Turning 7!

My first born turned 7…7!  It is hard to believe, but it is true.  I am so thankful for the young man he is and is becoming.  I love my son.  Isaiah is such an amazing kid to be around and parent.  Here is my prayer for him.

God, I pray that Isaiah will always know he is deeply loved by You and by us, his family.  I pray that he will live a life of rich faith and trust in You Lord.  I pray that he will experience deep relationships that honor you and that he would grow in his passion and love for You.  Give him the ability to persevere in hard times and to find joy in life serving You.  Fill him with the generosity, gentleness, joy, wisdom, self-control, hope, faith, peace, patience, faithfulness, and love.  I pray that Your protection would be around his life, physically, emotionally, yes, but even more, spiritually.  Do not let anything draw him away from You and Your truth.  Bless him, use him, guide him.  Give him godly friends and role models that will love and support him.  I am thankful he is my son, what a true blessing he is to my life.  Help me to show that to him daily.

Amen.

 

Birthday Ideas

I love spoiling my kids on their birthdays and making them feel the love!!  My son opted for no party, just his favorite friend to come and play Wii at our house and have cake, simple and fun.  I still wanted to make him feel special.  Here are some ways we celebrate in our house.

Birthday Countdown:  My son has been enjoying a birthday countdown that took me about 5 minutes to make but he loves it!  I put the numbers 7-1 on 7 colorful sticky notes on his door.  Each day he wakes up and takes one off.  They are super simple…but things he loves like he gets to pick dinner, or McDonald’s brought to school, extra Wii time (Much coveted by him in our house!!!).  It is an easy way to delight and rejoice in the boy he is.

Balloons: My kids are obsessed with the helium balloons that you see at the grocery store, you know the ones in the shape of Dora or Spiderman?  This year I will be getting one and tying it to his door so when he wakes up, he can be surprised!  I will also be putting balloons in the shape of a 7 on his door for him to enjoy!

Tradition: Breakfast in bed with a birthday tray is a tradition we have.  Each year they choose a breakfast and we wake them up by bringing it into their rooms and singing happy birthday!!!  The tray is filled with small (Target dollar spot) toys.  We all sit around with him and watch him enjoy his breakfast and open his first gifts.

Other Birthday Ideas: I’ve seen people do presents on the hour.  So their child gets a present each hour the day of their birthday.  I do like that idea, but we aren’t giving him that many presents…maybe another year!  We might also do a scavenger hunt for my son’s present this year…since his big present is a new basketball hoop that he can play on!

Birthday Countdown

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, chances are you’ve seen countdown calendars.  We love to count down to holidays, breaks, etc.  You can imagine my joy when my son asked for a birthday countdown!!  Of course.  I decided to go a little different and made one for him out of plastic cups.  It was very simple I got 6 plastic cups, wrote a fun idea for our countdown for the day (his included: go to the zoo, pick a park, make your own sundaes, etc.) then I lined the top with glue and cut out a piece of wax paper over the glue.  Then I let it dry and added the number and day to the outside of the cup.  My son gets to punch the wax paper and pull out his fun surprise!

Ice Cream Bar

Last summer we I was obsessed with the frozen yogurt topping places.  They have about 15 different flavors along with any kind of topping you can imagine, sauces, fruit, cereal, candy bars, cookies, etc. I was addicted and not afraid to admit it. For my son’s birthday countdown we decided to have an ice cream bar one day.  Here is a look.

Our toppings included: carmel sauce, gummy worms, chocolate chips, Oreo cookie crumbs, whipped cream, M&M's, etc.

My son's eyes were huge! He was so excited to make his creation.

She had more fun creating than eating!

I gave them one small scoop of ice cream and here is what Ayla ended up making. Oh my! Luckily she ate only about 1/6 of what she made.

Mario Kart Wii Party

So I am not a huge fan of video games.  I am strict with my kids when it comes to any electronic time, TV or video games.  Over Christmas we decided to get the Wii for our family, my son loves it.  So for his sixth birthday party, we had a Mario Kart Wii party for his kindergarten class.  I knew I didn’t want the kids to play video games the whole party, but I also knew it would be fun to have that as part of the party.  Isaiah and his friends had a great time.  Here is a look.

This year decorations were simple. We covered our table with large white butcher paper and drew a race track on it. We added Mario Kart charaters and it was set to go!

My husband made this wonderful cake! It only took over two hours, 2 cakes, and four cans of frosting!

The first activity was to make their own Mario Kart snack out of food. Homemade buns, pretzel sticks, cheese cubes, grapes, and blueberries.

Although it was mostly just the kindergarten class, we couldn't forget Ayla and their cousins.

Since the Mario Kart is a race car racing game, the kids raced through obstacle courses, and enjoyed doing relay races.

Isaiah jumped for joy as he cheered his team on. Big smiles all day!

Then they came back inside and made race car driver shirts. This also served as their party favor.

Then it was finally Wii time! We had four kids playing the Wii at a time.

While some were playing the Wii, the other could watch or race their own Mario Kart characters down our hall by blowing the characters (we printed off from on line) with a straw.

They also had the option of building their own Mario Kart racer with Legos and racing it around a tape track.

We opened presents after everyone left since we ran out of time!

Celebrating Dr. Seuss’ Birthday

Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss’ birthday.  We love his books and are excited to celebrate him.  Here are the ways we will be celebrating.

* Green eggs and ham for breakfast

* Pretending we are authors and making our own books

* Reading our favorites: Hop on Pop, The Cat and the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham

* Playing a rhyming game.  Whoever wears the Horton mask(from the game Horton Hears a Who) has 1 minute to rhyme a word they pick from the basket.

