Happy Birthday Ava!

 Ava turned nine years old on September 28. We had a lot of celebrating and Ava had a great day!

 Ava with her little sisters in front of presents. I think the little sisters were almost as excited as Ava!

 I found fun letters so we can have Ava's name with the birthday sign.

 Ava and her cake. She picked the kind of cake and the colors she wanted on the cake. 

 I can tell by the look on Nicolette's face, she is wishing it was HER birthday now! It's so hard to be patient when you are the tiniest sister! 

 Ava received plenty of great gifts this year! Including fun art things from Grandma and Grandpa. 

 Grandma and Grandpa with the birthday girl. 

 Ava chose a dinner out with mom and dad and baby Owen. 

It was a perfect way to celebrate the birthday of our nine-year-old girl.

 She also chose to go to Build-A-Bear for her main present this year. 

It was very fun!

 She chose a bunny and started taking great care of bunny from the get go:) 

Ava, Mom, and Dad, and Owen on our way out of Build a Bear.

Happy Birthday Ava! We had a great day celebrating with you!

We Love you Ava! You help make our family complete.

Dance, Dance!

The month of May always brings the girls spring dance recital. The girls did a great job dancing this year!

Lilli had two dances and did a great job.

Ava also had two dances and worked really hard to remember her smile while dancing. She did great!

Vivien's class got to be the very first dance number. The class did a fabulous job, including Vivi who got to help lead the class off stage.  Fun times! 

We all enjoyed getting to watch our girls perform. Lexi and Nicolette, Dad and Owen, Grandma and Grandpa, and mom and Lilli's friend Sammie were the spectators. 

Thanks for a fun night of dancing! Nicolette is ready to be on stage and finally this September her dream will come true.

A Green Day ( no, not that kind of green.)

Owen feeling festive for his first St. Patrick's Day. He even had a green outfit. We had such a fun St. Patrick's Day last year that the girls had me convinced we had to carry on the tradition of celebrating this fun green day.  I will confess it was not as fun as last year...but let's just focus on the positives.

I love this picture even though my camera was on the wrong setting and it looks a bit funky. I decided something fun and festive was make your own pizza night. That is a favorite here at our house. I even put out the bowl of spinach so we could have green pizza. A  big thank you to Patsy for her amazing pizza recipe! We love it. Almost everyone was willing to put at least one piece of spinach on their pizza...uh huh, one piece of spinach, pretty funny.

Doug and I get the big pizza. We are extra hungry.

The girls all get to make their own little pizzas.  Well, Nicolette has to share the big pizza with mom and dad. I am sure that won't last much longer. Before I know it she will be demanding her own mini pizza. 

Vivien's night started off bad. Her new zuzu pet, which she earned for finding my keys..which were lost for a week, but that's another story.  Well, her new zuzu pet met a terrible demise when it was banned to the laundry room shelf for eating up a huge chunk of hair girl's hair.  Of course, when we were at the store and I read the "hair warning" on the toy I new right then and there...big mistake. Yet, I bought the lovely pet anyway and hence the hair disaster. Luckily, I was able to convince Vivi to focus on her pizza, she said she would but, she would not be happy about it!

many pizzas in the oven...yum!

During all the fun pizza business Doug and Owen were busy and focused on filling out our Census information. We're good citizens. It's the right thing to do. Doug is a great citizen. I wish he was our president, he would be a good one. I know things in the country would be running much smoother if he was in charge. That might make things real un-smoothish for me, but I could sacrifice for the country.

Ava made this over the top darling Leprechaun house at school. We used it for our center piece. I am so grateful to get to have all of Ava's creative art around.

A fun green dinner. I actually do love celebrating St. Patrick's Day. It's a low key holiday with no presents to buy.  Do you love all the smiles on this group? Yes, I blackmailed them all with "no dessert if you don't smile for my picture", and presto...big smiles:)

Three Birthdays and a Baptism

We have been a bit busy here.  I have been wanting to blog, but seem unable to get it together and just get it done!  I am starting with our first birthday of what I like to call "birthday season at our house".  This year was extra fun because we got to throw a baptism in with birthday time...crazy busy, but well worth it:)

Happy Birthday Ava~ September 28!  8 Years old...wow!

