Valentines & A Birthday~

Valentine's Day is always so much fun because we get to celebrate both Valentine's Day and Mylie's Birthday!


We had such a fun day and now have way too much candy in the house! Bennett had fun having his first Valentine's Party at school and it is fun to be able to live out the fun of Valentine's (like I remember it as a child) through the eyes of my own children now!

Here is a little about Mylie so I can remember what she was like at four. It seems she had been "almost four" for so long, it was finally time for her to be officially FOUR! She's such a darling little thing and is such a wonderful part of our family. She is so social and talks way too grown up for her age. She loves loves loves to sing and dance, and does so much of every day. She also loves playing and really makes buying her toys worth it. She loves about any toy and has such an imagination making up ways to play. She is very dramatic while playing that sometimes I rush to see what might be wrong, but she is just acting something out (very vocally) with her toys. She's getting really excited to start preschool in the fall, and it just isn't getting here soon enough! She can already count to a hundred (thanks to the help of Bennett) and is starting to learn to read. She also loves to color and draw and is very detailed when doing so.

Mylie is loving Snow White lately and asked for a Snow White cake. I have fun making a cake every once in a while, but really don't know how some people enjoy decorating them all the time. I swear things always go wrong (like the cake splitting when I inserted the doll~luckily with a lot of frosting I was able to patch things together), and it is very time consuming and wow did my hand hurt just from decorating one cake!! I even got a blister. Sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn't it! Oh well, I really like how it turned out, thank goodness! I'm sure you can tell by how many pictures I took of it :)








After Bennett's Valentine's Party at school, we went with some cousins, etc. to Noodles & Co. for lunch. I highly recommend it if you have kid that like mac & cheese! Mylie loves it so much, she actually chose to go there 3 times in 8 days (on her birthday and then when each of her grandma's took her out to eat.) Bennett picked the Spaghetti & Meatballs which he loved as well. He loves "noodles and red sauce," as he would put it.



Afterward we went out for cupcakes at a new cupcake shop. They were very delicious!

Mylie's choices when I asked her who she wanted to come were Bennett (of course) and Kaydence and Olivia, her cousins. She loves her best friend/cousins!



Bennett was glad Franklin could come along too. They wanted a "boy" picture.


Here's back at home waiting for the party to start. Of course I have to take pictures of everyone on special days. I just gave each of the kids (and Russ) a new shirt for Valentine's this year. I'm kind of boring like that I guess.



In other news, Bennett lost his first tooth the day before Valentine's!!! So he also got a $1 from the tooth fairy that morning. He was super excited to lose a tooth. I cried when it got loose. My little boy will never look the same! It is so hard to see them grow up so fast!!! Thank you to Uncle Patrick who helped him pull it out. Mom and Dad were both too wimpy I guess. It grosses me out for some reason and Dad didn't want to be the one to blame if it proved to be a traumatic experience. Luckily, Bennett said it only hurt a little and was just overpowered by the excitement of all of it!


And here's Coy, just because he's cute.

This was also a BIG DAY in regards to Coy and his WALKING!!! Yes, my 18 months and 6 days old child FINALLY decided to start walking for good on Mylie's birthday. He is my latest walker of the three. I didn't think anyone would beat out Bennett being 17 months old, but Coy kept us in suspense for much too long! (Mylie was 15 months, and that is considered early for walking for us!)



Here's the little set up:


These little Valentine treats were so fun, yummy, and easy. I got the idea on Pinterest, but the source is HERE. I think they would be so cute at Christmas time, too if you use Christmas colored M&Ms and even those yummy candy cane Hugs.

The kiddos are passing the time waiting for the guests to arrive by watching Mylie's newest movie Babes in Toyland. Now she doesn't have to keep borrowing it from Grandma Harkness! She is in love with this movie for some reason.


We had our family come over for a light meal and cake and ice cream. It's fun to have an excuse to celebrate with whoever can come on Valentine's Day

Finally time to open presents! In addition to her Babes in Toyland Movie, she got a VTech laptop, lots of clothes, a Fancy Nancy book, a Prince doll for Snow White, some pretty dresses, a Pillow Pet, and I'm sure more things I can't think of right now!


And blow out the candles!



Happy Birthday, Mylie! What a fun day!

January recap~

Rewind. I have so much coming up in February, but I thought I'd better do a January recap. January is definitely a unique month. In many ways I love~okay maybe only like~it, but I also really don't like it. It's great at first, but then just seems never ending--cold, dreary, gray, long...it gets to be yuck to me after a while. So I am super glad to be welcoming February! It holds a special place in my heart especially since we welcomed our little girl into our family almost four years ago. I also love that it is a short month, after the unending doom and gloom of January. But here is why I like January:

Just one more celebration to welcome a new year. It promises new beginnings, another chapter of life, and many things to anticipate and look forward to.

We rang in the new year at Patrick and Kara's this year with lots of yummy food and fun entertainment in the form of the old-fashioned Little Rascals episodes that Patrick rented from Netflix. The kids though it was hilarious!








Another thing I like about January is how laid back it is. After the busy holiday season (which I love), it is nice to take it easy and just relax a bit at home! Coy and Bennett are enjoying some library book fun.




And here's a little card playing fun. Old Maid in the form of Disney Princess, with the Old Maid being none other than the wicked Ursula.


This game is some serious stuff.


Oh, and who can forget the cute little impromtu tea party we had. What started as a princess party ended up with the brave and cunning Spider Man being more than willing to pour the "tea."









Also, a great thing in January is getting to celebrate Russell's birthday. This year we went to the Temple and then ate at Famous Daves. Thanks to my mom for watching the kids! He picked brownies and ice cream for dessert afterward.

These crappy flash pictures from his birthday (and from many of the pics in this post) inspired me to buy a new "Point and Shoot" camera! It is so nice to have a camera that requires little to no thinking and works much better than the old point and shoot that we got back in 2004. It's amazing how far technology has come since then...So in January I also got a new camera...which I was planning on buying soon anyways because in January we also finally booked our Disneyland trip which has been literally YEARS in the making. And I really wanted a little P&S to take with us. We are so excited to finally go this summer.

And that was my January recap, sort of, in too many words because I never can make it very short.

just around the corner~

V-day is just around the corner. I decided to make some photo valentines (really last minute) for my kids this year...Here's how they turned out! Bennett cracks me up. Coy wouldn't keep the hat on for more than half a second (even though he wanted me to put it back on the moment he got it off). And Mylie...well lets just say that's why I had the camera out. Her little Valentine's birthday is also just around the corner!

new post~

There's a new post on my photo blog. Hopefully I can get a new post on this blog soon! Maybe a January recap? Well until then, you can see some little cuties HERE.