Kaitlyn's "Tangled" Birthday Party

Yesterday was Kaitlyn's 7th Birthday Party! She wanted a rapunzel themed party. Here she is in her Rapunzel costume and her Rapunzel hair waiting to greet her guests. The Rapunzel hair is a thick yellow rope we attached to her real hair. Notice the "wanted" poster of Flynn in the background?Here's a closer look at her dress. I used a pattern... sort of.... I altered the pattern alot.

We put paper laterns over the lights in the house to look like the lanterns in the movie.

We also hung the purple sun pendants in the house and outside just like the ones you see in the movie.The birthday cake with Rapunzel in her tower. The tower is just a big batch of Rice Krispy treats molded to make the tower and then frosted. Super easy.

Notice Flynn on the watermelon boat in the blue Jello water?

Here's Kaitlyn Rapunzel enjoying a strawberry.

This is a craft that we did as the guests arrived. They are Paskel blowers. You take a blower and put it between too sheets of sticky foam and then cut it and decorate it to look like Paskel. The blower part looks just like his tongue in the movie.

Here's another fun craft we did that the girls absolutely loved. I braided yellow yarn onto a hair elastic and let them add flowers and ribbons to it just like when Rapunzel's hair was braided in the movie.

Opening gifts.

A game we played was "pin the nose on Flynn" since in the movie Flynn always complains about his nose in the wanted posters. I took a picture and removed the nose, and then made a bunch of funny looking noses to let the kids tape to it. We also hung the poster on a tree just like the first time we see the wanted poster in the movie.

Here the kids are having fun playing with Rapunzel's hair. They played a couple of rounds of tug of war, which they loved, and then wanted to do the Limbo. So fun.

And the last thing we did was hit the flower pinata with a frying pan, of course!! As you know the frying pan was Rapunzel's "weapon" in the movie. It actually worked really well.

Kaitlyn also gave out little thankyou gifts of Rapunzel's paints.

It was a great birthday party and everyone had so much fun. I had alot of fun planning it too. Now it's time for a nap. :)

A special birthday

Alan is 12 now and was ordained to the office of a Deacon last week by his Father Thomas Rose, who is a High Priest. Today he passed the Sacrament for the first time.

Alan's 12 Birthday

Here's some pictures from the Lego Birthday Party Alan had. He's been collecting legos and so he thought that if he had a lego party, then he'd get all the legos he needed! Well, he got alot of legos. Right before the party started, I brought 10lbs of legos that we bought him from ebay. He was so suprised, and so happy. He dumped it all out and invited all his friends to build with him.
Here he is opening one of his favorite gifts-a yoda lego mini figure clock.

The food for the party: watermelon, grapes, apples and cheese platter, barbecue chips, corn chips and delicious cream cheese and chili dip, apple juice and pizza rolls.

And the most fun item on the menu was a bowl of lego candy that you can actually build with!!

Here are the goody bags Alan made for his friends. He filled snack bags with lego candy and made little thankyou notes with drawings on them.

The birthday cake was one cake cut in half and made to look like two legos. The "bumps" on the lego cake are giant marshmallows cut in half. Alan said he wanted a lego cake with 12 bumps and the candles on them.

It was a very successful birthday party. I just love the older kids birthday parties because I don't have to do as much. Alan pretty much planned his party, and I let him. They had a lot of fun.

Volcanoes

With my scrap wood I decided to cut some little "volcanoes" for the kids to play with.I thought they might enjoy doing eruptions with vinegar and baking soda. I just cut some 1 1/2" wood at a 45 degree angle and then drilled most of the way down in the center. It was fast and a fun way to use up some scrap wood. We put food coloring in it to make the lava different colors as well. William liked it so much that he cried after we used up all of vinegar and kept asking me for days if we could do it again.

U.S. Space and Rocket Center

There's going to be lots of pictures in this post because there were just so many cool things we saw!!
Since we didn't get to take any vacations this year, we decided to take a day last week and go to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Al. We so have to take family here when they get to visit here again. It was a last minute decision, but since it's only 4 hours a way, and it was the last week before school started, we decided to go. What a great place to take your kids! We drove to Huntsville in the afternoon and checked into a hotel and played in the pool all evening. The next morning we drove out to the Space Center. We were there an entire day and still didn't get through all of it.
Along with all the space/science stuff, there was also a dinosaur exhibit going on. We got to see a life size replica of "Sue" the most complete T-rex skeleton ever found. William my little tough boy was actually really scared to go into the exhibit. He insisted that Tom or I carry him at first until he got used to it. In the dinosaur exhibit they got to dig for fossils and actually take a little one home. Also in the dino exhibit they had a climbing wall where Alan,Sarah and Tom all made it to the top. (I didn't want to embarrass myself by trying to climb the wall)


The Space Shuttle was huge!! You can't actually see it. It's on top of this giant rocket that blasts it into space.
This is actual moon rock. It's value is so high that it's actually valued at "priceless".

This is a replica of the moon.

