Texas Days

Rainbow Pajama Party

Ava had her pajama birthday party today.  She invited all her girl classmates, cousins & a few friends over to the house to play games, eat cake, dance and wear pajamas.  It was 12 little girls total so it was a little crazy but a lot of fun.

Everyone got a sleeping mask to wear for the Pin the Ava game and they all decorated rock star bracelets.

 In typical Ava fashion, she wrangled up most of her friends for an improptu storytime.  We were waiting for everyone to get there and to finish the bracelets and I looked up, and this was going on.  Cortney said Ava was "holding court" with her friends and that seems to sum up what Ava does a lot.

 I bought a glitter tattoo kit online and gave all the girls one.

 After everyone arrived and got a glitter tattoo, we played a few games of musical chairs (please note that yes I am crazy and had Darren help me move all the furniture around/out of the house so that we would have lots of floor space to play for this party).

 We also had everyone play "Pin The Ava."

 It was a 2 hour party and I will say that about 30 minutes in, everything we had planned was done.  Leaving an hour and a half!  So we did some quick thinking and came up with some other games to play like Friend to Friend, What Time is It, Freeze Dance, etc.  I also thankfully had blown up extra balloons and just let them play balloon toss and whatever they wanted.  With the exception of 2 girls, everyone was fine doing whatever.  Those 2 kept asking me what we were doing next...wonder if they do that to their moms all day?  Ha!

As a result, we ended up opening the gifts at the party to kill time (something that NOBODY does any more for some reason).  It actually worked out great and surprisingly everyone sat and watched and had a good time seeing what she got.  We were very proud of Ava's manners because after each gift, she got up and hugged whoever gave it to her and said thanks.  I also just enjoy hearing her honest reactions as she opened them (a lot of "wows" "awesomes" and "this is so cute").

Ava always loves when everyone sings happy birthday.

 The rainbow cupcakes were a little extra work (since you divide the batter into 6 different batches to color) but they turned out fabulous if I do say so myself.

 Ava and some of her friends (Haley, Addi, Avery & Sawyer)

 Here is the party table...I blew up a bunch of balloons and hung them on the wall, used my Ikea rainbow plates and then all the girls got pajama dolls from Oriental Trading and a hair clip that I made.  I wish I were as fancy as the parties on pinterest but you know what?  The kids loved it and you don't need to do so much at this age.  Too much is overkill in my opinion (and expensive).

 Wait was I just talking about people doing too much?  That's right, I did hand make these pinwheels like a crazy person.  They weren't hard but they did take time so I shouldn't say things about people doing too much considering how much time I spent doing stuff for this party.  I got a little out of hand with the amount of balloons/work I actually put into this party and really it didn't look like I did that much.  Ah well it was fun. 



Happy Birthday Ava!!

The day that Ava has been waiting MONTHS for finally arrived!  Her 5th birthday!  She was lucky enough to get to go to school and see all her friends to celebrate.  Darren even surprised her by taking a half day at work so that he could pick her up from school and spend the afternoon with her. 

Ava was very excited that she got to wear a birthday crown at school.  And she was excited to get cards in the mail.

 Since Darren got home early, Ava got to open all her gifts and play with them.  A good portion of her presents this year were clothes and it was funny to see her open those gifts.  She would say "Awesome" and "This is so adorable" when she opened them.  Girl loves her clothes!  Ryan had a blast while Ava opened gifts too...he loves the paper!

After that, we let Ava pick a place to eat out (Flores) and we met up with Me-Mommy there.  Then we celebrated one last time for the day with a candle topped cookie (Ava is not the biggest fan of cake so I thought we would save that for her party).

Happy Birthday sweet Ava...so hard to believe that our baby girl is 5 years old.

Park

It was such beautiful weather out this weekend so we actually headed to the park for once.

Ryan spent most of his time in the swing.  He thought it was fun at first but then eventually decided that he would prefer to be out and moving (shocker).  At that point, we pretty much left since his favorite thing to do at the park other than swing is eat mulch. 

Oh and btw, I forgot to mention in previous posts that his top 2 teeth are coming in (one right after the other) -- think they started coming in the weekend of the wedding.  I tried to snap a photo of them on the swing but of course, Ryan closed his mouth.  Eh.

 It was a windy day!

 Ava loves to climb on these structures.  It's fun to see how she has grown and progressed at the playground.  Still a bit afraid to climb too high (no complaints here) but at least she gets on these now.

A Few More Wedding Weekend Photos

From my phone -- Ava with her curlers in (with Sara). 

