Picture Updates!!!

 I've had a broken lens for a full 6 months now so I finally broke down & bought a new one so I could get updated pictures of the kiddos!

Tucker: 16 months

 Whitney: 3 years

 Tommy: 4.5 years old

 ...still in love with Thomas!

Father's Day Weekend

Happy Father's Day to the best dad I know!  Vic loves & adores our kids and it shows by how much he loves being with them & plays with them constantly.  He spends so much time entertaining & loving them & can never stand to hear them cry so he is immediately to their rescue!

I had the kids make some cute thoughtful cards this year.  Here's Tommy's.  He is so proud of him & dad standing in the house with a cactus & apple tree outside.

 Vic wanted nothing more than to get away from our long to do list here at the house & escape up to the cabin.  He loves it up there. Our first day we hiked around the island, paddle boated, & played games.

 On day 2 we celebrated Father's day so Vic could open his presents early.

The kids were obsessed with throwing rocks in the lake so we went on another little "hike" to let them throw more in.

 It's been a nice warm spring until this day!  It was pretty cold so we went jet skiing with our sweaters on.

The kids all loved taking their turn to drive.  Tucker could stay on it all day.  He was quite upset when his turn was over!

 The 3rd day Mom, Mark, & Grandma Van Sickle were there. We had a hot dog roast for lunch.

 I thought it was cute that Tucker made this his chair & table :)

 It was 15 degrees warmer this day so we braved the cold water with our swimsuits on.

 Tommy went on his first tube ride & since it wasn't a real tube for boating he got dumped off. oops.

 Whitney went on her first ride too & had fun.

 Both kids played in the sand for quite awhile.

 And since they could hardly stand to wait their turn, they decided to all go at once :)

 More games with Grandma.

 On our 4th day there Vic went home early to work & I stayed behind with mom to paint.  It was another freezing day, but the kids had fun & didn't want to leave!

Whitney's 3rd Birthday... Minnie Mouse Party!

Whitney turned 3!

 She was so excited the week prior so I let her open a few presents early as potty treats.

 I did a "Minnie Mouse Bow-tique" party.

Here is her party invite:

Our welcome on the front door:

 The party table (my favorite thing to decorate for parties)

 I had bows everywhere!

Here is my cuties anxiously awaiting the 1st party guest to arrive. 

 We had bow-tie pasta to go with the "bow" theme.

 After lunch I had all of the kids color a picture of Minnie Mouse.

 Then "bedazzle" a bow for pin the bow on Minnie Mouse.

(There's episodes on Minnie's Bow-tique show where they bedazzle all of the bows.)

 After that they got to bedazzle a bow for themselves as one of their party favors.

The boys had blue bow ties to decorate.

Here's another cute bow I made for all of the girls.

 For our last game we played bingo w/ jelly beans.  

The kids loved being able to sneak jelly beans while they played.

CAKE TIME!

 There was a lot of cute ideas out there for Minnie Mouse, but I wanted to keep it super simple this year.  I did chocolate & strawberry cupcakes & then the main cake was a layered angel food cake w/ one of my favorite recipes.  It was super yummy!  I altered the recipe a bit by putting cool whip as the frosting as the original recipe has only toasted almonds on the outside.  I'll probably do that again!

 I made decorated one of Whitney's chairs to be the birthday girl chair & she was pretty cute insisting she sit in it all day & every time she opened a present.

 After presents I gave all of the kids a Minnie or Mickey Mouse wand that I made & taught let them help me do some magic tricks.  They were pretty impressed & wanted to do it over & over!

 Birthday girl & all of her loot!