"Despicable" party!

Given a few choices, Faith picked Despicable Me as her theme. Not surprised, as she watches it at least 3 times a day. It was fun to plan though and it was gender friendly too, not just for girls. The best way to plan a Despicable Me party is to play off the minions with the color scheme of yellow, blue and black. Those little guys are my favorites.

These are the invites.

For treats we had:

• Minion Goggles (mints)
• * Girl Scout Cookies, named from the movie (Coconutties, Choco Swirlies, Minty Mints, Lemon Cremies, Berry Munchies) turned the boxes inside out and wrote names on.
  
• * Minion twinkie cakes (aren't they the cutest things ever! Thanks to my sister Tam, I didn't have to spend all day doing them by myself)
  
• * Anti gravity Serum (Lemonade)
• * Dr. Nefario's juice (where he says "Do you want to explode?" favorite line in our house)
• I found some test tubes for cups and flasks for pitchers, after the longest search ever found them HERE. They worked out perfect!
• Vector's crazy straws
  

hahah what more can you say about the Box of Shame :)

• For favors, I gave every child a balloon attached to Moon Dough. Went along with the theme of Gru stealing the moon. Tried to redeem myself from sending them home with loads of candy last year from Faith's sweet Candyland Party.
  

Games played:

• Gru Says (like Simon Says)
• Knocked Over (3 tries to knock over "spaceship" with ping pong balls.)
• Annoying Sound Contest (based off part in movie where Gru says 'No annoying noises' and girl says 'Does this count as annoying'.) We got a movie of this, pretty fun.
• Carnival game (throw big ball through moving hula hoop.)
• Steal The Moon (someone hides 'moon' [spray painted styrofoam ball] and the rest try to find or "steal" it.)
• Watched Despicable Me movie after gifts and cake.
  

I love my sweet girl she was so excited for her party and to see everyone. Thanks to all you who could make it, wouldn't have been a party without you!

Happy Happy birthday Faithy bug!!

Sweet Faithy bug,

I can't believe you are 4 years old today! Life was even more happy when you came into our lives. It is no coincidence we named you Faith. My faith grew right along with you from the very day I found out I was pregnant with you.

At 4 years old your favorites include:

COLOR: Pink (it changes every day so I think it's all the bright colors!)

MOVIE: Despicable Me, Cars, Veggie Tales

CEREAL: Lucky Charms

SONG: I love to see the Temple, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

FOOD: Chicken nuggets

FRIEND: Mikkie (duh! :)

TOY: Ponies, flowers, Mikkie frog

BOOK: The Mercer Mayer Little Critter stories

THINGS TO DO: Preschool, games on Zoodles, dance, violin, play with Kuzco (aka chase him around with things that scare him), memory games (SOOO good at these!), road trips (hehe as long as you have the iPod).

You are an extremely smart, bright, fun, funny, talented little girl. Or should I say big girl! You amaze me every day and bring daddy and I so much joy!

Happy Birthday Sweet Pea!!

I took advantage of the amazing weather in AZ, got a fun birthday outfit and went to the Mesa Temple for a photo shoot. We came back to the cold, depressing weather and I thought how glad I was we did her pictures there! Faith was excited about her cowgirl boots! The only thing that would have made the pictures even better is a cowgirl hat and our little rocking horse. Darn it. Oh and a pro photographer of course, I'm not pro by any means but I think they turned out pretty good. Faith did very well after continually being bribed with a yummy treat after or in my exact words, "Whatever you want!" haha How's that for a bribe?! I said that knowing very well she would be completely content with a cookie. :)

Happy Valentines!!

I RUFF you!



Happy Valentines Day!! :) :)

Faith's super cute new room!

This was such a fun project to make the dreary month of January pass by more quickly. I was SO excited to incorporate my ideas I had in mind. I gotta say, redecorating/painting rooms is my most favorite thing to do....next to planning parties of course. :D

My dad had a brilliant idea he wanted to do in memory of Mikkie. He's pretty much the best contractor/painter there is and has hook-ups with Sherwin Williams. I took a bunch of different paints and mixed them up, when I came up with the colors I liked, my dad took them in and had them named after Mikkie. "Mikkie Pink" and "Mikkopotamus"! How COOL is that?!? If you want these same colors, you just have to go ask for these names!! They're available to the public. I was so excited to have some meaning go into this.

Faith was uber excited about getting a new room and was a pro at helping me paint. She's had practice helping her Grampa before. :)

Her drawers before and after! Complete difference, eh! And these knobs I found at Hobby Lobby.....Perfect!!

What's more fun than Polka dots! Seriously. This was time consuming, but so worth it. It was my favorite part. After trying different things and not finding any easy way to make perfect circles, I found THIS tutorial and it worked like a charm. See those nice, crisp edges.
Before and After. Refreshing change, huh!

Faith painted most of the little cubby all by herself!

I took down her toddler bed and repainted my old bed. She's very excited about her 'big girl bed'! It was just a very hard day taking down Mikkie's crib. :'(

We finally got this girl some blinds! It was very much needed and I think it's helping her to sleep better. Yay!

