Lydia's B-Day

Lydia turned 4 this week!  She wanted a Zoo party theme until we were in the store buying the paper products and she spotted all the princess decorations.  She practically threw the animal decor out of the cart and went straight for the princess stuff.  I took this as a good sign since she usually  plays with the toys that David likes.

I made two cakes, a Cinderella Carriage cake and a castle.  We displayed the carriage one at the party but saved it for her actual birthday a couple days later.  We served the Castle cake to the guest at the party. 

 We have a very small yard so we had to find something that would entertain 17 kids.  I found a great idea here http://www.gokidyourself.com/2012/03/giant-squishy-sensory-bag.html    It was a hit and lasted until the end of the party.  It probably would have lasted longer but it took more than the usual amount of abuse.  We also ran out of duct tape or we would have been able to patch the holes. I was too busy cleaning up that I didn't get a chance to play on it myself:)

 The Knights table

 The Princess Table

 After party movie 

Hope you had a great birthday Lydia, we love you!!

The kids and I went on a little outing one afternoon to look for animals in "the forest".  These are two of my favorite pictures of the summer.

This little guy isn't so little anymore.  He turned 18 months old today!

 My dear parents came with me to Nauvoo to cook for our Stake YW camp last week.  We were able to squeeze in a little time at Nauvoo to see a couple sites, the temple, and the pageant.  The pageant was amazing and I hope I can take my family next summer.  We even happened to be there the same night as Sister Elaine S. Dalton and she was gracious enough to speak to all the YW, take a picture with them and stay around long enough to give them all a hug.  We had a few girls there who are not members of the church and they all said how they felt the spirit that night.  The rest of us did too, it was a great experience.

 We were so busy cooking I didn't really have time to take pictures, here is their last meal at camp- cold cereal:)

 I managed to take a picture of the cake (of course) that I made to celebrate the 100th birthday of girls camp.  I got the idea from sugardoodle but my dad suggested actually toasting the marshmallows.  The girls thought it was pretty fun.  These cakes were just for show, I made 4 large sheet cakes (about 10 cakes mixes all together) to actually serve, we had just under 100 people at camp.

Two days after I returned from camp my lovely, amazing, kind-hearted, generous, etc.....in-laws stayed an extra few days (they watched the kids while I was at camp and Scott was at work) so that Scott and I could  take a quick trip to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary.  Scott is such a great husband, I'm so so blessed.