Party Time!

Leah Bug had a bunch of friends over for a birthday party last night. The girls had way too much fun.

We made pizzas. No pictures of that but we cleared off the big kitchen island and stood around it and each girl made her own pizza. They had lots of fun doing that and the pizza turned out yummy.

We decorated "Pup Cakes", little cupcakes that looked like puppies.

We painted fingernails.

Aunt Jessi was essential to the fingernail painting, we could never have handled the kind of bulk painting we did without her and her artistic touch. They turned out cute. Leah's favorite color is green so most of the girls got green nails.


They played at the park quite a bit. I have another official announcement to make; I LOVE having the park right behind us!! Look at this:


Yes, our backyard has a park we don't have to mow. Although, Ryan did tell the kids that they will have to mow it sometimes, ha ha! It is awesome. Really really awesome.

So for those of you who wanted to know why/how we moved, here's the dealio. We needed a bigger house. We looked for about 8 months and it took so long because we wanted to stay in this same neighborhood for the school and the ward/stake. The house we found is perfect in absolutely every way except we are switching to another ward :( Don't make me cry about it again like I did in my talk last week in Sacrament meeting, I think the people in the front row got sogged from my tears. . . But the ward we are moving to is awesome too. They actually won Youth Olympics this year and as I told the YW last week when I taught my last lesson to them; We could have stayed in LPP if only we hadn't gotten 2nd in YO, we have to go where the winners are :), they should have gotten more points, 41 would have done it! Just kidding, ha ha.

So Long Cub Scouts, Hello Sprouts!

Jeffey got his Arrow of Light this week. He was pretty excited.

The arrow plaque is awesome and has been hung up in his new room.



It was a fun night. So we've moved into the new house and it has been lots of work but it has gone pretty well. I've still got more projects than I can shake a stick at, but we love the house, a lot a lot.

I planted some herbs from seeds a couple of days after we moved in and they are sprouting! I'm excited to have cilantro and basil so I can make make salsa and pesto. We discovered that there is a rosemary bush on the front porch so I've been making rosemary bread. I've been baking and cooking more than usual because, and I want this to be an official announcement; *I LOVE my kitchen*. A lot. I mean, I really loved our old house and I liked my kitchen a lot, but this kitchen. Oh my. Happiness.

So far I've got sprouts in all of them but one, but it will come too I'm sure. Anyways, stay tuned for more updates, we've got Leah's birthday coming up next week! And I will be better about posting now.

The Big 11

Our Baby Jeffey was born 11 years ago yesterday and, let me tell you, that was a crazy time!
Now he is all big and handsome and stuff. So for his big birthday celebration he had a sleepover with four of his cousins, they played the PS3 and stayed up late. In the morning they had donuts and chocolate milk and headed off to Flagstaff to play in the snow. The weather has been really cold lately and the snow is great up in Flag. Ryan took the boys and I stayed home with the rest of them. We had fun at home but a couple of the left behinds were mildly upset.
This is an old picture of the Bug but it gets the point across, I wasn't brave enough to photograph her yesterday to capture the sadness, but, yes, that is about how they were.

The boys had high adventure and good times. They didn't last very long with the sledding since it was 7 degrees out and they are wimpy AZ boys, but they had fun and got worn out so it was successful.

They came home to the cake I'd made. I totally thought of and made that cake all by myself and I am pretty proud of it. I rocked that cake hard. It is cake ball dinosaur eggs (Jeffey has historically asked for and gotten dinosaur/dragon cakes on his birthday) with a nest made of various things with melted chocolate and peanut butter holding it together (the nest was super yummy actually) and more cake ball "rocks" (or dinosaur poop as the boys said) around the bottom of the nest. I'm telling you, it was super cool and a big success.

The boys each had an egg then and there and the nest was re-filled for the New Years/Birthday party later on at Livingstone's. It was cool that they could have some of the cake and it didn't wreck it.

Upon interview the boy said that he had a great 11th birthday, he loved the snow, his presents and everything and he thought his cake was awesome. Hooray!