 We spent the Saturday before Ava's birthday at The Lion House.  This is a tradition at our house and Ava is now the 3rd sister to celebrate her 8th birthday in such a historical place.  It takes effort on mom's part because the birthday needs to be booked a year in advance.  Now, for this mom that is one hard task to remember, "oh, on the 7th birthday let's start paying for the 8th!" Well, it is well worth it and we had a great time celebrating!

The girls all get to come and pick a pioneer bonnet.  Then we talk about pioneers and Brigham Young.  The tour of the house is always a fun highlight:)

 This was our hostess Karen.  she was a wonderful delight, and made the party fun for all of the girls.

 

 The Lion House birthday cake.

 

Ava with all of her friends out in the garden area of the house.

Here is Ava on her actual birthday, September 28.  Her big surprise was a new bike! 

Birthday cake made by mom.  All frosting colors chosen by the birthday girl:) Grandma and Grandpa were able to join us for dinner and cake!

We went to the cabin to meet up with my parents to continue the celebrating.  (i know this is one L-o-n-g birthday!) We had fun getting to see them over UEA and celebrate birthdays.

We celebrated with Lilli and Ava at the cabin.  It was lots of celebrating, but such a fun birthday to celebrate!  Happy 8th birthday Ava...We love you!

My Sweet Ava...and Cupcakes!

Ava informed me that, my blog is VERY boring because there is never anything new on it! I decided that I'd better get off this boring streak and start posting some of my stuff!

Here are some fun cupcakes that my friend Charisse and I did for a relief society gardening night. We had flowers and carrots on our cupcakes....really fun:)

These are some cupcakes I did with a friend to help her out with a family reunion. We made lots of different kinds. These were my favorites. Charisse gets the credit for the idea. The "sundae" cupcakes were so so easy and so stinkin cute!

We did lots of fish...
and, shark bitten life preservers:)

Of course, we had to do the dogs again. A few of the dogs looked like wolves but, they were still very cute.

We did over 100 this day...it was a bit insane, but very fun:)
* A big thank you to Patsy for taking my little girlies this day so i could focus on cupcakes:)

Charisse and I did these for a wedding. They were so fun...i could hardly believe how perfect they turned out! Right down to the wrapper. I have decided the wrapper is BIG. It does tons for the cute little cake!

We also did green. Green was one of the bride's colors. These were very fun. The flower on top was not too fun, but we made it through the trying experience. The flower on top is made from royal icing. They were a royal pain in the you know what:)

We did over 60 of these.

Patsy and I made these for the same wedding. They were so yummy I could eat these anytime and anyplace. Mini cupcakes with lemon-cream cheese frosting. There were none of these babies left!
So, I've been up to lots of cupcakes these days. The possibilities are endless with the cute little cakes, no wonder I am making them every chance I get:)

Everybody Dance Now

Vivien, Ava and Lilli after the big spring dance recital.

Here is Vivi and her all time best friend. They got to watch all the dancing until it was their turn.
Grandma came to watch...thank you Grandma:)

Vivien was posing for the camera, this is one of a myriad of photos from my Vivi:)
Vivien is a fun dancer. She knows exactly what to do and every move to make.

This is Ava on the stage. Ava is such a graceful and beautiful dancer. She is a delight to watch.

Lilli is full of great dancing energy! She has not danced as long as the other girls her age, but she definitely can hold her own:)

Ava after the concert with her flowers.

Lilli after with her flowers.

Of course we had to celebrate the great dancing at B&R:)

Ava picked a chocolate sprinkle cone with lots of mint chip ice cream.

Vivi ate her treat pretty quick and was then feeling very tired!

I even caught her with her eyes shut for a minute:)

She did muster this cute smile in the end:)
Good job dancing girls! Another fun and great performance...I love these little dancing queens.