Taye Turns Two!

Tayevion has the joy (hmm?) of having a Halloween Birthday.  Actually, I think he will like it very much growing up.  I mean, there is a party pretty much all month long that consists of dressing up and uh...candy.  What's not to like right?

But for me, it is just kind of stressful, adding a birthday in with everything else going on.  And as he gets older, I just anticipate it getting more stressful.  Unless I get my act together and get more organized. 

I can dream.

At his cousins birthday party, he loved the presents!

Here he is in wonder of his cake.

"I'm Two Now!"

Yum!

Back at home, Taye got to open up his new toy: a basketball hoop!  And let me tell you, he has definately made good use of it!

Oh Taye, the baby of the family.  He is such a sweet little boy, when he wants to be.  Other times he is as agressive as they come. But he is the youngest, plus training to be a quarterback, so that is to be expected. He amazes us with talents way beyond his years every day.  He is gifted in anything physical, but also smart as ever, and tough as nails!  Happy Birthday! 

Kiki's Birthday

This is my niece, I call her Kiki.  She is a barbie and Carrie Underwood nut.

Happy Birthday!

Back To School Time Capsules '10 and Carina's Birthday

Carina's sweet 16! ~ Wow this is a big deal!

Every year we make Back to School Time Capsules.  It is so fun for the kids to go back and read their answers from the previous year and write down what they are anticipating for the coming year.  We usually do it on the Sunday before school starts, which always seems to land on Carina's birthday celebration. It's fun to have cousin traditions!

Jasmine's Birthday Party

 Jasmine's party was a hit and pretty easy to do.  I am done with overplanning and overwhelming myself.  So I made it simple. Jasmine wanted a rock star 4th of July party. So I painted them all as rock stars and then they each got accessories to make the transformation complete. Necklaces, silly bands, inflatable guitars...you know, the essentials.

 We had popscicles.

 Did the chicken dance, among others.

 Jasmine rockin' out.

 Then we had our family birthday party for her that same day at a little park.  She pretty much just opened her presents, had pizza and cake.  Her aunt Li made her such a cute guitar cake!

And what she wanted most for her birthday was a face painting kit just like mom.  She was thrilled!! Pretty soon she is going to be painting better than me!

Visit From Our Favorite Texas Cousins!

Oh it is a joyous time when cousins from out of town come and visit! That is one of the wonderful part of living by grandparents...everyone comes to see us!We got to have a birthday celebration for my darling little niece that was turning 11.

Isn't she a cutie?

We threw her a surprise birthday party! The cousins are getting so creative when it comes to celebrating birthdays, I love it!

As part of the festivities, I got to paint all of the cute faces (except for my own kids, as you can see, haha...they must be sick of it!)

Shayden's Birthday Week age 9

Shayden turned 9 already! Where has the time gone?

Here he is having his birthday breakfast...healthy choice huh?

He got this hat at school and I made him wear it all week.

He secretly loved it, although he wouldn't admit it.

The week started off with taking him fishing for free fishing day. They love to fish even though they don't often catch something!

And what could be better than sharing a birthday with your closest cousin? Check out this awesome chess cake that my sister made! Both boys love chess.

They were dissapointed when we told them we actually had to cut the cake and eat it.

Opening presents at the cousins party.

It wasn't Shayden's year to have a big party, but he did get to enjoy the day at Boondocks!

Tricking the basketball game into giving tons of tickets (sneaky!) haha

Tayevion found a ball and of course carried it around everywhere.

The girls are such good little friends now.

Another great culmination event for the 3rd grade. This time they did a May Pole and an Opera.
The opera was called Space People Meet the Vikings. It had a Star Wars flair, and Shay was Boba Fett.

The students helped create all of the set and costumes.

Then they sang some fun songs they had learned.

No photos!

The busier I got with the business, the less pictures I took, apparently. I started taking a million pictures of kids' faces that I had painted, and neglected to take pictures of the every day things that we did. In March of this year, for example, these are the only pictures that I have! They are of a culmination activity for Shay's class in school, and they are blurry even! Ha ha.

Tayevion Turns One!

Tayevion had a blast at his one year party with the cousins. He had lot's of help opening presents too.

Now if we had just put some pants on the poor guy!

We celebrated his big day later at home.

And since this is so behind, I don't even remember why he was crying.

But he sure looks happy here!

Oh the joys of being one!

Green Elephant Party 2009

Mandy was the host this year and she had the party at her sister Jamie's beautiful home. Mandy opted to do something different and have it around Halloween this year! We also had a baby shower for Jenny and Mandy, so that was fun. Plus, I got to do glimmer tattoos on everyone including some cute pregger bellies! 

And Tracy will be the hostess for 2010!

Pre-Halloween '09

Here is Shayden's class singing in the program during the day.

And Jasmine at her little party.

And then later that day, the 3rd grade had a big International Fest at the school. Here they are performing a (dutch?) dance.

This was taken at the Jetblue trunk or treat:

And earlier on Halloween day we went to Sunflower market and they got to run around and do a scavenger hunt.