A Friend to Play

Our friend, Jane, came to play today in the afternoon. She was nice enough to bring each of the kids a chocolate shake from Wendys. The kids loved it!

We played outside for a lot of the afternoon.

Cooper loves the slide!

Jane and Elizabeth had fun in the house together.

Ben was having fun practicing with his roller skates. As you can see no one is holding onto him. He will not let anyone hold his hand.

The other thing we did was make place mats. The kids stamped their feet to look like hearts. We stuck them on clear contact paper and the kids added their own hearts, glitter, stickers, etc... We added another layer of contact paper on top to keep it all protected and added red tape on the edges to hold it all together. The kids had so much fun. We hope we get to do it again soon!

An Oldie but Goodie

Elizabeth is very into art projects so I was trying to think of something cute and fun that would be Valentiney (is that a word??) I thought of the crayon shaving idea. You shave some crayons (this is about 6 crayons) with a pencil sharpener. Elizabeth did a little of this, it's kind of tiring on the hands.
We melted them between 2 pieces of wax paper on the low setting of the iron.

Waiting so patiently for mommy to hurry up and stop taking pictures!

Elizabeth cut out all the hearts and we hung them on curly ribbon and put them on the back door. We needed some cute decorations in here!

Iced In

Here in TX we got an ice storm that shut down the town for a day. We decided to stay home and play...and get some organizing done. Fun stuff! :)
Tom was showing the kids the ice the next morning - like it how we don't even have shoes on the kids? We went in quickly!

Ben got roller skates for his birthday so he was trying them out. He didn't want anyone to hold his hands, so Elizabeth was holding him on his back to help him stay steady.

We put up the bounce house Ben got for his birthday in the garage and had fun bouncing with our cousins, Drew and Josh. There is a slide on the bounce house so it was a challenge keeping the kids in the bounce house, not sliding down onto the cement garage floor.

At least we were able to get some energy out on this cold day! We hope you all had a good day too, especially all our friends who were also iced in!

All the Kids

Ok, prepare yourselves, this is a long one! I wanted to try to include all the kids who came to the party, so here we go!

The birthday boy - Farmer Ben.He really enjoyed all the fishing. Cutie pie Emily - dressed up as a horse for the party!

Enjoying his cupcake - I wish I had turned the 2 around for the pictures! :)

Cousin Josh - and Ashlynn in the background.

Our friend, Jake. He was enjoying playing with one of Ben's presents. I was wishing it really worked - the kids went crazy with all the shredded paper. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the aftermath in the garage!

Cousin Zach - isn't he getting big!?

Our friend, Ashlynn.

Our friend Jane, and my friend Joanne. They also had their 3 week old baby at the party, but I didn't get a picture :(


Cousin Cooper - he was loving the farm!

Ben, enjoying the horse that one of his friends got for him. He felt like a real cowboy!

Cousin Josh

Our neighbor Adam.

Elizabeth having fun in the barn.

My mom and Ben. I must not have had my camera out much for the afternoon party when the rest of the family came - because I got no other pictures of adults! Sorry everybody!

Our friend, Baylee.

Luke and Baylee enjoying the cars.

Elliott, catching some fish.

Cousin Drew - doesn't he look cute in his farmer shirt?

Kids from our neighborhood taking turns fishing. It was a big hit at the party.

Anabel and Elliott in the ball pit Ben got for his birthday. This was also a big hit at the party.

Ok - I think I got almost everybody. Thanks for hanging in there with me! Thanks for everyone who came, and who wished Ben a happy birthday! We have a great big 2 year old on our hands now. I hope no terrible twos are on the way....

Ben's Party Games

We had Ben's birthday parties at our house yesterday, but instead of posting all of the parties, I decided to break it up a little bit (or else we would have the longest post ever!) We had two parties at our house. The one on the morning was our neighborhood friends and the afternoon party was our families and other friends. This is the barn the kids and I made for our garage. It ended up being an even bigger hit with the kids than I thought. They pretended to be the 3 little pigs and the wolf, and one would "blow" the barn down. (not all the way, thank goodness, or we would have squished some kids!) This is Find Farmer Ben's Animals in the hay. I had directions to each game typed up near the games. They were supposed to dig through the hay (paper) and find little animals - and the kids got to take 2 home with them.
Just some decorations on our chalkboard wall in the garage.

Farmer Ben's Beanbag Toss. The goal was to knock down the cups and receive an animal sticker.

Fish in Farmer Ben's pond. If they caught a fish they got a farm tattoo.

Milk the Cow - they got a sucker after this game. I think each kid had a least 4 suckers - Ben probably had 10! Suckers are a huge treat for him so he was taking advantage of us not paying too close of attention to what he was doing. :)

One of the kid tables.

The cake and cupcakes. Not my favorite cake I ever made, but it was alright. All in all everyone had a lot of fun. I'll post all the kids tomorrow!

Busy Before 8am

1 trip to the gym

1 load of laundry

1 load of dishes

1 roast in the oven

3 clean kids

1 clean bathroom (done while kids were in the bath)

All before 8am!

First and only time I'm sure I'll get that much done before 8am. We're lucky to be out of our jammies by that time normally!

On another note...

For Ben's Bday we went out for ice cream after Elizabeth's dance class. The kids and I were met by Grandma H, Grandma B, Janet, Josh, and Zach.

Our group enjoying our treats.

Zach and Josh - what cuties!

The birthday boy enjoying his cupcake. You wouldn't believe how messy he got. I wish I had an after picture with the chocolate and ice cream dripped over everything. At least he enjoyed himself on his birthday!

Ben is 2!

Ben woke up this morning and instantly saw his birthday present. He wouldn't even wait for me to take his picture, he was crawling out of his crib, ready to play.

It's a soccer ball pit! Ben and Cooper have been playing with it pretty much all morning. The only problem is I didn't realize it would be so big. It's fun though!He loved running through the streamers. (about 2 hours after I took this picture I heard Ben and Cooper screaming and laughing...I went into the room and found all the streamers down and in a pile. Oh well, I knew that would probably happen!)He found the candy in his birthday cone!Ben has trouble holding up 2 fingers on one hand so we are teaching him to hold his fingers like this. He's 2 now!

My cutie pie!

Happy Birthday Ben!