Sunday, February 28, 2016

A Beach Party!

This year for her birthday my girl wanted a party at the beach. I wasn't sure how it would work since she also wanted to host her first slumber party too. I really wanted to just say yes to whatever ideas she had this year to make up for the fact that I felt like her last year's birthday party was not up to my usual standards because of me not feeling well. I was determined to make this year's party the best ever.

To start out we designed the cutest invitations. We decided to have all the girls meet at the beach and then after that we would head back to our house for the sleepover. My girl pinned tons of great ideas from Pinterest and we had so much cute stuff planned. But...turns out that the weather in Florida in January is not really as beautiful and predictable as you might expect. I kinda suspected it might be a bit chilly for the beach part, but it ended up raining almost that whole day so we had to call off the beach part and just move the whole party to our place.

I felt really badly that my girl wasn't getting the beach party of her dreams (she was great about it, it was me that was disappointed for her!) so I decided to try to recreate the beach indoors. We had planned on taking her quilt from her bed to the beach and using a coffee table to set everything out on. We just moved it all to our living room floor and it was so cute! Her beach themed quilt looked perfect and we put out some fun beach floats that the girls lounged around on.



My favorite part of the decorations were these palm trees!  They were so cute and everyone loved them.  They really helped to bring out the beachy vibe.  To make these I spent just $4 at the dollar store.  I bought 2 sheets of green poster board and cut the leaves out of them.  The coconuts are brown balloons and the tree trunk is a gold plastic tablecloth cut into strips.  It's all held into place with a ton of painter's tape.  I thought they would fall down but I actually ended up having to take them down a couple days later because they were still up.

I had so much fun with the beach themed snacks. These didn't last long.

The 'sand' pudding was so delicious. It was layered vanilla pudding and golden Oreos crushed in the blender. The cupcakes were amazing too. My friend who makes wedding cakes lent me some of her stuff and got the sugar sea shells for me too.

The beach balls are gumballs. My mom was supposed to bring over a pitcher for us to use for the blue punch and she had forgotten so I was all distraught trying to figure out what to put it in when my boy reminded me of our party ball drink dispenser. We got it for a white elephant gift one Christmas and had never used it (it had a tequila sticker all around it and I just ripped that sucker off and it looked great). It was a hit and the girls had fun getting their drinks out of it.

I'm pretty sure the girls' favorite part of the party were the favors. My amazing Mother-in-Law sewed all of these mermaid tail blankets with help from my Great Aunt. I still can't believe how generous they were to go to all that trouble and then ship them all down here from Ohio! It was something my girl will never forget, that's for sure. The girls were all beyond excited and couldn't believe they each got one to keep and take home. They watched "Aquamarine" (a mermaid movie) while all wearing their tails and it was so cute. They didn't want to take them off and were hopping around the house in them like potato sacks (except for much cuter with their fins dragging on the floor behind them). They kept slipping and falling on the hard floor so I had to make them stop.

There was a lot of silliness happening that night.  I have no idea what is going on in this pic, but they were having fun!

They played a bunch of games too.

Opening gifts. My girl has some of the sweetest friends. They all got her such thoughtful gifts and wrote lovely things in her cards.

They also had fun making balloon animals. I absolutely hate the noise that it makes when you touch a balloon so I had to keep leaving the room. They all did great and were making little dogs and everything.

These are from when we were signing Happy Birthday to her. I cannot believe my girl is 12!!

After her party we did the traditional birthday survey. I love reading all the answers and seeing how they've changed from one year to the next.

~How old are you? 12
~How does being 12 make you feel? Wondertastical
~What's exciting about turning 12? Because you get to sit in the front seat and it's wondertastical and saying the word 12 seems magical.  
~What do you want to learn this year? About different types of foxes.
~What was the best thing about being 11? I don't know. It was all pretty good.
~What did you do on your birthday? We are going to Steak and Shake tonight. What about your party? I had a party and we got mermaid tails. It was a beach theme and it was a sleepover.
~What is your favorite color? Aqua
~What is your favorite food? Donuts. What about dinner food? Buffalo Chicken Casserole
~Who is your favorite person? Probably you. :)
~What grade are you in? 6th
~What is your favorite thing to do for school? Like, reading and writing.
~What is your favorite game to play? What kind of game? I don't know, board game or made up game or outside game. Probably silent touch. I love silent touch. And I like climbing trees, that's not really a game but it's fun.
~What do you like to do with Daddy? Two favorite things. #1 I love to fish with him. #2 I like playing this game that we made up called Daddy Push n' Shove.
~What do you like to do with Mommy? I like to have girl time and go shopping and go to Starbucks.
~What do you like to do with your brother? I like playing weird games and one of them is called Alaskan Survivors and we are explorers and we're on trees and if we touch the ground it's lava and these flies called 'nya, nya' flies come and eat us. There's lava in Alaska? No, we are from Alaska. I don't know, Dean made that part up!

