The LOVE Boat!

Our friends had a LOVE BOAT/Tropical Themed party tonight and it was great to get together!
Even an ice sculpture to commemorate this child-free night was created!

Many dressed the part in Hawaiian shirts but Brian ( the Captain) and Sean ( Isaac) topped them all!

There was nothing tropical about the night...it was rainy and chilly but we still stayed outside much of the night. And when I asked this group to huddle up for a picture, this is what I got....

Obviously not many sorority girls in this group! I had to direct them to get this pretty shot!

We actually wore our honeymoon outifts from 7 years ago!

What a great group of friends!

Brian and I headed home to relieve the babysitter at 10Pm but friends were still up and partying well after 1AM!

A Real Honor

Today we had the honor to take our children to Mills Breast Cancer Institute at Carle Hospital in Champaign and drop off our donation of $225 and the children's handmade flowers to brighten the days of patients to Carle Representatives.

The Director of the Foundation, Representative from the Communications Department, Director of Mills, and a Breast Cancer Physician all came to greet us. Mara handed over the beautiful bouquet of flowers to the doctor and my heart swelled with pride to see on her little face that she was making someone else really happy- EXACTLY our purpose in doing service projects instead of gifts.
The Director of Mills and the Doctor were so appreciative and we all gave high fives!

They all oohed and aahed over the large donation ( The Director decided while we were there that the money raised will go towards buying DVDs, puzzles, books, and games for patients to enjoy and use while they are receiving their treatments) and a few pictures from the party.

It was so wonderful to see our service project in action and to have our children be part of actually giving their gifts away to make a difference in the lives of others. Mara was most excited about her money tree and making the flowers for the Breast Cancer patients and I was most excited to see her!

Thanks to all of you who donated money or helped paint flowers- you really DID make a difference!

Pinkalicious! Amara's 3rd Birthday Party

What a perfectly Pinkalicious Party today was for Amara! It started with Grammy giving her a very sweet little cupcake necklace. She LOVES it!


Happy Birthday Amaralicious!

I made cupcakes to look like the ones in the book...PINK PINK PINK! and borrowed my neighbor's homemade cupcake stand to display! my mom also made two beautiful flower arrangements with geraniums in painted pink pots to kinda look like cupcakes!

My mom made Amara's personal cake to look like a huge cupcake. She squeeled with delight!

Each friend that arrived, Amara hugged and was so excited. She had been waiting for this PINK party to happen for weeks!

No guest was more honored than her favorite person in the world, her cousin Veronica!

For our parties, we ask that children do not bring individual gifts and rather help us participate in a service project. Because of the pink theme, we went with Breast Cancer. We set out a small tree we had decorated with pink ribbons and let the kids and parents clip and dollars or checks they had for Mills Breast Cancer Institute to the tree. We then had a pink bucket for friends to dump any spare change in.Mara loved her money tree and loved helping guests clip their money on it. We talked over and over about what the money was going towards and she loved to be able to share that her money tree was going to help people with sick boobies. HA!

I was so excited to see that my nephew was dressed in pink too- GO JACK!

Daddy and his Pink Sweetie!

Our guests received little baggies full of marshmellow cupcakes.

It was one of my favorite birthday projects ever. I had so much fun making these little things and they were really easy and SO darling.

We began by introducing the book ( since some hadn't read it) and talking about magic and using your imagination.

Then each child collected 3 pieces of hard candy from a bucket and went out into the field and "planted" their candy.

They needed to find their special place for it and pretend "water" it and wait to see what happened to it during the party.

We read the book together and then talked about our service project for breast cancer. Amara decided she wanted to do something to make the sick people feel better so we made coffee filter flowers. They are so easy and really beautiful! Each kid simply used water colors and painted a couple of coffee filters. Then we attached a pipe cleaner. DONE!

The kids really loved paintingEven the adults came dressed in pink. Like Nana, Aunt Marcy, and Papa!

then it was time for Pin the Cupcake on Pinkalicious. I used an overhead projector at work to create this beautiful little, lifesized girl. All the guests had to see if they could get the cupcake in Pinkalicious' hand.

Look at these pink cuties!

Don't forget Jack!

Amara couldn't WAIT to eat her yummy huge cupcake! Finally, we headed back to the field to see what happened to our "seeds". Sure enough, the seeds had grown!!!! Everywhere you looked in the field, whereever a seed had been planted their was a beautiful candy ( and paper) flower in it's place. The kids ran all over trying to find 3 flowers they wanted just for them! It was cute to see their faces light up and see that something had actually happened.

Mara handed her first batch to me so she could get more!
And Jack was devasted to see the party come to an end!There is nothing better than seeing your angel happy....and Happy was our Mara today!

Super Fun Whirlwind Birthday/Basketball Weekend!

Wow we were busy this weekend! Brian's parents and cousin came into town Friday night so she could compete in AAU b-ball tournaments on campus Saturday.

We all headed to her first game at 8AM and loved watching her.
The kids were very engaged the whole time...partially, I'm sure because we were so close to the edge of the court that the girls kept throwing balls or themselves at us.

Grandpa and Alaric love being together

We were all so proud of cousin Katie!

I took the kids to a birthday party ( see post) while the rest stayed for another one of Katie's games and then in the afternoon, Amara's Godfather Anthony came to visit!

We broke him in by playing silly Dr. Suess games

And he loved giving Mara her gifts...her favorite was a new Pinkalicious sticker book!!!

Saturday night we had 14 people at our home for dinner and hanging out in the yard and we all loved it! The kids love their cousins and any chance they could get to jump or crawl or tackle Tyler they did.

Katie and Mara enjoy some snuggly time before bed!

Then Sunday morning, everyone who didn't sleep over, came back to our house for Breakfast and Mara showed her Great Gram and aunts her money tree. They all clipped money to it for breast cancer.

One thing Brian's family is good at is talking and we did LOTS of that. It was so great to catch up with everyone.Mara got to open up her gifts from Nana and Grandpa before her party and her very favorite, and most special was a matching outfit set that Nana had made for Mara and her Bitty Baby! It is precious!Mara showed Uncle Anthony that she too can be a Transformer!

Its a PAWty!

The kids and I left after Katie's first basketball game to go to the joint birthday part of our dear neighbors, Stella and Sylvia. They, along with a few other friends from school with May birthdays decided to have a picnic together with a dog and cat theme...it was a PAWty and it was SO cute!

Here are sweet Stella and Sylvia-now 6 and 4!
All the friends lined up to see what the activities would be

There was collar making, face painting, dog/cat ear hats, pin the tail on the dalmation, throwing frisbees, and more.

Alaric's favorite was getting to pick am animal out of the "pound" ( laundry basket) and adopt him. They even got to make their own adoption certificate.

No gifts. Just a dog bowl to put spare change and donations for the local animal shelter!

Look at these sweet little dogs and cats!

They were noisy though! And Alaric was alittle rough but what sweet dogs and cats!