 Right after she got her hair done (she looks so proud of it).  Definitely some Texas hair going on here.

 And the kiddos in bed together early in the morning.  Ryan kept crawling up onto Ava's air mattress so we decided they could snuggle for a bit.  I apologize for the poor poor quality of the photo but apparently this is what you get in a dark room using the flash.

Yeah I Do This All the Time

And by this I mean: neglect the blog for a long period of time and then back post everything that has happened since then.  I guess I at least update it from time to time.  Not sure anyone still follows this old thing.

Anyways, new posts start on February 24th.

Hopefully I'll be better about updating this in the next few weeks since 2 special people are having their birthdays soon...can you believe Ava will be 5 and Ryan will be one in just a few weeks!?  Yay!!

Grandparents

A group shot of Granny & Pops and their grandkids.  As usual I took about 10 photos to get this one. 

 

Professional Wedding Shots

I need to figure out how to order these...here are some of the professional photos from the walk down the aisle.  Too cute!  I have the video which I need to upload but I'll admit my camera work was a bit shoddy.

I love that my shoe made it into this photo (mine is the closest in the foreground and I believe Ava is looking right at me & Darren in this pic).

Wedding - Party Time

Ok, I'm a sucker for kids in wedding attire so I apologize for the amount of photos in this post.  But you have to admit they are too darn cute.

Ava & Sara dancing

 Ian dancing with his flower girls

 Proof that Ryan was at the wedding (although he did not last too much longer)

 Ryan in his fancy clothes

 New friends

Donna swinging Emily. Somehow Donna got roped into doing this with all the kids. We thought it was entertaining but were waiting for someone's arms to be dislocated...thankfully it did not happen. I love doing this too but I have heard of that happening.

 Right before Ava got to swing...I love this photo for some reason.

 And their new friend Sara got a whirl too.



The Wedding

Here are some photos from just before the wedding.  Ava kept posing and holding her skirt out. She just LOVED this dress.

 Me & my little girl.  Or should I say big girl.  She looked so grown up after getting her hair done. Will have to get the photos of her with curlers her in hair off my phone and post because it was quite the sight.

 Showing off her big girl hairdo.

 Darren & Ava...not sure how much Darren loved having Ava call her dress her "wedding dress."  He is so not ready for that.

 Ava, Ian & Emily.

 This was just after the wedding when they were taking group shots.  I love their little flower balls/baskets.



Wedding Rehearsal

We headed to Shiner TX this weekend so that Ava and her cousins Ian & Emily could all be flower girls/ring bearers in Darren's cousin Kaedy's wedding.  Man that was a mouthful!

Ava & Ian practicing with their new friend Sara.

 Emily made fast friends with this little boy Jaxon.  It doesn't look like it in the picture but they ran around all night together having fun.

Acrobatics

Darren and Ava had a great idea to put a blanket on the floor tonight and for some reason, Ryan thought it was the most fun thing in the world.  He decided to show off his tricks.

First up, his jumping to his knees move (and of course he needs his tongue out to do this)

 Then he decided to do my favorite move, the downward dog/I might tumble move.  He has been doing this for weeks but very sporadically and I have never been able to get a photo of him doing it until now.

 I think he likes the way the world looks this way.

Pajama Day

Another Pajama Day at school.  (see here and here for past PJ days...it's funny to see how Ava has changed BUT she still loves PJ day!)

This year she picked out one of her sleeping shirts which is actually one of Darren's old tshirts he had growing up.  I made her throw on leggings since you would see her underwear otherwise.  Btw, her leggings ripped the other day so I patched them up.  I felt kind of funny about patching up $7 leggings (I mean, really I should buy a new pair) but they ended up being so cute and Ava loves them more this way.

I love that she picked this out...it was a very unique pajama set.

 Modelling the back so we can see that it's Darren's shirt.

Like Father Like Son

I don't think a week goes by that I don't hear about how much Ryan looks like Darren (deja vu for me...think it was the same with Ava).

So seeing as I have been wanting to try freezer paper stenciling (look it up online if you don't know what I am talking about), I decided to make Ryan a "Daddy" shirt so that people really could compare the two.  Especially when Darren is not with us.

The boys modelling for me.  I, btw, love this little onesie...I find it funny.  I think Darren was surprised when he got home to find that his face is now on our son's shirt.

 Ava, of course, did not want to be left out of the photos.  She also saw Ry's shirt and said that she too, needs a Daddy shirt.  Maybe I can make her a cute "Daddy" tshirt dress?