Happy Birthday James!!

One of these days James will have a birthday when we aren't in the middle of moving or on an away rotation. Unfortunately, that probably won't happen until his 4th birthday. Luckily, he still seems to have a bunch of fun. Below he is enjoying his birthday meal of mac 'n cheese. I don't think I've ever seen a kid down mac 'n cheese like James - he loves the stuff.

Here are a few pictures of James opening presents. The first thing he opened was a card that sang Old McDonald. He liked it so much that I had to hide the card so he would actually open his presents.

Tori loves being the big sister and helping out during birthdays.

Below is our birthday boy wearing his new train pj's to bed (sleeping in the Donigan's pack 'n play, because the poor boy's crib is already packed on the moving truck - he didn't seem to mind).

Mall and Dance Costume

John and I celebrated our birthdays by taking the kids to the free carousel night at our mall (where you can go around about a million times for free). I think the most I've ever been able to stomach in one night was 9. Then we went out to eat at Red Lobster and stuffed ourselves with crab. Tori and James love the carousel and eating out so they made our birthdays a lot of fun.

Tori got her dance recital costume this week at dance and was super-excited to try it on, so I took a fun pictures of her doing some poses.

Old Video

Here is a cute old video I found of Tori and James that I forgot to post. It is from the middle of July, so James isn't even walking all by himself, yet. I can't believe how fast time goes. It's a pretty long video, so no pressure to watch. I also found two more cute build a bear pictures - below.

Birthday with Family

This year for her present from Mom and Dad, Tori got to go to Build A Bear for the very first time. She was so excited and talked about it for months and months before. We actually took her to go the day before her birthday since John found out that day that he was going to be in surgery really late on her birthday. Tori was thrilled to get to go a day early.

Above, Tori is helping to stuff her bear (I thought the bear she picked out was very cute). She also picked out a sound to go in her bear - it plays a happy birthday song when to press the left hand. Tori and James are really cute when they dance together to the song.

Tori and James are watching as she gets sewn shut. Below, Tori is giving her bear a bath and brushing off all the fuzz.

Below, Tori is dressing her bear in the the rainbow fairy outfit she picked out with red sparkly shoes.

Below, Tori is at the computers naming her bear - she named her Daisy. Tori absolutely loved the whole experience. She was really cute and had a lot of fun. All the people there were really sweet to her. It actually all went pretty quick since Tori was very decisive about what she wanted. I thought she would have a hard time with all the choices, but she knew just what she wanted. What a fun evening!

The next day was Tori's actual birthday and as you can see from the pajamas in the pictures and the fact that James was already in bed, John did get home pretty late. We sure were glad we did Build A Bear the day before.

Tori is blowing out the candle on one of the extra cupcakes that we had taken to her kindergarten class earlier that day. I saved one for her and she got to decorate it when she got home from school (she loves frosting cookies and cupcakes). I didn't want to make another whole cake since we were driving the next day to Utah to stay for a week.

Our happy birthday girl with some of her presents.

Birthday Party

Here are some pictures of Tori's birthday party with some friends. Above is her cake (she picked out the cake pan at our local library and helped me frost some of the skirt. She was so excited about the cake a begged me to make it for the whole week before her party. Unfortunately, after I frosted part of it and left some for Tori to do the cake started to fall apart in some places as you can see above. John helped me doctor it up with A LOT more icing and below is how it looked afterwards. It all turned out fine and no one cared, but it was quite a frustrating experience for me nonetheless.

Above, Tori getting ready to blow out the candle while her friends sang to her.

Below she is playing pin the tail on the donkey.

This was the first birthday that she had a pinata and she was so excited and did a pretty good job destroying it. :)

It was a very crazy day for mom and dad, but I think Tori and the kids had a blast. Luckily, James slept through most of the party which made it a little easier to handle all the chaos. What made the day even more exhausting, but also exciting, was that we ended up (unplanned) buying a new car that same day.

James' First Birthday

My sweet little baby James turned one!! He's still my sweet little (well, not so little) baby - can't believe how fast the first year went. We had a bunch of fun and got to celebrate his birthday twice. Once while at home with a few of his little baby friends and then again on his real birthday when we were in Des Moines. I think Tori was much more excited than he was for his birthday, but he sure did enjoy eating his cake. It's funny the difference between first and second kids. Tori didn't really eat her cake on her first birthday since it was one of the first times she had ever had cake or frosting. James, however, downed his cake and cupcake during both parties since he has had cake and frosting several times before this and knew just want to do. Above is a picture of his birthday cake - Tori was so excited and really wanted to decorate it, so I just wrote "Happy Birthday James" and let her do whatever else she wanted. Below is the large cupcake we gave James to do whatever he wanted with.

Below James is mesmerized by the candle.

Below is James' dazed sugar high look.


The messy birthday boy after his cupcake.

Below are Tori and Megan loving sharing one of the big chairs. You also see Anne smiling, baby Kate, baby CJ and Cooper.

Below is a little video of us singing happy birthday and some of James eating his cake.

Below are some pictures of James' and Tori on his actual birthday in Des Moines.

Below is a little clip of the video of James opening some of his presents. We all went shopping together for his birthday. Tori picked out a really cute Toy Story 3 car for James and he loved playing with it while we were in the store and got quite upset when we took it away to buy it. So, when it came time for him to open his presents a few days later he recognized the car Tori got him and was so excited to get it! He wouldn't let go of it and held on to it while unwrapping his other presents (you can see him holding onto in the video). Also, in the video I really liked when he was swinging his cute little legs in the camp chair we got him.

Actual 4th Birthday

Here are a few pictures of Tori on her actual 4th birthday which we just celebrated with mom, dad and James. She's blowing out her special number 4 candle she picked out on one of the cupcakes she got to take to school. She was so happy that her real birthday fell on a preschool day so she could take cupcakes to school and they did lots of cute things for her, too. They made her a crown, she got to lead the walk and pick people to help with snack. She had a pretty fun birthday.

These are just a few pictures of her opening some of her presents - above she is holding the new ballet shoes that James got for her because he loves watching her dance.

Birthday Party

I can't believe our little girl is turning 4! For her party this year she had two requests: she really wanted to have a "big kid party" (i.e. no parents, just friends) and she wanted a princess cake. Our local library has a collection of about 100 cake pans that you can check out, so I took Tori to the library and let her pick the one she wanted. She picked one that looked like a princess and told me she wanted her to have yellow hair and a pink dress like Sleeping Beauty. I was a little nervous about making the cake since I haven't really done much in the way of cake decorating, but in the end I was pretty proud of my creation, and most importantly Tori absolutely loved it!

Above is Tori and her friends about to sing "Happy Birthday". From left to right - Siri, Megan, RoWan, Tori, Andrew, Claire, Anne, and Anna.

Below everyone is eating the cake. I think it tasted pretty good, since they all had 2 or 3 helpings (I'm sure their parents loved the sugar high they were on when we sent them home).

Above - Tori opening presents (with some help from her very excited friends) :).

Below - All the kids decorating foam crowns or stars with foam stickers.

Above is James during the party. Our normally very sweet and easy going baby decided that he wanted to cry during most of the party and had to be held the whole time (thank goodness John was there to help run the show).

John spent the night before the party blowing up a million balloons to put in the basement. It made it seem a little more worth it when Tori's friend, Anna, said to him during the party, "This is the best party ever, I've never seen so many balloons!"

Cute Birthday Outfits

These are just a bunch of pictures I took of some of the really adorable outfits Tori got for her birthday. I try and take pictures of some of my favorite outifts since she grows out of things so fast it makes me sad. All of these clothes are at least size 4T or larger and they fit her perfectly!