Birthday Recap

I haven't blogged about the kids' or my birthdays this year, so I thought I'd do a quick overview of them all at once!

Ella's birthday was back in June.  She turned 7!  I can't believe how old my kids are getting.  :(

Ella wanted a ballerina themed birthday and was very specific about how everything needed to be.  First we had to play pin the tiara on the ballerina.  I busted out my drawing skills (sure) and drew a giant ballerina on a leftover piece of packing paper.  I left it empty and let the kids decorate it as part of the activities.

I think they did a pretty good job.

My ballerina with her ballerina.  Isn't she just so cute?

Then on to the game!  Not a single one of us managed to get our crown on the ballerina, not even the kids who cheated.

Next up was musical chairs.  It's pretty hard to play when you only have 4 people and one has to start and stop the music.  That leaves you with 3 people and 2 chairs.  The game goes pretty fast.  Anton took a video or two of the silliness, but I'm too lazy to hook it up right now to upload it.

Then it was present time!  Ella's one and only request was for a Happy Napper.

Thank you television for introducing my children to such fantastic toys.  She also got a ballet tutu (she wanted a whole ballet outfit and was totally bummed about the homemade tutu I gave her), clothes, art stuff, and a jump rope.

She's still working on the jump roping skills.

Then it was time for cake!

Ella requested a strawberry cake with white frosting.

I did all the pink decorations with chocolate.  There were different ballerina silhouettes all around the cake.  I wanted to cover the whole thing with the roses I did on top, but I ran out of frosting.  Those things are frosting hogs!!

It was a tasty cake, but sadly Ella didn't like the strawberry filling I put in it.

The rest of us enjoyed it though.

So that was Ella's 7th birthday!

Next up was Alex's 5th birthday in July.  Can you believe he's starting kindergarten in a week?  Where did my baby go?  We celebrated his birthday in parts since we were travelling and moving right around his birthday.

We gave him one present early so he could have it in the car.

Yes, another Happy Napper.  He loves it.

When we were in Utah we had a whole big family party for everyone, so he got celebrated some more, and then it was off to California.  We actually celebrated his real birthday in the hotel.

I had tried to get all his gifts ahead of time, but ended up having to make a last minute Target run to round out the gifts.

But he was thrilled with his goggles and floaties since we had a pool there at the hotel to swim in.

I didn't want to try and bake a cake in the little hotel kitchen, so I let Alex pick his cake at the grocery store.  And no matter how much I tried to convince him that a nice plain white cake with Happy Birthday on top would be perfect, he insisted in this one:

Yeah.  The kids were pooping green for days.  I couldn't eat it.  But he loved it, and that's what matters, right?  I need to send a picture of it to Cake Wrecks.

And then last, but not least, was my birthday.  We pretty much didn't do anything.  Actually, that's not true.  we house hunted on my birthday.  We went to the open house of the house we're currently living in, and all I wanted for my birthday was this house.  And I got it so all is good.  We also went out for dinner at a super good sushi place, and on my birthday itself went up to see the Oakland temple.

And that about does it for birthdays this year.  I'll probably do a couple other catch-up posts, and one of these days I actually post about our new house!  I was hoping to wait until we are all unpacked, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon.