Old Man Casey

 My sweet husband turned 40 today! Are you kidding me?! To commemorate this event, I put together a digital scrapbook compiling thoughts and memories from 40 different people. It was pretty great watching him read it and I think he was really liked it. 

I told everyone I would post all of the pages as soon as I gave him the book. So here you go...

Casey's Forty!

Happy Birthday To Me!

Casey brought me Cravings french toast, a Diet Coke, and Peeps for my birthday breakfast. Am I the luckiest wife or what?!

Some Serious Bragging About to Happen

Jenna and I took a trip to San Diego for my brother, Scoot's girl's birthday party. Scoot and Jen planned this darling Minnie Mouse party for their girls first and second birthdays. It was so fun, and I must say, I have the cutest nieces and nephew...and I have the photos to prove it. 

Our attempt at a family photo with my siblings and their children....just impossible

Happy birthday, Ashtyn & Shiloh! {P.S. Do you like the banner I made?}

 Ready yourself for a parade of cuteness:

Shiloh, 2

Ashtyn, 1

Chloe, 3 

Cooper, 2

Jenna, 2

Kylie, 7

I made some subway art for the party and and Jen blew them up crazy big so that it was you saw first thing when you walk in to the house. 

How cute are the balloons and table cloth draping from the ceiling? 

The next day we went with the Quarders to a fund raiser for my friend, Cindy Bagaso Farmer's son, who I have know since I was 3. Nathan, who is 13 years old, needed to go Mott's Children's Hospital in Michigan for another vascular surgery on February 16th, just 4 months after his last surfer. Nathan has a difficult time controlling his blood pressure, and the doctors have determined he has a narrowing of his aorta artery. 

Nathan has already endured several surgeries including kidney removal, aorta to aorta by-pass, renal artery, kidney reimplementation, and several others. The fund raiser helped with the cost of travel expenses as his last surgery kept them in Michigan for over 6 weeks. If you feel like donating to the cause, an account has been set up at Chase Bank. Please feel free to contact me for account information. 

Cindy, Nathan, and Jimmy were already in Michigan, but we did get a little time with Cindy's mom, which was so fun! They had face painting, a raffle, a silent auction and delicious food, along with a bunch of activities for older kids. So we ended up playing at the local playground. 

On our last day in town, we joined Jen and the girls and fabulous little pub in South Park that has a great little play area for the kids and they had so much fun together. Jenna and Shiloh are so cute together and it was great to get a little one on one time with Jen. 

Cuties.

I thought I would include one picture of her royal cuteness sleeping.

With some final good-bye loves from cute, cute Chloe and Cooper, we were off. It was a great trip and once again Sara and Chris were fabulous hosts. Thank you for always being so good to us, sister! 

A Candy Land Birthday Party - Jenna's Two!

For the second year we had a joint birthday party for my nephew, Cooper, and Jenna. Since they were born just 3 days apart this is what's happening for now. We had the funnest time at the party. My sister, Sara, and I decided to do it in Saint George this year since her family was in town for Thanksgiving and went with a Candy Land theme. As most of you are probably aware, we don't really do anything on a small scale. So, yeah, went a little overboard....but it was to be expected, right? You'll have to forgive the 1000 pictures but I promised pics for the out of town fam...

We had candy cane balloon pillars on the entrance to the clubhouse.

When you opened the doors you were greeting by the start of the construction paper board game. 

It lead you around the room to each of the stations.

You started by getting your ice cream. 

You then stopped at the "Gingerbread Plum Tree" station. Where you could top your ice cream with chocolate sauce, crushed graham crackers, cheese cake crumbs, yogurt chips, brownie chunks, crushed Oreos, Butterfingers crumbs, mini Reese's peanut butter cups, milk chocolate caramels, or cookie dough chunks. 

The next station was the "Gumdrop Mountains" / "Lollipop Pass" where you could have a choice of Skittles, Dots, Smarties, Gummy Bears, Nerds, Mike & Ikes, M&Ms, gum balls, Pixie Stix, and lollipops. 

At the "Peppermint Stick Forrest" station we had well, peppermint candy canes, peppermint mints, licorice, and Jolly Ranchers. 

We also include the kid's gift "bags". Because we were pumping these children full of sugar before we sent them home we decided to not include any candy in the gift bags. We were lucky enough to come across some Candy Land chapstick in the Target One Spot {oh man, I love that place way too much!}. Target also had bubbles in a ice cream cone container, and we topped it off with a squiggly straw. 

We had cupcakes topped with Airheads Xtremes to look like a rainbow.  

I made a wreath from water balloons, tulle, and ribbon. I bought a Styrofoam wreath and inserted each balloon/tulle/ribbon piece in with a floral pin. It took FOREVER and my fingers were killing me by the time I was finished but I loved how it turned out. And I can totally reuse this at another party. I finished it off by printing a miniature version of the bunting banner I made for the entrance. 

We also had a water station, thinking these needed to be grounded with water after all the sweetness. 

My lollipop tree. Loved it. 

The reversible banner at the entry way. "Happy 2nd Birthday" on one side...

...Cooper & Jenna on the other. With a picture of each of them at either end ended up being the perfect number of characters. 

Birthday girl, Jenna Rose! 

We felt so supported by all of our friends and family that came out. My cute sister, Sara did the ice cream serving. The Quarders clan; Cooper, Sara, Chloe & Chris. And the birthday boy, Cooper. Seriously, how cute is he, all sugared up?!

We had a little cake walk for the kids to play. It was the only game we had. It was a great night. A lot of work!!! I really need to figure out a way to reign it in, but so far, that's not my m.o. so I have little hope of that changing.