing, landing in the foam pit!




Who had more fun? Asher or James?




06
May
14

Asher is six!

Asher is our fun-lovin’, energetic, artistic, cuddly little boy!  At six, he is reading “Biscuit” type books, and is doing great in kindergarten!  He hasn’t lost a tooth yet, and is one of the smallest in his class, both height and weight.  He still loves for mommy to put him to bed.  His favorite thing to do with daddy is jumping on the trampoline.  His favorite thing to do with mommy is play Legos.  His favorite thing to do with his sisters is color.  His actual birthday was on a Thursday, so he went to school, and for dinner we went to Chuck-E-Cheese with his best friend, Caden.  His Beyblade party would be on Saturday!

Traditional birthday donut wake up call!

running through the crepe paper!

Asher just finished watching all the Star Wars with daddy and so we got him 2 light sabers for his birthday!

The girls painted the car windows to make for a festive way to school!

I wrapped all his lunch items like last year because there was no visitors that day at school because of testing.

Early morning light saber battle before school!

We also got him more marble tracks to build onto his already existing one! He was one excited boy that night!




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