A Princess Birthday

   Our beautiful princess turned TWO! What? You can’t believe she’s two? ME EITHER! Everyday this little munchkin of mine grows bigger and bigger and now she is two and talks up a storm. She is so funny! Jared and I are always laughing at this silly girl and the adorable things she does.

For her birthday I decided to go with a princess theme. As usual she woke up to our front room decorated with balloons, streamers, and a birthday sign. This has become a fun tradition that me and the kids love.

She had one present waiting for her to open and here are few pictures from that. I love that you can see her excitement and pure joy in these photos.

   

The rest of the day was pretty normal for the kids but I filled my day with this project.

I love giving my kids the gift of a homemade cake and for now they seem to love it to.

This took me forever because one: I’m no pro so it’s a learn as you go kind of things and two: I could not for the life of me get a pretty color of purple fondant. So I spent way too long trying to get the stupid fondant to turn a pretty, bright, fun color of purple. Lesson learned, buy the food coloring in the exact color you want. Don’t waste your time trying to create the color by mixing.

Once I finally decide to bag the purple and go with blue and yellow the cake came together beautifully. I was so happy with how it turned out. And so was Madelyn. Yeah!

Sadly my camera was in her room while she was napping so I just took pictures of the cake with my phone thinking that that I’d get better picture later that night. But that never happened. Oh well at least I got some pictures.

This it what my apron looked like when I was done. And don’t worry my kitchen looked just as bad.

Then it was time to party. Once Jared got home from work we took the kids and invited our families to join us at Chuck-E-Cheese.

The only thing that Madelyn seemed to enjoy was this duck game. She’d push the button and try to knock of the ducks as they’d go buy. Any other game she’d cry and want someone to hold her. But everyone else seemed to have a good time.

        

After games and pizza it was time to open presents.

 

and then cake!

 

She was all smiles until I lit the candles. For some reason it was pretty scary to her so I had to sit with her and help her blow them out. 

 

But she did enjoy the cake.

What a blessing it is to have this beautiful girl in our lives. I thank the Lord daily for my kids and hold them a little longer and snuggle them a little more. Especially on days like this when I realize they are growing up so quickly.

Soccer

Ethan is playing soccer this year. So far so good. He seems to be enjoying it and doing pretty well. It’s hard at this age because there are so many kids that want to play. it ends up being everyone run after the ball. But the kids have fun and that’s what matters.

  

One to Two

Jared and I have been sharing one car since before we were married. I gave up on my car in the spring of 2005 and Jared so kindly let me barrow his car. We were together all of the time anyway so it worked out pretty well. Seven years later we moved on from a one car family to TWO!!! Did you read that? SEVEN YEARS! That is a stinkin long time to share just one car. But I am so thankful that we were blessed to be able to afford our new van. I LOVE IT!

The ending to our fun weekend

Once we came home from hanging out with my family we had dinner and an indoor campout. Jared new that Ethan would be bummed that we weren’t going camping so he told him that they’d have their own camp out. Jared and him created this “tent” and slept all night under it. Ethan was so excited! What an awesome dad he has :)

I took this picture while Jared was reading bedtime stories to the kids. Then Madelyn went to her bed and me to mine. It was a boys only camp out.

Withers family time

Instead of going camping this year with my family we ended up having a fun day of food, roller skating and jumping.

Here are pictures from us skating at classic skating. There are a few funny things about this. One, the skating rink hasn’t changed since I was a kids so it was totally a throw back in time and two, this is the last thing Jared and I thought we’d be doing with my family. BUT it was super fun!

{PS sorry for the scary and crazy red eyes in these pics. I’m too lazy to go through each of these and fix them}

One of the great things about this place is that you can have strollers and scooters on the ring. Making it possible for everyone of every age to be able to have fun.

The great thing about pushing Madelyn is that the stroller was also a great support for the not so great skaters.

This is the only picture I have of my dad skating but he did awesome! He started out with the old school skates and then soon changed to roller blades. He enjoyed them much better.

My brother Ryan and brother-in-law Beau

Ethan with my nieces Paycee and Adysen

My brother Jamason and his wife Angel

Ryan and my mom

Ryan and his family

Jared and I skating our first snowball skate(couples only skate)  :)

My brother Brandon and his soon to be wife Sara

And of course me taking advantage of the stroller with my terrible skating skills. Jared was literally doing circles around me. He’s a pro on skates.

My awesome sister Jenalee and her hubby.

The last part of the day we spent running and jumping around these crazy things. I actually got in on the action and LOVE it! It’s fun to be a kid again.

A few of these photos I took with my phone so the quality isn’t great but the memories are.

 

These two pictures are of us at the top of one of the slides

 

Madelyn was pretty scared of these things and didn’t really want anything to do with them but right at the end she decided that this entrance was just enough fun for her. She’d climb up and then scoot down and sometimes climb inside and jump around.

To end the night the boys played a few video games.

Even though we were able to do our traditional yearly camping trip this was tons of fun and wonderful memories!