~What’s your favorite thing to do with the whole family? I like movie night and I like when we all hang out together and you roll your eyes at us because we are being ridiculous.
~What’s your favorite store? Ooo, probably, hmm, I like Target but I don't know if that's my favorite. I like any store that has fox stuff. Any cute store.
~What’s your favorite place to eat? Steak and Shake and Culver's and Rumba.
~What’s your favorite book? Oh gosh, I like the Max and Liz series and the Harry Potter series and the Storybound series.
~What’s your favorite song? I like the Oceans Song. What about the River song, I thought that was your favorite. It is, I just have so many I can't keep track. They change all the time.
~What’s your favorite thing about God? That He loves me so much.

~What do you want to do this year? Well, if I could pick anything I would say adopt a fox but I can't do that so I want to go to Homosassa Springs and see the baby foxes with Abby.
~What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be an author and an illustrator and maybe me and Abby will write a book together because she wants to be an author too.

~What's your favorite animal? Fox, red fox though, not just any fox. But I do love all foxes...except the Tibetan Fox because it's so creepy.

I love my girl sweet girl so much and I'm so glad that she had such an amazing birthday this year. She said it was the best party ever and she deserves it for being the best daughter ever. :) Happy Birthday, my favorite girl!

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Christmas 2015

We had such a fun time spending our first Christmas in Florida this year.  The weather was warm which was weird but nice all at the same time.  I missed seeing most of our family who we normally get to visit, but having my grandpa and my brother's family here was so nice.  It was a smaller, simpler gathering than usual, but I kinda liked that.  Our celebrations were spread out and not all crammed into 2 days of mass chaos and sensory overload.  I have no idea what we are going to do in the future, but I'm glad that this year we stayed home.  It was so nice to wake up in our own beds on Christmas morning...even though that wake up call was way too early, as usual.  :)

On Christmas Eve we had a very small gift exchange with my grandpa, my brother and his kids.  Each kid just got one present and they were totally okay with that.  I didn't even take any pics.  After that we had pizza and got dressed up and went to church for the Christmas Eve service.  It was a really lovely service that focused on Christ and even the boys were very into the music and especially liked the candlelight portion at the end.  The cousins all had matching outfits this year and they looked so cute. I had forgotten to take my camera that day so all I have is one iPhone shot of them all together.  My son had matching grey pants, but he spilled something on them, so jeans were the only backup.  Oh well, they are more his style anyway. 


Christmas morning at home.  My kids got a lot of fun stuff this year.  Most notable were a fish tank from Santa for my girl so she could get a betta fish and a Lego x-wing for my boy.  They both got new scooters from Santa too.

We finally decided to get our kids their own electronic devices.  This was a pretty major thing for us.  We've been pretty adamant about them not having them for a while now, but after some research into the Kindle Fire and the Free Time app they offer, we decided we would give it a try.  When they first opened them they were so shocked and confused.  I don't think they knew what to make of it!  My son's face looks so suspicious here.  I'm sure he's thinking it's too good to be true.

They are getting a little excited in this shot.  We've set time limits on the games and the kids have been great about it.  Overall, it's been a very positive experience, but don't expect them to get their own phones anytime soon. ;)

Just a shot of the aftermath. :)

Later that day we headed over to my mom's house for Christmas dinner and it was warm enough to swim! Love these cuties.

I made an exception for Christmas Day and there were no time limits on apps.  These boys were loving it.

My kids with their Great Grandpa.  Can you believe he is 90?  He looks amazing!

We went to the beach to watch the sunset.  You really can't beat a Christmas where you can swim and go watch the sunset at the beach!  Check out my niece's adorable gap toothed smile.  In the next week she would lose two more teeth on top!  She's lost more teeth than my son and she's 3 years younger.  It's crazy!


These boys are so adorable together.  I love how they just get each other.


I love this gorgeous girl!

And this handsome boy!

I love these 4 together.

I'm almost all caught up on blogging!  Next up, my girl turns 12!

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