Happy 8th Birthday to Tess!

Another June birthday at our house; this time Tess turned 8!  A pretty special birthday that she's been looking forward to for a while.  She actually went with me to choose her set of scriptures a few months ago, and she got to help do the name engraving (her Primary teacher works at Deseret Book, so she hooked us up and let Tess help with the lettering).  

For Tess's cake I just asked her what she wanted.  She's old enough to really have an opinion about it, but I am sometimes a little scared to ask because I don't know much about cake decorating and I'm nervous she'll say something much more intricate than I could do.  This year she said a rainbow colored peace sign, which was a super cute idea, and not too hard at all!  She also requested white cake with strawberry jam between the layers.  I've never done that before, so we had a little learning curve when the jam started squishing out as we were frosting it, turning into a pile of reddish pinkish goo all around the cake.  Umm...thankfully I have a friend who is a cake-decorating whiz and she gave me some good advice to salvage our mess.  Tess wanted to help me decorate it with the piping bags and I loved working together on it.

I found these cool candles that have colored flames.  It's hard to see in the picture, but there were pretty neat. 

Here's Tess's 8-year-old interview:

What is a happy memory you have?  When we built a giant snowman in Riverdale  (I tried to remember a particularly big snowman we made there and couldn't think of one...it could be due to the fact that we moved here when Tess was only 3 1/2 years old, so any snowman there would've seemed giant to her! :) 

What is one word to describe you?  Spunky.

Why do you like being a kid?  Because I'm small and I can fit through small spaces and I can hide easily.

What do you like to do for fun?  Play with my friends and watch the iPod.

What's your favorite thing to do with your friends?  Play games where you have ALL the superpowers.

What's your favorite thing to do with your family?  Go to Cherry Hill.

What's the nicest thing you did for someone?  Cleaned Miles's room.

What's your favorite song?  Firework.

What's your favorite movie?  Matilda.

What's your favorite book?  Matilda.

What's your favorite TV show?  A.N.T. Farm.

What's your favorite food?  Inside Out Chicken Cordon Bleu.

What's your favorite dessert?  Cake with jam inside, or graham cracker sandwiches.

Who's your best friend?  Mari.

What's a talent of yours?  Tumbling, jumprope, skip-it, soccer.

Tess is such a sweetheart.  She is getting to be so helpful around the house and she is always willing to do anything for Bree from getting her dressed to helping her get a snack, etc.  She can make her own lunch and help Miles with his.  She is smart and funny and super energetic!  She is flexible, strong, and coordinated like her dad.  One of our favorite things about Tess is that she will try and try something until she gets it.  She won't give up if it's hard.  We love her and we're so glad she is in our family!

Happy 2nd Birthday to Bree!

Bree turned 2 on Tuesday!  Aack, where does the time go?  I know as a mom I'll probably say that phrase hundreds of times in my kids' lives (especially around their birthdays).  But, really, how do these kiddos grow so fast (especially while I stay 29?  heh, heh.)

Bree has a cute little kitty cat stuffed animal that she loves.  It was actually a hand-me-down to Tess from a cousin, but Tess never loved it as much as Bree has loved it.  It was originally named "Neow Neow" but she now calls it "Meow Meow."  Also, whenever I give her paper and crayons, she always asks me to "draw Meow Meow, Mama!"  And then I help her little hand draw a stick-figure cat.  An artist, I ain't.  So when I was thinking about what to make for her cake, I decided a cat would be great.  Her stuffed animal has lots of black on it, but since black frosting is not so easy to make (and it stains your whole mouth black), I made the cake-cat white.

All day long I told her it was her birthday and tried to teach her how to say "I'm two!" which she will repeat, quietly, when I prompt her.  But the sweet girl just can't figure out how to hold up two fingers yet, but she'll get it eventually.  She didn't seem to really understand that it was her birthday, even when she opened her presents; but when we sang "Happy Birthday" and brought the cake over she finally realized that it was her birthday and she became SO excited!  Grinning from ear to ear and looking around at us like "this is all for ME?"  So cute!  (Afterwards, she kept singing to herself, "Happy, to you!  Happy, to you!")

She really got into her presents...

...I mean literally into her presents!

Oh, our Bree is a joy.  She is such a ray of sunshine.  I'll tell you what, she seems to charm everyone whom she meets; at the store, at church, with friends and family, and with total strangers.  And she loves every minute of the attention!  I've sometimes been a little jealous when I think about the fact that my kids are the last born (Bryan and I are both the youngest in the family, so our kids are the youngest too), thinking they would somehow get less attention, but that couldn't be farther from the truth--in fact Bree is the very last grandchild on both sides and so all the cousins, aunts, and uncles just seem to savor every moment with her since they know she's the last baby around.  It's so fun!  We sure love this girl!  (And she loves doing cheesy grins every time the camera is on her.)

Here's one more cute picture of our Bree...she is at the age where she's interested in clothes.  Taking them off, putting more on (the other day she had me put on 6 bottoms--a mixture of pants, skirts, and shorts!), flipping them inside out, etc.  Well, she came out the other morning with footie pajamas and wanted her flip flops on.  I told her that the flip flops wouldn't work with those jammies.  So she went back into her room and put a pair of socks on over the jammies and tried again.  Not only that, but they were on the wrong feet. Funny girl!

Hill AFB Museum

We decided it would be fun to go to the airplane museum at Hill AFB today.  Miles loves it there and asks us when we are going back nearly every time we drive by it.  (And we live so close to it that we drive by it A LOT.)  Luckily for us, we got there about 15 minutes before they were going to do a kids' class where the kids got to make and launch their own rockets.  Fun!  

We browsed around for a few minutes and then went over to the class.  The teacher told them step by step how to build their rockets, with nothing but paper, masking tape, and a little spongy cylinder that looked basically like a foam earplug.  

The kids went outside to do their launching.  The teacher had all of us count down (from 5--thankfully not from 10) each time a kid launched their rocket.  It was pretty fun and the kids were all super excited.  There were probably 30-40 kids, so it took a while.  We were amazed by how high some of the rockets flew!  Way higher than we expected.  A few of the rockets landed on the roofs of the adjacent buildings, but our wise teacher had told us beforehand that if that happens we should all cheer loudly because now that rocket is permanently on display at Hill AFB Museum!  (Smart guy...I bet they learned quickly that lost rockets would produce teary children, so they had us celebrate it instead!)

Here are Tess and Miles getting ready to push the launch button.

Fun day!