Balentimes

Miles was so sad when Christmas was over that I had to tell him we were taking down the Christmas decorations so that we could get ready for his birthday. When his birthday was finished, he was extremely bummed that we had to take down those few decorations, so I convinced him to let me take them down as long as we decorated for Valentine's day. I sense a pattern here...
I have about 2 Valentine's decorations, but we put them out and got feeling festive. Miles and Gwen are at really fun ages. They really got into making "balentimes" for our friends and family and made about a million of them. I loved cutting out heart after heart and letting them decorate as much as they wanted. I remember my mom helping me make Valentine's for school every year and it brought back good memories. I always had the best homemade Valentine's to hand out and the most awesome card holder!! I also remember my mom helping me host at least one cookie decorating party for Valentine's day when I was about 9. So it never seems quite like Valentine's day without decorating sugar cookies.
We invited our friends over from a monthly play group to come over and get on a sugar high, make creative messes, decorate sugar cookies. The cookies were upstaged, however, when the garbage man came and captivated all 6 kids.



Miles helped me decorate the rest later on in the day to deliver to friends. :)


Every Valentine's Day we have our family fancy dinner. Basically we just eat something out of the ordinary and light candles at the table. It's always a hit. But to up the "wow" factor this year, we did a little chocolate fondue! I offered fruit and pretzels, but all they wanted was to dip marshmallows, go figure!

Richie got me a pedicure and as tradition calls for, I cleaned his car and left a little present inside. I sure love this small, but significant holiday.

Miles turns 4!

We have a 4 year old. Officially. He got to celebrate his birthday all week long! The Friday before my parents were in town and took us out for pizza, on Sunday they sang to him in primary and the bishop gave him a treat, on Monday we took cupcakes to Joy school and they gave him a present, on Tuesday we took cookies to pre-school and he got to wear the birthday crown all day (super big deal), Wednesday was his actual birthday so he chose pancakes for breakfast and we went to arctic circle after dinner for ice cream and playing. Whew! By Thursday we needed a break from all the partying! We had his actual party on Friday with some of the Garner fam.
Miles requested a Mickey Mouse cake, and balloons. I'm so glad he's still easy to please! I'm also glad that he gets to share his birthday with 2 awesome uncles, uncle Ben and uncle Jeffrey. Jeffrey was ok sharing his birthday party with Miles, so Miles thought he was pretty special. We played pin the Mickey ears on Miles and ate homemade cafe rio. Everyone was super generous with presents and Miles has loved playing with them all!! We decided since we didn't really do a lot of games, we thought we'd turn opening presents into a game. So I made a giant "Toodles" out of cardboard and Miles had 4 mousketools to choose from to help open the 4 presents from mom and dad. For instance, I wrapped one with lots and lots of ribbon and tape, so Miles chose the scissors to help him open that one.
He was on cloud nine! I love seeing my kid happy. You could tell he felt really special that all of this was for him. Success! I'm always amazed at what a good boy we got. We really won the lottery with Miles.

Deja Vu

I realize I still need to post about Miles' 4th bday! I'll get around to it, but until then...

One morning a while back Gwen woke up with the best bed head! She was super ornery that morning and add that to her awesome hair, we just thought the likeness to George Washington was uncanny and couldn't stop laughing. Miles was jealous of the picture taking, so we took his picture too and he gave us his best "cheese!" face. Later on in the day we tried to cheer Gwen up by painting her nails. It's one of her favorite things, but it just didn't seem to do the trick. She gives really good 'ticked-off' faces.

Some time passed and I hadn't taken any more pictures. The kids are extra cute in the mornings and I decided to snap a few pictures recently, on account of their cuteness and Gwen's fantastic bed-head...again. After taking them, I scrolled through the most recent pictures I'd taken only to discover that the last pictures I took were shockingly similar. Pancakes for breakfast, bed-head, chessy grins. Deja vu. They were cute eating their mac n cheese for lunch too, so I snapped another picture. I don't ever want to forget those over-the-top, squished-nose, squinty-eyed smiles.