* Make our own Cat in the Hat hats.  See these instructions.  http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/category/dr-seuess-birthday

Monster Truck Rally

Yep.  This is something I never thought I’d attend in all my life, but we went to a birthday party held here last Saturday.  We got to watch the the trucks race around and jump/roll/drive over cars.  Here is a look.

We got to go down on the floor before hand and see the trucks close up.

Isaiah and Daddy by Isaiah’s favorite truck, Grave Digger.

Ayla got to sit on the lap of the motorcyclist before the action. This was our favorite thing, to watch him ride around in the metal cage.

With their protective head wear on they were ready to go!

Isaiah’s favorite winning best tricks!

Ayla was proud that there was a lady driver, she even won the highest jump contest.

Ayla had to get fancy to go to the party, pretty sure she was the fanciest one there.

It was hard to tell if it was the popcorn and cotton candy, or the trucks they liked better.

Unique Birthday Cards

My Mother-in-law’s birthday is coming up, so the kids and I decided to make her a card today.  We have done lots of cards in the past with old cards, stickers, markers, etc.  Today we made another kind of card.  Here is how we made it. Enjoy!

We folded the paper in half and then drew a picture, in this case of their grandma. The kids then cut the top only of paper.

After the paper is cut, you open one section at a time and write inside. Since this was a birthday card, we wrote nice things about grandma.

I used to do this with my kindergarten students. We’d use it to write penguin facts or steps to building a snowman.

Brithday Girl

Since Ayla’s real birthday was kind of busy and crazy, we did her breakfast in bed the day before and pretended that day was her birthday.  She requested pancakes with syrup for breakfast and a playdate with her cousin.  She also really wanted salmon and asparagus for dinner with rainbow cupcakes.  We had a great day complete with watching part of her favorite Disney movie The Little Mermaid.  I love this girl so much.  She adds so much joy and fun to life.  She has great faith in prayer, a generous spirit, compassion for poor people, and lots of spunk!  Even at four years old, she is already teaching me things.  Here are our highlights of our day.

It was great that her pretend birthday was nice and warm for part of the day, at least she got to play in her pool then.

The birthday tray.

She really enjoyed her chocolate chip pancakes.

She really enjoyed opening all her presents. She would exclaim, “Just what I always wanted!” to each one.

The princess with some new fairies.

Isaiah loved all of Ayla’s new toys.

She wanted rainbow cupcakes so we made the batter and then divided them up and added food coloring to them. We added a spoonful to each cupcake liner and that made rainbow cupcakes!

I am so glad they turned out. I wasn’t sure if the colors would mix and turn brown.

She actually ate the cupcake and not just the icing! Success!

Beach Party Take 2

Yesterday was my sweet Ayla’s fourth birthday.  As she requested we decided to have a water party, complete with several wet outside activities.  Around Wednesday I saw the weather predicted to be rainy and 55.  Really?  It had been nice the past month, 90′s mostly, so I was sure the weather would change.  Bummer, their prediction was right, so on to plan B for the party.  Here are some things I was planing for the water party:

*Begin with free play with the pool, sprinkler, water table, painting with water, water swords, water sprayers (they work better than squirt guns), and a water wall.  I was really excited for this so I think I will make this later this week.  I was going to use an old milk jug, water bottle, etc. to cut and nail to our fence as a water wall the kids could play in.

*Relay races with ice cubes (made in the number 4), water balloon bounce on a sheet outside, water balloon pop to find sea creatures, and free play with colored ice cubes.

It would have been fun but luckily my daughter adapted well to the change and really enjoyed her inside beach party.  Here is what we ended up doing.

*When the kids arrived they have four different stations: Sand table dig for sea shells, Wall art (I set out summer/beach sticker and markers and had them decorate the large butcher paper, go fishing with fishing pools, and ice-cube melt.  I used a bowl and froze three different things in the bowl (bottom layer rocks, middle eraser fish, and top layer mini shells).  I gave the kids squirt bottles, old toothbrushes, eye-droppers and a small bucket of water, and salt to try to melt the block of ice.  This was by far the favorite activity.  Most of the kids crowded around and worked together to break the ice block.

*Lunch: My MIL made took care of that!  She brought bread, lunch meat, cheeses, and fruit requested by my daughter.  All I had to do was buy the cheese balls, as Ayla really wanted cotton balls!!  I served the meat and cheeses on frisbees and used a bucket to hold the silverware and cheese balls.

*After lunch we played the limbo with a broom, the kids seemed to enjoy that.  Then we played a version of hot potato.  I took a beach ball and wrote several different questions of the ball (Pool or sprinkler? What is your favorite sea creature?).  When the music stopped instead of getting out the person holding the beach ball answered the question.  Very fun!

* We finished with presents and cake.  My husband made a great flip-flop cake, and I made rainbow cupcakes.  I think there was one cupcake left!

All in all it was a great party despite the uncooperative weather.  My daughter was very pleased with all the people who came to show that they love her.

The sunshine welcoming the guests was the only sun we saw that day!

The sea shell dig. I expected a huge mess from this, but actually it was quite tame!

For the table I used beach towels as the table cloth and the center piece was a vase filled with various shovels and rakes.

We used the party favors as a way to assign seats to our guests. Ayla wanted to sit by Isaiah and her cousin Lydia, so we placed the kids before the party started.

We hung up a clothesline of swimsuits as part of the decoration.

I told my husband my idea of the balloons as the ocean floot with small sea creatures dangling to make it seem under the ocean. He did a great job making it happen.

Here is our wall of beach art, ready to be decorated.

Here is our fishing game. I wish I would have had them fish for candy but they just got fish!

The great flip-flop cake!

The birthday girl was listening to the ocean.

Here they are melting the ice.

Isaiah doing the Limbo.

The beach ball game.

She took about three breathes to blow them out, so dainty!