Tucker's Mickey Mouse Birthday Party!

Tucker turned 3!  This little guy is still quite the character.  He's always looking to get people to laugh and is a determined little guy. He is our wild, crazy, always looking for the party boy.  He is a huge mess maker that never stops playing, but his smiles make up for the extra work he creates.

 We LOVE Disney so I've wanted to throw a Mickey party for 3 years now and figured this would be my last chance so we did it! A hot dog Mickey party!

 I couldn't find any Mickey paper at 4 different stores so I gave up and created my own wrapping paper.  The kids loved it and they were pretty beat up by the end of the week because the kids had so much fun playing with them.

 We didn't do a good job of showing it, but we all dress up in Mickey attire.

 Cute sign Vic cut out for me to hang balloons out front (since we don't have a mailbox).

 Sign I put on the front door

 Party wall of streamers to run through in our entrance.  The kids love this and now expect it at every birthday.

 I really wanted to keep it simple and not make Tucker's cake, but after going to 3 bakeries and not seeing what I wanted, I made the cake again!  This time I used rice crispy treats in the feet and head.  That was so much easier to work with than the cake!

 Party table!

 "Mousekatools"

 Lana made her yummy mac and cheese casserole.

 Simple, but cute cookies.  I think Tucker ate a plate of these all by himself!

 My favorite gourmet popcorn store has a yummy cinnamon and white chocolate mixture that was perfect for our party favor! I also found a little mini Mickey puzzle to throw in there. I bought those Mickey cups to give out too, but I forgot so now I have a bunch of Mickey cups!

 Birthday boy eating lunch

 I forgot to pull out our other kid table before the party so the big kids had a "picnic" on the floor... oops!

 We had a family quiz game on Mickey trivia, a relay race where each member of the family had to put on big "Mickey shorts", white Mickey gloves, and Mickey's ears, and played with balloons.

 Tucker got spoiled with Paw Patrol, Blaze, and Dinotrux (his 3 very favorite shows).  It turned out to be the perfect mixture of gifts for him! :)

We had lots of cake leftover so we had our good friends, the Durtchis over for round two of cake and ice cream and games. 

 It was a good day for Tucker.  I'm sad he is out of his baby stage.  I still snuggle him and hold him like a baby all the time.  I should probably stop, but it's hard to let go of your last baby!!

February Happenings

February flew by!  For the superbowl we were more than a little excited that the Broncos won!  Here is our family all ready for the game to start!  Tommy's first name is Payton after Peyton Manning so he was pretty happy with the win too!

 The sun finally came out and it warmed up to melt off the sidewalk so we jumped at the first chance to ride bikes!  I normally LOVE the snow, but we had so much of it for so long this winter that I was very done with it.  Now it is mostly all melted.

 I planned Tommy's Valentine party.  We tried doing full class activities instead of little stations because I felt like that gave it much more of a party feel.  Here the kids are doing musical dance hearts.  It was a fun day.

 It also happened to be spirit week and it was "dress up with your friends" day so Tommy and Addalyn were minions together. 

(She lives in our neighborhood and both Tommy & Whitney adore her.)

 My mom took the kids up to the cabin on Saturday and Vic and I were supposed to go on a hot Valentine date.... instead Vic bought a house and wanted to get a jump start on painting so we painted for 8 hours straight and were too tired to move at night!  The next morning on Valentine's Day we drove up to the cabin and made pink pancakes for breakfast.

 Aunt Pam spoiled the kids with lots of fun treats.

 She also brought chocolate molds for them to make some Valentine candies.

 They were a bit sloppy, but the kids were pretty proud of them!

 We had heart shaped pizza for lunch.

 We had spaghetti, pink cake, and red valentine jell-o for dinner.  I drew hearts on the rolls too.  It was pretty festive :)

 During the day Uncle Danny pulled the kids around and around the island on sleds.  Their faces were frozen, but they didn't care one bit.  They could do this all day!

 ... and who needs a sledding hill when we have the snow bank?!

January Happenings

I love Christmas, but it is a breath of fresh air to get our life back in January!  Vic worked a million hours all November and December trying to make his job work out.  It didn't work so he started a new job working for one of our friends.  He made a huge change and switched over into property management.  He is loving it so far and we are loving having our weekends back!

At the first of January I started another ballet class.  Look at all those cuties!  My girls this year are 10 times better behaved than last year's bunch. It is fun to see how the girls that returned from last year are so much better than the girls just starting out.

 Tommy was feeling quite left out that he didn't get to be part of dance so we signed him up for his 1st swimming lessons.  After just one lesson his skilled took off.  He is a natural swimmer!

Vic loves skiing so we went for his birthday.  

My mom brought the kids up later to try them out on the bunny hill.  I wanted to see if they were ready for lessons and lets just say we'll be waiting another year or two before we start into that!  I think Tucker did the best of all of them and had the most fun!

After skiing, Vic wanted to spend the weekend at the cabin.  Here he is with his "Twinkie" cake.  I have never heard of this cake and after 10 years of being married, he insisted that it was his favorite birthday cake as a kid so I attempted to whip it up.  I didn't think it tasted much like a twinkie.

 The boys surprised my mom with pouring their own bubbles!

 Tommy had his first crazy clothes and hair day.  He was a bit skeptical of me dressing him like this, but once he got to school he loved it and can't wait for the next one.

 I love frosty trees and I haven't taken the kids' pictures for over a year so I raced out to our backyard one morning and grabbed some pictures of them. All 3 of them are struggling with a normal smile right now!

Tucker, age 2 1/2 

 Whitney, age 4 1/2

 Tommy, age 6

 The heater cord on our roof went out and we are having major icicles grow over our sidewalk so I broke a few off and made Whitney an Elsa castle.  She is quite proud of it! 

 Vic's niece came home from a mission so we went to Twin Falls for a weekend. Trish's family came and joined us for swimming at our hotel. 

 Vic's brother Josh just built a new house in Boise so we went to visit them the next weekend and see their new house.  They have NO snow on the ground.  I usually love snow, but I was so happy to be able to get out and walk outside without freezing.  Here we are at the Boise zoo.

 The lions were roaring and pacing like crazy. We got the best show I've seen from lions at the zoo!

 This one was going nuts over this wagon. The guy with the wagon would bounce his wagon up and down and the lion would paw and follow it just like a baby kitten.