Happy Birthday Olivia!

Our baby girl is no longer a baby. She is a big girl now, a big three year old. It is amazing how different boys and girls are. She definitely is all girl, glitz and glam and brings a lot of drama to the house. We nicknamed her 'drama momma'. She is also super sweet and has the most infectious laugh and little crooked half smile that melts us. We had a lady bug party for her that was super fun to do. Lots of black red and poka dots made this a birthday to remember.

Olivia was so excited for her Ladybug birthday party. We made cute little pop up ladybug invitations that livy was so fond of, we had to keep one for her.

Livy sporting her new crochet ladybug hat. She liked it, especially the pom poms.

I wanted her cupcakes to be cute, classy and simple. I had about 12 different ideas and finally narrowed it down to this one. Simple, but still cute and chic. Chocolate chip bug spots and a junior mint for the head sans antennas (couldn't figure out how to make they look nice on the cupcake without ruining the cupcake, so we left them off).

Ladybug appetizers, cherry tomatoes and olives on cream cheese and ritz crackers=yum!

I LOVED how the individual ladybug cupcake pedestals turned out.

Our family loving on Livy!

Cousin Fun! Wouldn't be a wonderful party without the cousins.

I hired my fabulous friend to crochet her shoes and her hat (seen earlier) and loved how they turned out. Thanks Breanna.

Had to sneak this one in here because we love her little crooked smile so.

CHEESE! I'm now 3!

Blowing out her cupcake candle.

Tommy, you look buggy and sweet. Red is a good color for you.

Crayton, Evelynne, and Olivia excited to play Don't Eat Lady.

We played the game Don't Eat Lady (ladybug version of Don't Eat Pete). It was the perfect level for these toddlers. Simple, silly, and candy. They loved it and we played many rounds until everyone had their turn.

Happy Birthday Livy. Love you sweet girl, don't grow up too quickly!

Johnny Appleseed's Birthday: Apple Tribute

I helped out in Howie's class. It was Johnny Appleseed's Birthday. So we celebrated with apples. I made pie dough and the filling to go on the apples and with the teacher's help bringing sliced apples, we had a blast helping the kids make their own apple pies.

My neighbor, Dub Jones, makes the most wonderful fresh homemade applesauce ever! It is so good. He doesn't can it or preserve it or make a lot, just small batches of fresh applesauce. It is amazing. He made some for the class to try. They all loved it. We also served apple juice.

Howie with his baked apple pie.

This day also happens to be Livy's birthday. After school we were heading to grandma Schulthies' house to have her party (her Birthday blog post coming soon). On the drive there, Howie told me that he was going to give his pie to Livy for her birthday. Ahhh, so sweet. I just love these photos. Another sweet moment. Short lived, but sweet indeed.

Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed. We sure do love apples.

Shingles

I came down with a nasty case of shingles. I am not talking about the kind on a roof, but the painful, blistering, itchy but you can't itch it because it is a blister and painful, skin rash kind on your body. It is the virus that causes chickenpox. For whatever reason, I got it. I thought about putting a photo of it on the blog, but it gave it me the creeps/goosebumps on my arms to look at it again and so I thought I would spare you.

At first I thought I had 5 nasty spider bites. They were at the back of my neck and up in my hair/scalp. They hurt so bad. I got a blinding headache with them. Finally, after three days of this, I went to the doctor. By then, they were spreading. They told me it was in fact shingles. I was surprised to find out there is such a thing as a medication for a virus. Antiviral medication called acyclovir that I had to take 5 times a day (It was pretty intense!) along with prednisone and hydrocodone. The doctor said it could last along as 3 months. Everyone is different. We caught it pretty early and were able to decrease the course of the bug by a lot. After 2.5 weeks I was better. Thank goodness.

My sweet husband did get me some flowers after we found out what it was. I couldn't find a vase, so look how resourceful I am. The magical transformation of the popcorn bucket into a vase.

"APPY" BIRTHDAY Tommy

Happy Birthday to Tommy/hubby/daddy! No I didn't spell Happy Birthday wrong. It is APPY for a reason. We LOVE the angry birds app on this ipod. This is an Angry Birds birthday party. The banner is ipods. I always tease Tommy, "there's an app for that." Perfect that there was one for his birthday. We had his favorite cupcakes (and mine too, truth be told. I can't resist them even though I am trying not to eat sugar right now. All resolve goes out the window when I make these bad boys.), chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

(Note on present: "Real Dads like pink!")

So, not everything is as it seems. Under that pretty pink paper was a manly DeWALT cordless drill Tommy has been asking for. However, I am pretty sure I am going to get a lot of good use from it too.

APPY BIRTHDAY Tommy, we love you lots. Hope you enjoyed your day.

Stacking with Stoney

Stoney was stacking close to our house. So I took Livy and we went and visited him (took him a chocolate peanut butter cupcake). Livy got to ride with him for a bit and absolutely LOVED it. She talked about it for a long time afterwards. It was run to see two stack wagons in the same field. They busted that stack job out pretty quickly.

This is right after she got in with Stoney. She wasn't sure if she wanted to stay in it. It kind of scared her.

Look at that grin! Turns out she likes it.