I love the zebra print in the quilt, so I found a valance to go with it. CUTE!
Searching around for a light fixture wasn't easy either, I knew it when I saw it though. This bright chandelier added the perfect touch to the room! ahhhh I'm so excited all over again! :)

Needless to say, Faith is a VERY satisfied little girl. So happy she started dancing! :)
I love it so much, I'm thinking about swapping rooms with her. :) Her and her daddy can both not sleep together. hehe ;)

Perfect room for my sweet girl!

Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam!

This little girl is in Primary now!!
I can hardly even believe it! My first born in the wilderness is all grown up! *sniff sniff* :)
She was so excited, after just the opening prayer she says "Ok, I go to 'pie-mary'!" :)

Crazy how fast they grow!

Faith's violin recital

Faith had her first real violin recital, even if all she played was 5 notes it was so cute to see her play! She is such a quick learner, I can't wait to see how far she comes by next year at this time! She is one talented little chica! :) i'm grateful for everyone who came to support her, it's so fun for her!

Tim had a recital too, but I didn't get a video of it because I was accompanying him, but he sung "Let Him In" by Michael McLean from Forgotten Carols. He has a great voice and sung it so well!

Growin' up

My little Faithy started preschool last week! She loooooves it! The first few times she would not come out to me, she was having too much fun. It's good for her to be out for a few hours socializing with other kids, and it gives me just enough time to get some stuff done! It's weird, but it's nice at the same time.

Faith has been taking violin lessons (rather rhythm/beat lessons) but today started her first lesson with a violin. I can't believe how tiny her violin is, it's so cute!! She's catching on quickly, and loves "playing" her violin just like her Gramma. :)

Billy to Bob

Inside story here..... Mikkie's hair was getting really long, mostly in the back so it looked like a mullet, like this:

Being a hair stylist it drove my sister nuts :) I was only holding on to it cuz of the cute curl, but it was looking kinda funny, at least we got some good laughs from it. :) So.... point, Tammy started calling her Billy Ray.......cuz of the mullet.......As much as I liked the curl, I wasn't too fond of the new nickname. :) So it was time to chop chop.

Tam was achin' her achy breaky heart to chop it off.

Bye bye Billy Ray.

Hello Bob. :) Of course we didn't nickname her Bob, but that's what the cut is.

What a stinkin' cutie! She did so good!

We got Faith's hair cut also. It hasn't been cut since the accident. :) She found scissors somewhere and butchered her bangs last November...RIGHT after her first hair cut.

She's not getting anywhere near scissors this time. :)

And they call it Puppy Looooooove

Faith got her first love letter today, how cute is that! She's only 3, man they're starting younger and younger. :)

and it even came with.......dead.....flowers....it's the thought that counts. I'm gonna have to save this & show them when they're older! :)

Faith's first recital!

Last month Faith started taking violin/music lessons from my mom. I'm going to teach her piano too, I just thought it would be fun to have a different instrument in our family.

When they're this young, they just start working on rhythm and get practice performing in front of an audience. She's learned her fingers that she'll be playing with on the violin too. She's doing so awesome! It will be so much fun to see her this time next year playing on a mini violin, how precious!

Tonight Faith performed her song "Twinkle Little Star" in front of about 15 people, which is the most she's ever sung for. She did such a great job, I'm so proud of her!

Don't mind that the video is sideways or the fact that it's from my phone and not a good quality camera... didn't come prepared. :S

Faith: The Birthday Girl!

Here's some cute shots of our birthday girl in her cute birthday outfit!

These next 2 have got to be my favorites, too cute! Thanks Marcie, you rock!!

I can't believe our lil firstborn is going to be going to kindergarten in TWO years! ahhhhh I'm not ready for my girls to grow up. I now understand why my dad always told me "But don't you want to stay a little baby forever?!" They're so sweet, innocent, precious, trusting, forgiving, loving.... then they become teenagers. =)

Faith's birthday!

Today our sweet lil Faith turned 3! It was the first year that she understands what a birthday is, and was SUPER excited about it!

Her favorites are as follows:

Color: Pink, purple and blue.

Book: Brown bear, Brown bear

Song: Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam, I love to see the Temple and I am a child of God.

Game: rolie polie with dad. (He rolls them in a blanket down a mattress from our bed to floor.)

Movie: Full House (knows all their names and pretty much has seen every season.)

Pal: Mikkie (she is always making sure Mikkie gets treats, etc. first before her)

Food: Pizza and CANDY.....duh =)

Drink: Water (no wonder she's so skinny, compared to Mikkie-the tank who drinks milk ;)

For dinner tonight we had her favy, pizza and chocolate cake and ate on the floor which she thought was pretty cool unlike her dad who didn't see the fun in it. (every party has a pooper ;)

It was pretty simple tonight....the real fun comes Saturday!

Mikkie, however, did NOT sit on the floor with us......and you can see why.

For her gift, Tim and I worked on this little play kitchen over the past month or so, and though it has many imperfections (please don't look too closely) we were pretty happy with our results.

I think Mikkie seemed more excited than Faith, she dove right in and started playing with it, stuffing the cart and fridge with play food....that made Faith interested all the sudden.

I found a little play set at Wally World that came with a little cart...see how it says Walmart on it, how cute is that?! We got some extra play food to go with it and now need some play pots, pans and dinnerware but can't really find any for a good price.

We're pretty sure she had a fun birthday, she is such a sweetheart and we're SO happy to have her in our family! Thanks to all of you who remembered her on her special day, I can tell it made her feel good. =)