Addi's 4th Birthday

Addi HAD to have a Scooby Doo birthday party. She is obsessed with the whole gang. And actually, she likes Scooby the least because he's not pink.

My cute birthday girls who loves to strike a pose!

Here's the goodie table

with the Scooby snacks, of course

The first thing we did was color t-shirts that had the whole scooby gang on them. This was no small endeavor. It took me forever to iron on! I even burned my bathroom counter. (That makes 2 burnt counters in my lifetime.) But it was worth it!

Jinkies! Velma lost her glasses! They were hidden all over the kitchen and then they played "Pin the Glasses on Velma".

Next, Shaggy was hungry for scooby snacks, so we fed him PLENTY of snacks. The kids really loved this game. We put the line close enough so the kids were all getting them in his mouth. I think they were proud they could do it. Haha. (And I was proud of my drawings!)

I can't believe that they make Scooby pinatas! It was hard to figure out what games to play for a scooby party. Thank goodness for this pinata. This one was a hit! (haha no pun intended).

We had our traditional Little Cesaer's pizza.

Next we went to open presents, but they were missing! Gang, it looks like we've got a mystery to solve! The birthday phantom had stolen them! NO matter how much we told the kids that he was a really nice phantom, we still had some kids way too scared to even help us figure out the mystery.

We searched for clues in each room that finally led to the phantom (our neighbor Casjen) hiding in the bathtub with all the gifts. He had a white sheet draped over him. We snuck up on him and then ran back downstairs to devise a plan to trap him. We set up one more birthday present and called him down. All the kids were hiding behind the couch. The only two brave enough to watch were Alyssa and Addi.

When the phantom came down to get the last present, we trapped him! We took off the sheet to reveal who our phantom was! Casjen said, "I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids!" Addi was in shock and was so excited! We had two kids with tears of joy and relief. It was pretty funny. We got it all on video, so no pics of this part of the party.

Excited to open gifts!

Ben enjoyed his cupcake even though he got booted to the floor.

And finally we played Scooby, Scooby, Phantom (duck, duck, goose) and Freeze Dance to the Scooby Doo theme song. They wanted to dance forever! The kids were having a blast and screaming so loud. At this point, I was ready for the dance party to be over!

These last two pictures show Alyssa playing duck, duck, goose with Addi and the kids cracking up at her. She was saying silly things each time she ducked a kids head. They were dying laughing at her. Alyssa was in her glory. She kept going around for awhile as she enjoyed all the attention. Too funny!

Below is the mysterious floating bat. It took me awhile to figure that mystery out.

After the party, we had our own little family party. Addi waited all day to open her gifts. We wanted to wait for dad to come home. She was okay with that because I let her open two Scooby Doo DVDs in the morning and she carried them around with her all day. (Don't ask me why this is underlined! I can't get it off!)

I think this was one of her favorite gifts!

Whew! I made it through the day! I feel like a free woman now!

Alyssa's 6th Birthday

Alyssa wanted a science theme this year after showing her a couple of birthday parties from the The Celebration Shoppe and their blog. I love her blog!! There were so many fun ideas. We got all the experiments from stevespangler.com.

Alyssa's teacher let us borrow all their lab coats for the party! It was a good thing too - you shoulda seen them after the party was all over.

The favorite experiments were definitely the insta worms and insta snow!

We started off with something simple. We mixed the primary colors to make the rest of the rainbow. They were actually impressed. So simple. So cute.

All these lovely ideas were from the celebration shoppe.

These cute labels were printed up from her shop too.

The kids each got a test tube filled with candy to take home in addition to all the experiments they made which included slime (a must have at any science party!), lava lamps, and insta snow.

The big jar was filled with dry ice which they were just fascinated by. They loved putting their little hands through the fog. Then when they discovered blowing in it, wow, it made such a dramatic effect. They couldn't even believe it.

I made the banner using the wonderful Cricut machine.

I loved her invitations! I bought them on etsy.com from ThreeShinyJs.

It was a lot of work, but so worth it. The kids had a ton of fun!

Hi. We're back.

That last post was actually done by an apple employee trying to figure out why i couldn't post pictures on the web. Well, obviously we figured it out, so I'm going to try to keep up on blogging again. I may need a little push every now and then though.

So I thought, wow, where to begin. How about with the last few pictures I took...

Ben just started solids and he can't get enough. He loves to eat! Maybe it's because I started him on solids so much later than the girls. Don't show Addi this picture, she'll start gagging (she can't watch him eat, it grosses her out, and she really will gag quite a few times).

Lys plays soccer now. Their team is the butterflies and they loved pretending to "fly" off this ledge while waiting in the 100 degree heat to take their soccer photos. Just ignore my finger in the corner. whoops.

And for this last part, the day would not be a normal day without hearing this twenty times...

I'll have to record her singing again though, because she does it much better, but this is the only recording we have so far. She wants to be "Shag" for Halloween, but I think we've finally convinced her otherwise. Most of her day is spent playing with her characters.

Little Bendito

I love having someone else take pictures of my babies because most of the time they are much better and more creative than I am! Since my super duper talented sister in law Emily doesn't live here anymore, I thought all was lost until my friend Chante told me about her photographer Kristin! She was so good and had all the props and ideas too. I didn't have to do a thing but watch her expertise!

Here's Ben at 2 weeks old. If you like what you see, you can see more of Kristin's work here!

Shhhh. Don't tell Steve he doesn't have sunscreen on.

Benjamin Kent Nelson

It's almost been a year since I last blogged, but I thought I should announce the arrival of our baby boy! He was born March 30th and weighed 9 lbs 9 oz. He was 21 1/4 in long. Everything went well and we are all doing great! I apologize for taking so long to get this announcement out!

I'm on a roll!

These pictures are from almost a year ago. Digital Scrapbooking is so easy and quick! (Well, with the tutorials.)