Jaynee's Birthday

We celebrated Jaynee's Birthday. I have always loved Jaynee and her own unigue sense of self (and style! She was wearing skirts and tutus on top of jeans, pants, leggings way before they were popular. Trend setter really. But she doesn't care about that. She just knows what she wants to wear and does it)! This little girl knew what she wanted and it was butterfly cupcakes. I did my darnedest to try and make it come true. Butterfly cupcakes for the kids and Strawberry Mango cupcakes for the adults.

Happy Birthday Jaynee!

Game Night

Round 3 of family get-to-gethers and games. Either people are pretty busy or they forgot. No matter, our family had a blast playing games with aunt Susan! Love that girl! We had root beer floats, played Farkle {new obsession thanks to Emil and Kelsi} and then a game of Settlers of Catan (tommy's favorite). Played hard and long, a little too long because livy passed out cold and still slept through the night when we moved her to the car and then again into her room. Good times!

Adventures in Babysitting

I babysat my friend's three kids. They came over and played all day. It was fun. My kids are still in their PJ's, but they all discovered Livy's Disney Princess dress up shoes and strutted around.

Then they discovered that the shoes clacked louder on the deck. They are all pretending to tap dance. It was pretty funny!

After lunch, we headed over to mom's house for some swimming time. Mom has a cattle trough that makes the best (durable and reusable year after year) swimming pool. What makes it even more fun is her dunking machine. The kids LOVE it.

It took a while, but we finally got Alyssa ready to be dunked.

Kenzie, the daring acrobat.

Even Howie was brave and did it. Have to tell you this story. Howie is always inventing things. He invented personal sunglasses by cupping his hand in circles around his eyes like binoculars to keep the sun out and so he can see you when it is too bright. I have caught him many times doing this. I think it is cleaver.

We had just filled this little pool up and so it was very frigid, can't you tell?

Fun day swimming at Grandma's country pool.

Father's Day/Spencer's Birthday

It happened that my nephew Spencer's birthday fell on Father's Day this year. So we celebrated both. We went over and had dinner after church with Stoney and Maria's family. It was a nice spread, but my favorite was the terriyaki glazed salmon! Yum! I could eat seafood every meal.

Two pretty cool fathers!

Spencer requested Salted Caramel Cupcakes and I tried out a new Snickers cupcake for the father's. Mom also made my dad's favorite, Banana Cream Pie (in a sheet cake large enough to serve a large crowd). Maria had brought German Chocolate Sheet cake too, so we had oodles of yummy treats, including Bacon Toffee. I decorated with ties using this super cute Tie-riffic printable.

Snickers Cupcakes, a new family favorite!

Salted Caramel Heath Cupcakes

(having issues with blogger, this photo won't stay horizontal to save my life! UUGGGHH!!!)

Bacon is such a hot ingredient right now. It is everywhere, in cookies, brownies, cupcakes, etc. I saw this and had to make it: Bacon Toffee. Next time I will just make it with regular bacon, the smoked bacon was extremely strong. No one liked it but me and uncle Van. My family just lacks my "epicurean palate".

Happy Father's Day to some pretty cool guys!

Tommy, Dad, Weston and Stoney

Happy Birthday Spencer! Can't believe you are 16. Remind me to stay off the roads, ha ha ha.

Van was able to come over later. The twins: Van and Vaughn enjoying the evening.

Boise Zoo

Spent the day out at the Boise Zoo. We love our little zoo and it is a pretty good one too! It was kind of a flashback for Tommy and I. We hadn't been to the zoo since Howie was eight months old. There was some new additions which we liked too! Great improvements over the last few years. Great way to spend the day.

Stopped and smelled the roses in the rose garden beforehand.

Look at these gems! Howie was only 8 months old last time we were here. We tried to take as many of the same poses as possible. Kind of fun! This time around, we have a cute female version to add to the photos!

It was a toss up between my two favorites, the temp Butterfly exhibit and the Giraffes. I loved them both. The kids really enjoyed the butterfly exhibit. There were so many and so many variations. It was fascination. They told us when they land on you, not to move, the zoo staff will get them off. They must have been sweet on Howie, they landed on him 3 times and no one else.

The favorite for all of us were the most beautiful shade of blue butterfly. Intoxicating in person, these photos just don't do them justice.

Okay, no really, the penguins were my favorite. They put on quite the show for us too. It was so great. LOVED them.

Such a beautiful creature!

The male Lion came out of its house and gave us a good show. It would walk in an L-shaped path from its house then right along in front of the building with windows along it. It was beautiful, strutting back and forth. Man, some of the photos we got were amazing. If you didn't know better, you couldn't tell there was glass between us.

Needless to say, we had a blast at the Zoo.