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).