Makenna's 4th Birthday - A Princess Tea Party

Makenna LOVES princesses and tea parties so it was only fitting to make her 4th birthday party a princess tea party. And the added benefit was that Makenna got to wear her Halloween costume one more time. We held her party on November 23rd.

A lot of little princess and knights (we had to incorporate the boys somehow) came to the party.  Their first stop was to get outfitted at the "Princess Wardrobe" or "Knights Armory".

(The "Princess Wardrobe" had felt crowns, necklaces, rings, and bracelets)

(The "Knights Armory" had felt swords, felt helmets, and shields)

After the princesses and knights were properly dressed they went off on "The Quest For Lost Things".  Each of the princesses had lost items around our house that had to be found.  The kids had a great time looking all over the house for all of the princess' items.

Next we went on a scavenger hunt for Princess Makenna's lost shoe.  There were clues given from various princess movies and at the end we did indeed find her shoe and candy treasure.

The last game that we played was "Pin the Kiss on the Frog".

We had lots of Princess inspired snacks to eat.

• Rapunzel's Lovely Locks Pasta Salad
• Snow White's Apple Slices (It was brought to my attention that I should have put "non-poisonous")
• TinkerBell's Pixie Dust (Pixie Sticks)
• Cinderella's Pumpkin Muffins
• Jasmine's Magic Carpet Cheese and Crackers
• Belle's Chip and Dip Bowl
• Snow White and The Seven Layer Dip
• Merida's Teddy Grahams
• Ariel's Dinglehopper (Forks and other utensils)
• Mulan's Green Tea
• Aurora's Sleepytime Tea
• Princess Makenna's Pink Tea

And princess tea tea party inspired table decor.

Mad Hatter's Tea Party Table

Beauty and the Beast Tea Party Table

The kids were able to color their own tea cup and then it was time for cupcakes...

Cupcakes were made to look like teacups

and PRESENTS!!

Makenna cannot stop talking about how much fun she had at her fourth birthday and that makes it all worth it. She is getting so big so quick and it was nice to be able to celebrate our not-so-little, little girl with our friends and family.  Happy 4th Birthday to our little princess!!

Princess and Dragon's Halloween

On Halloween 2013 our kiddos dressed up as a princess and a dragon.  Makenna chose to be Sofia the First and since Kyler doesn't really have an opinion yet, he got to be a dragon.  We debated making him a prince but he is more of a seek and destroy type, so dragon fit him well:-)  We were super busy that day and felt like we were running around like crazy.  I think next year we will have to pick and choose which trick-or-treat opportunities we will participate in.

First we went over to Toby's work and the kids got to trick-or-treat around the offices in  his building.  It is a really fun event that is so creative.  You can completely tell how family oriented his company is by having an event like this.

Next we rushed over to downtown Redlands to meet up with friends and family.  I had misread the time that the downtown was holding their event, so unfortunately we didn't have much time to leisurely walk around.  We did however get to spend some time trick-or-treating at the businesses there with our favorite trick-or-treating buddies.  And we got an added bonus when our cutie pie cousins came too.  We had a great group with two dragons, two princess Sofias, an owl, and a sweet little newborn baby (not in the photograph).  And my mom also joined us!!

Then off we headed to eat dinner quickly at our house and make it to Wyatt's house for our last trick-or-treating experience of the evening.  We always have a great time trick-or-treating in Wyatt's community too.  The two older kids had to "take turns" knocking on the doors of the houses and they were in charge of saying "trick-or-treat" for the group since Kyler couldn't speak for himself yet.

Although we did the same amount last year, this year it seemed like we were always under a time crunch for some reason.  Although it was a whirlwind of events this year, it was also a lot of fun.

Pumpkin Carving Time

We finally got to do our pumpkin carving the night before Halloween.  It seems like every year we have good intentions of doing it early but never are able to get it done until last second.  We let Makenna pick, design, and cut her own pumpkin this year.  She didn't really enjoy the cleaning of the pumpkin but really liked getting to design and carve it. And as for Kyler, he had so much fun digging in the pumpkin and pulling out all the guts.  He loves his messes!!

Pumpkin Patch 2013

We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch on October 22nd.  And a pumpkin patch experience wouldn't be complete without Wyatt, Beth, and Jason. We are always so lucky to be able to go with them:-)

We decided upon taking family photos at the pumpkin patch before doing anything else.

Then Makenna and Wyatt headed over to play in a few of the bounce houses.  Knowing from experience that bounce houses weren't Kyler's thing he had fun getting wagon rides from daddy and uncle.

Next we went over to have the kids drive the little cars.  Makenna of course chose the only pink car that they had.  We decided to let  Kyler ride along with Makenna since her car was the only one with seat belts.  But, unfortunately he didn't like it at all and about a minute into the driving we took him out and just let Makenna drive herself.  She did way better than she did last year and only had a few times where she got stuck, ran into something/someone, or needed help.

