First Piano Recital

Bumpkin had her first piano recital in May. She did so well! She was the youngest by three school years but still didn't show any nerves. As you can see in the video during one of her songs she did lose her place but wasn't discouraged.  I was so proud of her! 

Week before birth

The summer weeks before DeeDee's birth were packed with summer camps, lessons, and softball games. And eventually grandma joined us so she could be here to help when the new baby arrived. 

Here are some of our pictures from hanging out at home and in the neighborhood. 

The older girls went to a memorial camp with some friends for two weeks and loved it. It is an artsy camp that had a performance at the end. I will upload those videos to a separate post. 

Daddy helped keep the girls entertained in the afternoon after their camps. He took them to the lake to go hiking, bowling, and the museums. Mommy and Mimi were also missing our Little Man so we picked him up and went to the children's museum one day while the older girls were at camp. Mommy was brave and let Mimi paint on the windows. So far she hasn't tried it at home. :) 

And finally, Mommas birthday dinner. Daddy and the kids took mommy out for her birthday which was just a few days before the new baby arrived. 

Jungle Cake

This cake was made for our neighbor and good friend E. she turned 7 and had a jungle theme party. 

Great Wolf Lodge

We surprised the girls with a trip to Great Wolf Lodge last week. I was so excited to surprise them! They had heard of it before but didn't really understand what it was. So it was exciting to surprise them. We walked into the place which they knew was our hotel. They had giant windows showing the water park area and the girls mouths just dropped! It was so funny to see. They loved watching the 1,000 gallon bucket fill up and then dump on the park. 

After we checked in we went to our room  where there was another surprise for the girls. We had gotten one of the log cabin rooms. The girls thought it was so cool to have their own place to sleep. That is actually the only picture I got while at the lodge. Neither one of us carried our phones around for pictures for obvious kids vs. water vs. phone reasons. So instead of pictures I have funny stories. 

Bumpkin- 

Bumpkin was drama this trip. Not that it is anything different then normal but everything had a production. Some of it pretty funny, like her reaction when we walked in and saw the waterpark, some of it not so much. She is currently 49 inches tall. The younger water slides say they are for 48 inches and shorter. Luckily nobody measured he or called her out on it because she loves those and wouldn't try the bigger ones. And I mean wouldn't try. She would walk clear up to the top of the tube stairs with daddy and Troublemaker (I was in the hotel room for naptime) but wouldn't go down the slide. She was scared of how high it was (even though she was up there) and then she was scared of the slide being enclosed. Etc.  So then they tried to get her to go on the body slides because they weren't enclosed or as high but she was scared of those for some reason as well. 

Troublemaker- 

Troublemaker on the other hand went on every slide she was big enough to ride. She even got to the point where she was going up the line and down the stairs by herself. (I'm not sure if I am more impressed with her being comfortable doing that or with daddy for letting her go by herself. Ha). 

Mimi- 

Mimi provided a variety of entertainment on the trip. She liked parts of the water park but really wasn't comfortable with a lot of it yet. She loved just walking around the little pool or the pool edges. 

However, she was hilarious outside the pool. First, we were in our room setting some ground rules for leaving the room, the pool, etc. we had just gotten done telling the girls they couldn't open the door without an adult right there. We were packing our swim bag when we heard the door open and looked up to see Mimi leaving. We asked who opened the door and when neither one of the big girls confessed we swore we wouldn't leave until one of them did. We even demonstrated that Mimi couldn't open the door herself. Daddy asked her multiple times to open the door and she tried but didn't. So since nobody confessed we sat down to wait. That was when Mimi got bored and opened the door herself and left! We were all rolling with laughter. 

That night we has put the kids to bed and Mimi was having trouble. We brought the pack n play just in case and had put it on the open floor in the cabin area. The other two were passed out but we knew Mimi was still awake. Then all of a sudden the lights in their room started going on and off. Somehow Mimi had gotten out of her pack n play (which she had never done before) and was playing around in the room. So I ended up moving the pack n play out of the cabin so she would go to bed. 

Daddy- 

I'm surprised daddy didn't have a heart attack while we were in the pool area. Anyone who knows daddy will understand this but his overprotective safety issues were in full gear! He even said to me "this is the perfect place to come in three more years". Ha. 