Check out how huge this thing is next to Alan.

Another picture of the moon walker this side inside.

We also watched an IMAX movie on the Hubble telescope. So amazing how far they can see into space with that thing!!

Here's William trying to use astronauts suit gloves to screw in a bolt.

This is the actual command module of the Appollo 16. Very cool.

A giant engine. ??

A replica of Sue, the most complete T-rex skeleton ever found.

Kaitlyn is a dinosaur in this game looking for food.

A day at the shooting range

Yesterday Tom ran a shooting clinic for our ward and took Alan with him. Alan loved it sooo much! The rest of this post is by Tom since I don't speak gun. :)
Alan's 1st time shooting a 9mm pistol at 10yds. He said the gun kicked alot and preferred shooting the .22. Even though it kicked hard, he still outshot some of the adults.

Shooting the .22 caliber pistol at 15 yds. Since you can't see the shot's well, I'll just tell you that most of them were in a 3" group, which is really good for his first time shooting. These were his first 10 shots shooting a real gun.

So funny... so sad....

I'm totally copying this post from a friend right now. I just thought this was so funny, and sadly.. so true.

Painting ice cream cones

Whenever I'm developing a new product, I have alot of extras and misfits that I will often let the kids have to paint and play with. I've been working on ice cream cones and cupcakes lately, so I let them paint some of the mess ups.

Family Band?

Our family band has many practices, and may one day perform. You're all invited to their debut. But until that happens, here's a look at one of their practices. You will see guitars being played like a violin with a windshield wiper (yes, windsheild wiper) as the bow. You will see stools become drums and cut pvc pipe as drumsticks. Sometimes these pvc pipes will be taped together and made into a pan pipe or xylophone of some kind. You will also see old nut cans and oatmeal canisters being used as drums as well. Sometimes there's singing, but there's always happy, creative children. :)

Big foot sighting at Flat Rock Park!!

While playing around on the rocks and streams at flatrock park, we came across this neat formation that looks just like a foot. We decided it must be big foot's foot print!! :)

William's first IV

Friday evening William started complaining that his stomach hurt. Then, he started crying every few minutes because it hurt him so badly. He went on this way for over an hour. He has such a high tolerance for pain, that I thought something could be really wrong. (He's had several ear infections, including bursting an ear drum and never even cried) I called our home teacher, Bro. Coleman, to come and give him a blessing because Tom was out of town.

After the blessing I decided to take him to the ER. I started calling people in our ward to find someone who could come and stay at our house while I took William to the hospital. The other kids were already in their beds, and it was easier that way. We did find a young woman who was willing to come and stay. Thankyou ,Anna.

By the time we got to the hospital, his bouts of pain were so severe that every few minutes he would tense up and start shaking and crying. Everyone in the waiting room felt sorry for him. People were asking me if his appendix burst. I didn't know.

Finally after an hour of waiting in the waiting room we were given a room. Then we waited a while longer while he suffered, and I was almost in tears myself because of what he was going through.

The Doctor finally came in, did a quick check of him and then ordered some blood tests, an IV, some stomach x-rays, and if all those showed nothing, then he would get a CT scan. I was worried about him getting his blood drawn and the IV. He was so tired from the pain he was already going through that I wasn't sure how he would handle it. Well, his high tolerance for pain showed through, because he didn't even budge when they took his blood. It was almost like he didn't even notice the IV. The nurse who gave the IV was amazed. I guess compared to his stomach pains, the IV was nothing.

After the blood tests came back all fine, the x-rays showed that he was severely constipated. I had no idea that constipation could be so painful! Poor little guy. They gave him some thing to get his system working right again and finally let us go home. We had gotten to the hospital a little after 9:00pm, and were released at 2:00am. This is a picture of him after he fell asleep with the IV in him. Apparantly he was a little dehydrated (a little dehydrated? is there such a thing?), because just the IV fluids eased his pains enough to help him sleep.


What a relief to us all that it wasn't something serious. We're so proud of him for being so brave. William the Conquerer.

Food on fire!

Tom likes to take the kids out for what Kaitlyn and Sarah like to call, "Daddy dates". (Alan doesn't call it that though, for him it's just one on one time with Dad :) A while ago, Tom decided to take both Alan and Sarah out to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.

Happy 4th of July!!

For the 4th we went to our friend's the Holloways house. We ate yummy food, and played card games, while the kids played and swam in the pool. At the end of the day we went to our usual spot in Downtown Columbus to watch the fireworks. It was a fun day.

Sarah gets a facial

Last week for Activity Days the 8-11 yr old girls combined with the Young Women for a spa night. The Young Women treated the primary girls to a fun night of manicures and facials. Sarah had so much fun. She can't wait to be 12 and go into Young Women.
Here she is showing off her nails with roses on them and her chocolate facial mask.

Orchestra class

One of our kids' favorite games is to play orchestra. Alan will hook up his mp3 player to the stereo in the family room and they will all pretend they are playing a different instrument in the song.