Then the big kids and the two daddies went in the corn maze.  It took a REALLY long time for them to get through, but they had a good time.  Beth, Kyler, and I were able to join them halfway through the maze.

And our last stop for the evening was going on the quad ride.  Kyler had seen them going by and seemed very interested in riding them.

The kids were super tired by this point so it was time to head on home and get them in bed.  We are looking forward to next year and once again spending time at the pumpkin patch.

Little Readers

I love that Makenna and Kyler are really starting to enjoy doing things together now.  I saw them reading together and just had to take a picture of big sister reading to little brother.  It is really funny because even though Kyler isn't that much smaller than Makenna, he loves to sit on her lap and she loves encourages him to sit with her so she can read to him.  He never stays for very long but it is super cute while it lasts.

Southern California Stay-cation 2013

We decided to take our "summer" vacation September 29 - October 4, 2013.  This year, instead of going away, we figured that there was enough that we wanted to do in our own Southern California backyard so we decided upon a stay-cation.  It also helped sway us this way when we knew that we would be able to put the kids to sleep in their own beds and thus ensuring us a good night sleep:-)

Sunday, September 29th

Our first stop was heading out to Torrance to go to our old church and say hi to those that were a big part of our newly married life.  It was great fun to see everyone!!  From there we headed to our favorite lunch place, El Burrito Jr. and then trekked down to Long Beach to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific.  It had been a while since we had been there so it was fun to go back and discover all of the new things.  It was super crowded there because they had a festival going on, but we still had fun wandering around and seeing all the sea-life.

After the aquarium we had been promising Makenna for a LONG time that when we went to the beach next that we would take kites and fly them.  Unfortunately our area doesn't have much of a breeze to fly kites proficiently.  So we walked to the park that is right next to the aquarium and brought our little butterfly kite and huge dragon kite in order to fly them.  Well, I guess the weather had other ideas because unfortunately there was not enough wind to get even Makenna's little tiny kite to fly, so we didn't even bother taking out the huge dragon kite.  Makenna was pretty disappointed, but they did give it a good effort.

So instead of flying kites they just played on the grass...

climbed in the trees...

and got nice and tired for napping on the long ride home.

Tuesday, October 1st

 After a day of resting on Monday, our next adventure was a trip to Disneyland.  This was Kyler's first time at Disneyland.  We were a little concerned about how Kyler would do while waiting in the lines but we found that as long as we had snacks to munch on the entire time in line that he was quite content being held and eating.  And Makenna of course was so excited to go back again.  She insisted that the first ride that we went on was Peter Pan.  She is very into Jake and the Neverland Pirates television show, but has never seen Peter Pan, so it was kind of funny that she picked that ride as the one that she had to go on first.  Here are a few photos of our time at Disneyland...

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Dumbo

It's A Small World

Rocket Ships

Alice In Wonderland

And as our tradition, each of the kids got to choose a stuffed animal to sleep with on the way home.  Kyler chose Winnie-The-Pooh and Makenna chose Sofia the First.

It was so much fun and not crowded at all.  At the end of the day Kyler's favorite ride was the Carousel (he LOVES horses) and Makenna's were the Teacups and It's A Small World.

Wednesday, October 2nd

Since we had such a long day yesterday we decided to stick closer to home and went out to Jumping Jacks in the afternoon.  It is a big warehouse building that has inflatable bounce houses set up.  Makenna and Toby had such a great time jumping around, going through the obstacles courses, sliding down slides, and dueling each other.

And Kyler really didn't like the feeling of how the bounce houses made it difficult to walk. So we got him to go down one slide with me but other than that he mostly just played in the little toy area and had fun running around on the solid ground.

Thursday, October 3rd

On Thursday we headed out to the Huntington Library and Gardens.  As you know they are our favorite and it was a free day that I was lucky to get tickets for.  So off we went to enjoy the day in the beautiful gardens. Our first stop of course was to the Children's Garden.

We visited the "houses"...

 the fog area (where they got soaked)...

the water fountains...

we went through some of the other garden areas, ate lunch, and then we ran around and played hide-and-seek before leaving to drive home.

Oh, how we love those gardens.

Friday, October 4th

Friday we joined up with some of our friends and went out to play at the Children's Discovery Museum of the Desert in Palm Desert.

Saturday, October 5th

Then for our last official day of vacation we went locally up to Oak Glen for an morning of apple picking.

And we had yummy apple pie, apple muffins, apples...apples...and more apples for weeks.  They were delicious!!

We had such a terrific time on our vacation.  It is always so fun to get to spend a whole week of time doing fun things with the people we love so much.