We really didn't do much of the extras this time. With naptime and needing to adhere to some sort of bedtime we didn't think we had much extra time. We looked into the Magic Quest but were told it took 4 ish hours. We saved that got when we can stay up later and/or stay longer. We did have fun in the arcade though. 

We had a great time and he girls keep asking to go back. We bought a groupon so it was well worth the money for us. We look forward to doing it again in the future!  

Mickey Mouse Cake

I made matching Mickey and Minnie Mouse cakes for a friends daughters recently. I should have gotten a picture of them next to each other but I was quite frankly tired of taking them in and out of the fridge. :) Since they were identical I would do one step on both cakes before moving on. It meant a lot of trips to my cake fridge. But here they are individually. 

Easter 2013

We really didn't do much for Easter this year. Mommy will admit being tired and not on top of the learning about the season experiences like last year.  However, we did start something I hope to continue. The Easter bunny put puzzles pieces in the eggs instead of candy. He/she left a note explaining why there was no candy in tge eggs last year (ie the dogs) and explained the substitution. So the girls searched for the eggs and knew that there were still some missing until the entire puzzle was together. 

We also attended a Easter egg hunt at the base. It was after Easter so there weren't many people there. We scored WAY too much candy but the girls lived it. They planted suckers in the ground and Mimi was only interested in those! Ha 

American Girls and Science City

Bumpkin and Troublemaker have been asking for American Girl dolls for awhile now. Probably a year actually since they first started asking but I really thought they would move on. However, their fakes started to get pretty messy hair dos and the asking got louder. So we decided to give them a lesson about money, savings, choices, etc.

We have been collecting money in our piggy banks for years but they girls have never understood actually how much they had. We would go to the bank and they would ask if they had enough money for something at the dollar tree. So their money has been accumulating for awhile. After talking it over with them we found we were pretty close to the needed amount for each of them to get a doll. They were so excited!

Bumpkin knew what doll she wanted. She got Saige the doll of the year. I tried to convince her to consider Molly as they have a lot in common but she wouldn't even think about it. Troublemaker went in with no idea what doll she wanted. I think she might have been leaning towards Kit but she changed her mind frequently. By the time we left she had happily settled on Marie-Grace. Mimi had also settled on her very own bitty twins. She didn't really care which ones, she just played with them all. :)

Finally, after we had selected our dolls and had lunch we took daddy to Science City. I wish we lived closer to it. I don't think my kids would get tired of it. We can spend four hours there and not get to half the stuff. It is a great day trip. Especially because on this day it was Sid the Science Kid day. They had different science projects every hour. My girls like the marshmallow experiments.

Professional Pictures

We went in around Easter and had pictures taken of the girls. Here is the one I paid to have the rights to post.

The Zoo

I finally bit the bullet and bought a pass to our local zoo. I am an admitted zoo snob. I grew up going to one of the best zoo's in the world but didn't know it. Now as an adult my standards are admittedly high. But I have to admit that I like our Zoe's education department. So after living here more than two years I decided to buy a pass. I was surprisingly happy. They had some decent animals and it was good fun for the kids. Plus, it wasn't exhausting like it is to go to a bigger zoo. Here are some pictures of our first couple trips.

Oh, and Bumpkin was in a Eco Club this year at the zoo. They met twice a month for the school year. She was so funny walking us around the zoo. She was like my own little self confident tour guide who knew everything you might want to know. :).

Bumpkins frog

I have to say my kids can draw better then me already. I have only ever mastered drawing a house. Here is Bumpkins frog she drew last week, without tracing or looking at pictures...

(Semi) recent cakes

Here are pictures of the cakes I have made recently. Also, the Avengers cake I made lake last year with the figurines on it. The cakes included are Troublemakers 5th bday cake (she didn't want much bc she doesn't really like cake so I surprised her with a paint themed inside), a friends 30th bday cake, and a Hawaiian Luau themed cake.

Circus

Earlier this year we went to the circus. We went with some friends and had a great time. Mimi was so impressed she was overwhelmed and really just sat there in awe. I am honestly surprised she didn't have more reactions but she was probably just on overload. The older girls also road an elephant during intermission.