Wonderland

So my Carly turned 5.

5!!!!

I can hardly believe it.

A month or so before her birthday, I asked her if she'd like a party (of course she did), and what kind of party she'd like.  She came back a few days later and informed me that she wanted an Alice party, because Alice in Wonderland is currently her favorite bedtime story.

For her party, my parents were able to come out and visit.  It was so nice to have them out to help.  We invited a bunch of Carly's friends and neighbors, and just about all of them came.  It was a lovely party.  Carly dressed up as Alice, of course.  I wore the Queen of Hearts crown, my mom was one of the Tweedles, Wes was the other, and my dad was the Mad Hatter.  Marshall even got into it and was the King of Hearts.

Wes, with Blaze.

The day of the party, it started raining, which made the umbrella vultures look quite fitting.

But it also meant that we couldn't play croquet on the lawn anymore, so these flamingo mallets had to come inside.  Quite sad after all the time and energy spent to paint them, and to make wickets out of 15 inch playing cards.

The other bad thing about the rain: the over crowding.  Since we could no longer use the yard, we were all shoved in to my kitchen.  It was tight, but I was assured no one minded.

We even had to break out the picnic table for extra seating, we had so many kids attend.

For drinks, we had pink lemonade.  Most of the kids really enjoyed pouring theirs from tea pots.

For lunch we served sandwiches and wraps, and watermelon.  Of course, we had "eat me" food picks.  And the watermelon was served balled from a watermelon tea pot.

For dessert, we had cupcakes.  Each cupcake had a white rose that had been painted half red.

For decorations, we hung placemat sized playing cards by the buffet, and garlands of playing cards from the sealing mixed in with paper lanterns and the like.

I also made some of the other birds from Alice in Wonderland.  The little hammer bird, 2 of the horn birds, and 6 of the pencil birds.  They were spread out on the tables and serving areas, but I didn't get any good pictures of them at the party.  Darn.  So you get to see them from the pictures I took while crafting.

I also framed a quote from Alice: "There'd be new birds; Lot of friendly "how-do-you-do" birds; Everyone would have a dozen blue birds; In that world of my own."

For party favors, I filled glass jars with pink lemonade mix, and put a "drink me" label on them, with mixing prep instructions.

For games, we had a pinata.  Funny story.  Carly and I worked on a pinata Cheshire Cat for days.  But ultimately the balloon we were using as our paper mache form collapsed, and the big round purple cat ended up looking like a wrinkled raisin.  So we used a store bought flower and added a face to make it look like one of the bully flowers from the movie.

But Carly was very specific about wanting her Cheshire Cat at the party, so my mom made this awesome cheshire cat out of cardboard and we used it for a game of "pin the tail."

When it came time to blow out the candles, she had to think real hard about her wish.

Wes approved of the cupcakes.

Calvin partied too.

Our big present to Carly (well, all the kids) this year was a playground.  Marshall spent the better part of 3 days turning this:

...into this:

Thank goodness my dad came and helped.  When we opened gifts, we opened the curtains to the backyard at the end, and Carly was super excited to see her playground.  We managed to build it and keep it secret from her the whole time.  Definitely a good surprise.

My parents' gift to the kids this year was this awesome teeter totter.  They are both in love with it.

It was a fun party for a special girl!!

Some missed holidays

For Thanksgiving, my parents came up and met baby Cal.  We mostly stayed in and relaxed, and snuggled the new babe.  

My dad also gave some horsey rides.  

Marshall worked on homework, while I set up the Christmas decorations. 

 For Thanksgiving dinner, Carly demanded a turkey leg, and Wes wasn't feeling the Holiday spirit, so he only wanted cereal.  I didn't think it was worth the fight.  I just wanted to add the disclaimer that I didn't offer Cap'n'Crunch as an actual Thanksgiving side dish.

I didn't manage to take ANY pictures of Christmas this year.  Bummer.  I'm lame.  Marshall had to work Christmas day, so we had  Christmas on Christmas Eve.  It was the first year we haven't traveled over the Holidays, which is probably a good thing based on our track record.  We just hung out with our own little family, and were preoccupied waiting to hear back about the house.

Easter was our first holiday we spent in our new home.

We took some Easter Morning pictures by the flowers in the front yard.

Then we had our egg hunt in the back yard.  We dyed eggs the night before, but every store I went to was out of egg dye, so we just ended up using food coloring and vinegar.  It worked really well!

 It was nice to be started traditions in our home, and I look forward to many more holidays to come.

Frozen adventure

On President's day, we took the family on a trip up the Canyon to Midway, Utah to see the ice castles. Marsh's family is visiting, so we had a big group.


The ice castles were beautiful, and the kids had fun walking through the icy tunnels.


On the way back we stopped at the lake, which is frozen over.


All across the lake there were ice fishers set up in their tents. We thought it'd be fun to walk out on the frozen lake and get some pictures.


Carly had fun making snow angels, and I think it'll be fun to take her back to the lake in the summer and try to convince her that she had walked all the way out to the middle.


It was a fun frozen adventure, and it was nice to defrost with big mugs of hot chocolate once we got home.