Our first teenager!

Our oldest child is now officially a teenager!  Where have the years gone???  Spencer is exhibiting many of the signs of teenager-hood, such as moodiness, girl craziness, and wanting to sleep on, but he's still an awesome kid who is very obedient and good.  We're lucky!  He's also hit a major growth spurt, and I can hardly keep him in clothes.  He is about an inch shorter than me, standing at 5'6", and he's already passed his grandmas in height.  He's anxious to get braces in the summer, and for his voice to get lower, so that the older girls will pay attention to him!  It's all about the girls.  For his birthday this year, all Spencer wanted was a cell phone and unlimited texting.  Since we had held out longer than most parents, we were happy to oblige him.  And his social life has been pumping since!  Happy Birthday Machine!!!

Ruby's Pinkalicious Party!!

Ruby wanted a Pinkalicious birthday party this year - for her first ever "friend" party!  Oh the fun that can be had with a purely PINK theme, and a darling little book go along!  My quest with this party was to have it be a fun, intimate little group of Ruby's closest friends.  Both of my girls are shy in large crowds, or with people they don't know well, so even though it was hard to do, we kept the guest list tiny!  My secondary goal of this party was to NAIL the cupcakes!  I mean, the Pinkalicious cupcakes are the key to this darling book and theme!  And some of the cupcakes online that I saw just didn't quite get it right.  And not that mine are perfect, but I was so happy with the way they turned out! They are as close to the cartoon cupcakes as I could have imagined.  If you don't know the Pinkalicious books, then you'll probably not notice the details on the cupcakes, or the identical star wands for party favors, or the Pinklicious font on the invitations.  But for those of you that DO know the books...you can tell that I had fun!!  And doesn't Ruby look just like Pinkalicous herself???  So adorable!  OK, so here is what we did for the party.  As the girls arrived, they came in and colored Pinkalicious coloring pages for the first few minutes.  Then they all gathered around as I read Pinkaicious to them.  A couple of the girls hadn't heard the book, so really they needed to know the story line to appreciate the party!  After the story the girls sat back up at the table and used sticker flowers to decorate their pictures, just like when Pinkalicious blended in with the pink peonies at the park.  After they were finished with their masterpieces, we played PINKO - a pink twist on BINGO.  It was super cute!!  We then played Pin-the-Cherry-on-the-Cupcake.   It was pretty cute, and the first time that many of these girls had played this "classic" party game.  Next up we read another story - Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink.  Those girls could have listened to stories the whole party!!  After we read the story, we made our own "pink drink," since Ruby's daddy "accidentally" made yellow lemonade for Ruby's PINK party!!  They thought that was pretty funny.  After sampling our new pink lemonade, we decided to sing to Ruby and eat cupcakes.  Little, sweet, shy Ruby did not like being the center of attention during the singing, however, and burst into tears (after pulling some hilarious faces, trying to show her disapproval of the singing).  So we canceled the song and opened presents instead.  We couldn't have the birthday girl crying while blowing out her candles!  This distraction worked, and we were able to convince Ruby to let us all yell "Happy Birthday Ruby" instead of singing to her.  Funny girl.  :)  After eating cupcakes we gathered the girls around for a group picture with their party favors - a Pinkalicous wand and a cupcake hair bow.  Such a fun party, and Ruby had the time of her life!

Ruby turns 4!

Who can believe that our little Booey is four years old!!  We love this girl, and had so much fun celebrating with her.  She had a Barbie filled birthday, and even got her first big girl bike.  She was so happy!!  I crammed the night before her birthday, sewing and sewing her very own owl.  She had wanted one ever since Ella's party, and I was glad to make it happen.  Little Ruby has had a great year, where she has loved preschool, going to dance class, and spending lots of time with mom and her friends.  She's down to taking a nap about three days a week, and even when she goes a week without one (such as the Washington DC trip), she is never tired and cranky.  That is not to say that she doesn't have her moments  - she definitely does!  She's exploring and testing and trying to figure out what she can get away with, just like every other four year old!  But she is still a very sweet little girl that I know I can take anywhere at any time, and she will behave marvelously.  What a treat she is!  Ruby still insists on being a picky eater (at least for our household!), but she eventually gets the job done.  It just takes a LONG time and lots of helping with bites, counting bites, bribing, threatening,...you name it!  Other people who see her out and about, munching on her little baggie of sweet peppers, however, would argue that at least she eats her veggies!!  Happy Birthday my sweet little Ru!!