Lexi turned 6 and Nate turned ??

February has been a slew of birthdays and random illnesses for our family. So on the 16th, Lexi turned 6! Her birthday fell exactly on Presidents' Day so she got school off, convenient I must say. Instead of a "party" this year, we said we could go somewhere fun and she could invite a couple friends. So after the longest time of trying to convince her to go somewhere BESIDES Chuck E. Cheese, she finally decided on "PUMP IT UP". This is a play place filled with giant, bouncy....things! You'll see in some of the pictures what I mean. They also had this huge obstacle course and and big ring with giant boxing gloves (like 3 times the size of a kid) where you could duke it out. The coolest part was that adults could play too (for free), so play we did!

Here are Lexi and her friends Sierra, Lance and Bethany at Pump it up.

The infamous Barbie cake that many of you have heard about already. It might appear to be simple to make, but you'd be mistaken... (at least if you don't have a great history with cakes, like me)

Tyler, Chandler and Collin (the lucky younger siblings that got to tag along to this event).

Lexi, Sierra and Lance on the giant inflatable slide, which soon became the favorite. They all loved going down at the same time. Later Nate showed them more "inventive" ways of going down.

Tyler and Chandler getting in on the action.

Here's Colton and his girlyfriend Laraleigh having some of their own fun.


Later that evening we had dinner, presents and cake as a family. Lexi wanted pancakes for dinner (can't complain about that) and a Barbie cake (as a I mentioned above) - a Sleeping Beauty Barbie no less (which is of course like the only princess we didn't already have). So anyway I finally found an oven-proof bowl I thought might work (I wish someone would have told me about this "pampered chef batter bowl" sooner, which apparently works perfectly for this sort of thing). Well after layering that on top of a round layer of cake it was no where near tall enough (those dang Barbie's have some long legs!). So I just kept making more and more round cake layers until I thought it might be tall enough. I frosted most of it, then tried inserting the barbie. Well it created an earth quake of sorts, as it went CRACK, CRACK, CRACK and started falling apart. Thank goodness for decorative spray frosting as it helped cover up the deep chasms. So after much effort, a few toothpicks and even more frosting we took a decent picture (notice you don't see the back by the way). Probably minutes later it all came crashing down. But Lexi still loved it, sweet girl. The moral of this story is that if you find yourself in a position where you need to make a barbie cake and you don't really have the right equipment, just sacrifice the dumb barbie and rip it's legs off!
Anyway... she received some nice presents (including from grandparents, thank you), she seemed pleased with. One of which was this Alexis sign with hooks.

I saw this in TJ Maxx and it was the only name, so of course it was destined to be ours.

Lexi finally lost those 2 wiggly teeth (making the grand total 6). So now this is her adorably funny looking smile. Needless to say she's having some issues with eating and drinking.


OK, so for Nate's birthday on the 22nd, most of us were sick and I know we were all tired. So unfortunately his birthday wasn't grandly celebrated, but Nate's always a good sport about that. He did request a turkey dinner, though, for his birthday - which is still something I'm not totally comfortable making. I do have to say though it turned out pretty great, at least Nate really thinks so. Here's a picture of our very golden "pretty bird".

This sucker was gi-normous weighing in over 20 lbs. and almost all breast, so needless to say we had some left over. Being the great guy Nate is, he wanted to make up and deliver some trays of turkey and mashed potatoes (which he made - delicious!) to a few families that are going through a rough time. So that's what he did on his birthday. He also got to open a few presents too.

By the time Nate's birthday rolls around, I'm caked-out, so I made up this chocolate snickers trifle instead. The candles are in the shape of the number of years he turned...can you make it out?

Here's Nate with some tired and sick kiddos and a few presents. Have you noticed how the gift bags just keep getting re-used through out all these birthday photos? Overall, though, February has been a pretty great month (despite all the sickness).

Tyler's 4th birthday

Lexi and Tyler showing us how old he is now (with a really cool Lincoln log fort in the background)

There's our handsome fella on his birthday

Colton showing off his "proper" crawling now

Our attempt at a firetruck cake

One of Tyler's favorite gifts this year, he's excited to start soccer next month

Another favorite of Tyler's, more Thomas (thanks Grandma Sherry)

Colton looking ferocious with his teeth (although you can't really see them)!

Tyler and one of his best buds Elijah playing a game at Tyler's party. They were trying to put out the fire by smothering the flames (aka - trying to pop balloons with blankets over them)

Ty with his friends Chandler and Elijah

Here's Joshua playing the firehat stepping stone game. It took a little while for the boys to get the hang of it, but eventually Elijah and Josh thought outside of the box and figured out how to get the job done quicker and with less effort (it was hilarious).

Here's the hot potato (or hot firehat) game with Ty, Elijah, Chandler and Isaiah

Well Ty-Ty's 4 now (he'll probably not let me call him that much longer...) and seemed to have a great birthday. His actual birthday was super bowl Sunday, so...there was a little competition for attention, but he did open some great presents and have his choice of dinner (pizza of course) and I made him a couple giant chocolate chip cookie cake things. We had some friends over to celebrate Tyler's big day (and maybe watch a little of the game while they were here, right?). He really got to celebrate the following Friday though at his long-awaited Firefighter Birthday Party. We had it in the Firetruck room at Focus on the Family (which was free, nice!) and he had just a few good friends come and they played a few games and partook of the firetruck cake, which was a little sad looking, but fun just the same. The next day we had set up a little tour of our local fire station for Tyler and his friends with hopes of sitting on a real firetruck etc., but it didn't quite work out as we hoped b/c the firefighters were out on a call (doing their job....I guess we can't be too upset). Now Lexi and Nate's b-days are right around the corner.

As for Colton, he's 9 months old now. He started getting into the sitting position by himself a few weeks ago, which he is soooo proud of! He also likes to say "mama" a lot, which is fun b/c Tyler and Lexi both said "dada" first (I'm sure he doesn't really grasp the meaning yet, but I'll take it!)He also started crawling on all fours about a week ago. He still seems to prefer the army crawling as he knows he can get places a lot faster that way. He's pulled himself to standing a few times and is even starting to try to get into the fireplace and can open the doors, yikes...some of you know how that turned out for Tyler. Needless to say we definitely need to get back into the mode of baby-proofing everything again. He almost has 6 chompers now and I'm feelin' it (whereas Lexi is about to lose her 6th tooth - so I guess they're balancing each other out nicely).