A good week

Well it's official folks. We are Costco members. We held out as long as we could but we could no longer resist the cheaper diapers,  free samples, and huge hotdogs.

I love this picture of me and my girls.

On Wednesday, my friend Marilyn let me know that our local flower shop, Jimmy's Floral, was giving away a free rose to anyone named Charlotte. So we went! Charlotte was so excited. Poor Hazel was of course a bit jealous but quickly noticed the large selection of chocolates in the front of the store. But as she leaned in to get a closer she look, she slammed her nose into the glass, really hard. Really made for a difficult afternoon.

Isn't this little lady growing up fast? She looks like she's five here to me.

These two are a lot of fun lately. Eloise will start building a tower or putting a puzzle together and Edison will come crawling over to knock it down or tear it apart.

Edison now knows what it means when we say, "I'm going to get you!" He smiles and then crawls away from you, looking over his shoulder. So cute.

This is what my house looks like when it's clean! We're loving this trampoline.

On Sunday morning, Hazel made these masks for everyone in the family.

Ellie has started to read on her own. I love that.

Pigtails + static electricity from the trampoline = wild woman.

10 Months

Ten months old, this boy.

Crawling, playing "chase," signing "all done," and clapping his hands.

I never knew I could love red hair so much.

Oh and he points now. The girls thought that was awesome.

He was so wiggly during this little photo shoot! And that tongue would not stay in his mouth.

We are really enjoying having a little boy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

On Sunday we celebrated Bradley's sweet 16, which is actually Wednesday. I was in charge of the cake and so I decided to take Costco's yummy chocolate Matilda cake up a notch with some crushed Toblerone on top, Bradley's favorite candy bar.

And he ate the biggest piece I've ever seen.

Happy Birthday to my cute and wonderful little brother.

My mom and Bradley stayed on Monday to go skiing and snowboarding with us! The first half of the day, we took the girls skiing and Hazel even went up the lift and on the big hill with us. Charlotte stuck to the bunny hill and even went all the way down by herself for the first time. Kind of scary, but luckily she slowed down and turned at the bottom, just in time.

While the girls were on the bunny hill, Grandma Lyn pulled the babies on this sled. Edison quickly fell asleep and Eloise (luckily) was okay with him lying in her lap while she enjoyed the scenery. They lasted much longer than I anticipated!

It was a lovely three day weekend and one that made me grateful to live in Utah.

A Disney Princess Party

January 19th

Charlotte's big day started with a "doughnut cake" for breakfast which turned out to be a bad idea because these kids were BUZZIN' all morning! I tried to balance out the sugar with the bananas and strawberries but I wasn't successful...
But it was oh so yummy.

(We tried to curb Ellie's sugar rush with a carrot.)

Being the good husband that he is, David took those buzzin' kids to the Treehouse for me while I set up for our very first Disney Princess Party. How we've made it this long without such a girly celebration, I have no idea.

This is Ellie. Took me a while to figure that out.

It's blurry in this photo, but this is Charlotte's picture of the year.
It just screams sunshine and happiness.

 This amazing cake was made for me by Cakes by Janelle, who I highly recommend to anyone. I have always made my own birthday cakes, which I enjoy, but I had a friend refer me to Janelle and I decided to try it out. She made these lovely puppy cake pops for Eloise's birthday and it made my job as party planner so much easier! And she does a fantastic job, as you can tell.
This cake was perfect for Charlotte.

And Charlotte's favorite part: the edible crown!

I only wanted to serve cake and candies this time, so I had fun hunting down some candy dishes at DI and a local thrift store down town called Sock Monkeyin' Around. Love my new collection.

That's Charlotte's art piece from our activity time the other day in the background.

Oh and did I mention that my mom dressed up as Snow White for this party? She looked amazing and Charlotte didn't even know she was coming. What a fun surprise!
My mom is beautiful.

Eloise was very interested in those sparkly eyelashes.

 My cute brother, soon to be SIXTEEN, dressed up a bit as well.
More of a Men in Black theme for him.

And this little princess actually wore this dress-up dress for the entire party. Unlike her oldest sister, dress up is not her thing.
Oh so pretty.

Charlotte opened her present from us before the party started so she could dress up in her new Brave dress-up dress. She's been asking for that since last summer.

Grandma Lyn brought us some new Wii games to play together which I think we'll use a LOT.

Now tell me again, are these real or not?

Wii action.

This little boy just turned ten months. And he signs "all done." Hasn't said mama yet.
I'm waiting patiently.

We had a total of thirteen princesses and one "pirate" (he wanted to dress up too!). We started out with a princess craft where the girls decorated these sparkly crowns. When you're a princess, everything must sparkle.

Didn't get a picture, but I did find an eye patch for our pirate to decorate with jewels!

 Then we played a princessy version of Hot Potato with a stuffed frog prince. They had to pass him to one another while we sang:

Frog Prince Frog Prince
Watch and see
He'll become a Prince
When he kisses ME!

Something like that. I may have made it up just a minute before the game started.
Even our pirate kissed the frog.

And of course the trampoline was a big hit.

Uh oh, someone stole the pirate hat.

One last shot before we cut the cake. It's more painful when you've paid for it...

And there she went. You can ask anyone how many layers were in this top tier because I kept exclaiming outloud, "Can you believe that there are four layers just in the top tier??" Seriously? Four decadent layers of strawberry cake with a cream cheese frosting! This thing was better than our wedding cake. Janelle even makes her own fondant and it is fluffy and creamy goodness. Wow.

This one was happy.

We were so happy that David's brother Tyson and his family could make it from Idaho!

And last but not least, we had a pinata. I think Charlotte has asked me for this pinata every time we go to the party section of Walmart since she could speak. And it was a tough one to crack, which means it was a good one.

Hazel immediately went for the leftover castle to hold her candy.

Happy happy 4th birthday little Lottie Lou.