My Homework

This is why being a teacher is awesome!  I get to do stuff like this for homework.  The course I'm currently taking involves learning 3 different programs a week and creating a project using one of those technologies.  

Eat My Cake

I love that we let 1 year olds go hog wild into a full size cake.  Priya loved it too.  This post will mostly likely be as good as a video clip because there are so many photos but I just couldn't cut any.  Thank you Aunt Karli for photographing for us!

duck lips=adorable

all about it

clapping with joy

love this one!  so priya lynn

brother got some cake, too

this is when we knew she was done

more cake...yeah we let it fly

pretty good portion for a peewee 

presents still to come

Priya's Car Party

We had a birthday party today.  Priya will officially be 1 tomorrow!  Unbelievable.  I haven't gathered all the photos of our girl during her celebration, but I thought I'd quickly share the decor with you tonight.  You can look forward to her birthday post soon.  She had a FANTASTIC day.  She loved all of the attention, she knew it was all for and about her.  She really never stopped smiling.  Which made all the effort worth it! 

We talked about several themes for her party and finally decided on --cars.  They are by far her most favorite thing.  I looked and looked for inspiration but only found super boyish things so I created our party from scratch.  I had fun putting it together. 

 

Invitations- I was cheap and just emailed them this year. 

p.s. dear friends we kept the party to just family since we knew the weather could be nasty and our house is small.  We love you and wish we had the space to invite you all!

 cupcake toppers- sadly I didn't have time to view these printed until today so the words were unreadable.  Oh, well.  Still cute!

We decorated our kitchen wall with a photo time line of the last 12 months.  Priya particularly loved this.  I did this with Porter as well and man it makes me sentimental.  Time with a newborn is so much work, adjusting to life as a larger family is hard, no sleep with a colicky baby all made me feel like time was moving so slowly, but at the same time it goes by so quickly.  We've had such good times with this little lady we call our daughter!

The cake table.  This was probably my favorite part.  I found the car that I used as a cake topper from a company named Green Toys (it's not easy to find pink toy cars!) and ordered it from newegg.com here.   The cupcakes are just on an upside down containers from the dollar store and the flowers were left over from my Easter lesson at church.  Put it all together and it's pretty darn cute!

Helium free balloons tacked to the ceiling of our breakfast nook added the colors I wanted.

 

 My father-in-law loved that the lemon aid matched the colors.  So did I.

 

Ready for the cake eating experience. 

We had summertime build it yourself bar style wraps. 

I don't know if you noticed but there are some 2x4s on our floor.  We're currently building a built in bench in the nook so I made these little signs.  I was so stressed when I found out it wouldn't be finished, but it wasn't a big deal at all.  

I'm excited to post all the lovely memories and smiles!  

There you have it.  A Girly Car Party!

Easter Time

We started studying Easter a week before.  For our FHE prior to Easter we read the Easter story, sang "Did Jesus Really Live Again?" and made resurrection rolls.  Click here for more info.  These rolls will be a family tradition... I hope.  I had to laugh, Priya obviously loved the dough and sticky mess of the whole experience.  Big Brother really didn't want much to do with the activity aside from the pre cooking marshmallow eating and devouring the rolls after they were cooked.

I just like this because it made me laugh, this is what we go through to try for a decent picture.

On Saturday prior to Easter Aaron's Dad was availible to come help with some projects so we put off the Easter stuff for that.  We loved having Grandpa here All Day!  A cute story... a boy scout delivered some cupcakes Aaron bought as part of a fundraiser.  We let Porter have one then closed the box.  The guys went out to work in the yard and Aaron waved for me to come out.  After answering his question I looked through our kitchen window to check on Porter only to see him with his arms punching the air, a huge smile, and massive cheering.  I looked at Aaron and said, "Did you get another cupcake?"  We started to laugh because it was obvious he had opened the container and gotten the sweets.  We went right in and discovered he had actually gotten 4 cupcakes in the short time we were outside.  We laughed about it all day and again today.  So funny!  Little stinker.

my soon to be garden!

Easter Day:

I want the focus of Easter to be on Christ and since our Saturday was busy we waited until Church was long over to do baskets, etc. Church was so uplifting and a great reminder of why we really celebrate.  I got to sing in sacrament and teach young women's.  It was nice.

My parents had an Easter dinner and we spent the afternoon/evening with them.  We were really sad we couldn't magically be in two places at once and be with Aaron's family as well.  It was such a BEAUTIFUL day and we just sat on the lawn and talked for over an hour.  There's nothing like the company of family!  I love talking with family because it's safe, but anything you say is also free game for a joke.  That's when you know you're really loved!  We're blessed with the Thompson's and Gelter's being amazing family support in our lives!

I had to wait SO long to do Easter with the kids because they both fell asleep on the way out and I had to wait for them to come out of their post nap grumpiness.  I was much harder on me then them.

The rest of the post is a lot of pictures that doesn't really need explaining.  I was a cheerful day!

 Priya was all over the Easter Egg hunt.  I was surprised she knew exactly what it was all about.  She would walk to an egg pick it up, shake it (every single egg!) and then cross over and put it in her basket.  It was killing us with cuteness.

 Porter on the other hand kind of had to be forced to be interested.  He loves the farm and was greatly distracted by the horses.  It made us laugh though when we'd put an egg right in front of his face only to have him point and yell, "Go see horses?!" 

 Our little family. 

Thanks Aunt Kaleena for being our photographer!

 

I made Priya's Dress.  There's a story to go long with that, but I'll spare you.  It's really cute on her!  She picked the material and was not about to be influenced by my preference.  She was right, she's pretty cute in that deep purple!

 Handsome Boy

Time to ride the toys:

I just wanted to compare the difference between my "force it" family picture of all of us in our Easter clothes verses the DARLING photo at the bottom Grandpa Gregg took as we were about to head out for a ride.  Just a little reminder to me that the best moments and memories aren't planned.  

 HAPPY EASTER!!!