Anna's 3rd birthday party!

Can I just say that June has been CRAAAAAZY! We've been so busy, I feel like I've barely been able to think or breathe! Dan had a week off, in which we put in sod in our backyard and watched Logan a lot. Then, Dan subbed for 3 days for summer school and the next day we left for Bear Lake, UT. Then, after 4 days of being there, we went to Dan's parents house in Utah and spent a week there. We came home, had 2 days, then had a fun filled day for Dan's best friend's wedding in Newport Beach. Dan's family came for that and spent a few days with us, during which we had Anna's 3rd birthday party. They left this morning. It's been fun being with family and friends, but it's time for a break! :)

So I'll start blogging about Anna's party and then play catch up with the previous happenings.

A few months ago, I saved a picture of a rainbow cake that I thought was cute. Anna saw it on the computer, so I showed it to her and she liked it. I asked her if she wanted that for her birthday and she said yes. So the beginnings of a rainbow themed party began.

Her last two birthdays have been kind of stressful on me, so I wanted a simple party this year. I really thought I was simplifying things, but in the end, things weren't so simple. I decided on a rainbow cake, cupcake toppers, party favors and rainbow food. I really just wanted a cute party for Anna. It all seemed pretty simple, but the problem was that we were so busy the few weeks prior to her party, that there was still a lot of stuff that had to be done the day or two before and the day of. So, it all went well, but hopefully next year, it won't be so busy and stressful for me.

I posted most of these pics on Facebook, so they be repeats for those who saw them!

Here is her rainbow cake!

I thought it turned out pretty cute. I made it out of fondant. I'm really becoming a fan of fondant. It isn't that hard to make and it just makes the cake look good, much better than I could do with frosting. I'm horrible with frosting, so fondant is my friend. :)

To make the rainbow, I just printed out a picture of one that had lines separating each color, cut out each arc, rolled out each fondant color and cut out the arc in each color and stuck them together.

Cutting into all that hard work! Good thing we have pictures to remember it by.

A rainbow surprise inside!

This was probably the most annoying part of making this cake. I made up the batter, divided it into five bowls and dyed each one a different color. Then, I got out my cake pan. And realized I only had one, when I thought I had two. I went to ask some neighbors if they had any I could borrow, but no luck. So, it took me over an hour to cook this cake. Each color took 10 minutes. Then I had to wait for each one to cool before I could get it out to put the next color in. It was very long...

Here are the cupcake toppers.

I printed out the rainbows and cut out the circles with my cricut machine.

I found this idea online and thought it was so cute, rainbow fruit kabobs!

The food.

I kept this simple. In the past, we've done a bbq with hamburgers and stuff, but that's a lot of work. So this year it was sandwiches, fruit, veggies, chips and juice!

Anna and Logan!

I love how he just happened to wear a matching colored shirt.

I found her shirt at Target a few months ago on clearance for like $2!

Dan also made her rainbow necklace out of ceramic beads. He's so talented.

Anna playing with her friends at her party.

Me and my little Anna.

The family.

Anna blowing out her candles.

When I was making the cake the day before, she was by me, singing happy birthday to herself. She even said, "...dear Anna..." It was so cute.

Anna with her cupcake.

The funny thing is, she didn't even eat her cupcake or the rainbow cake.

For some reason, at birthday parties, she won't eat the cupcake.

Opening gifts.

I loved how many people wrapped the gifts in rainbow colors.

She loved ALL her gifts.

Dan got her Hungry Hungry Hippos. The kids started playing it and all she wanted to do was stick a ball in the lizard's mouth!

Alex decided he wanted to join in the fun too!

Overall, it was a very fun party and turned out well. I really couldn't have done it without Dan's family helping out. They were so good to watch Alex for me as I worked on stuff. As well as helping out blow up balloons, put streamers up, etc. I hope that next year will go well and I won't plan too much and make things simple, yet still cute. :)

Active Lil' Alex

My little Alex is crawling! He's been so close for so long and finally started doing it probably a week and a half ago. He's developing so fast. It's like one day he started crawling and then the next day, he decided to start pulling himself up everywhere. It's amazing how fast it happens. He's fast at it too!

He pulls himself up on the ottoman we have. Anna likes to pull the cushion off it a lot, so he'll pull himself up on just the bottom part or with the cushion on it. He'll pull himself up by the TV stand (which makes me so nervous), on Anna's little learning table, her toy zebra, her bookshelf, the rocking chair in his room, the footstool to the rocking chair, etc. Anything he can get his little hands on, he'll pull himself up. He's still really clumsy, so he's constantly falling over.

Being a boy though, he's already much tougher than Anna was. He's usually fine, but every once in a while he'll cry. I, of course, feel bad. I was trying to figure out why he was crying more than Anna at this stage and realized that with her, we barely had any toys out and were able to watch her more closely. With Alex, we have Anna's toys out, so he wants to grab them, when they're too big for him and it's harder to give him 100% of our attention. I think also, because he's so big, that he'll be okay, because it seems like he's fine, then out of nowhere he'll fall down.

You can tell that he loves pulling himself up. He often gets a happy or satisfied look on his face. It's really cute. He's just such an active little guy. He constantly has to be doing something, holding something, reaching for something, grabbing something, etc. He's already getting restless during church. I can only imagine how it's going to be when he can walk!

Anna has had problems with Alex and sharing toys. She has also been pushing him a lot. We've been trying to discipline her and teach her about consequences for her actions. It's been hard. The last few days have been better. She's never been very good about sharing and since she's bigger than Alex, she can just take toys away. There are times when I actually can't wait for him to get bigger and he can start defending himself! :) All in due time...

Standing by the ottoman.

I'll often put toys on the ottoman, and he'll just stand there and play with them.

What a cute little crawler!

He doesn't do this much now that he's crawling, but for the longest time, he would bend over and rest his head upside down on the carpet. It was so cute, he loved it.

Standing by the ottoman again.

Starting to pull himself up!

Me and my sweet little Alex.

(looks like I need a haircut...)

Me and my little babies. They're growing too fast!

New Grass!

So, we got some new grass in our backyard! It was kind of a spur of the moment decision. We've been wanting to put grass in the backyard for a while, we just hadn't agreed on where and when. Last week, I was outside and I just got so sick of looking at dirt in our backyard. Dan had wanted to put grass on the left side of our patio, but I didn't agree at first. I was looking at the backyard again and decided it would look nice out there. So, I did some price checking and found the cheapest sod at a local nursery. We were able to borrow my friend Kristin's truck and as luck would have it, the missionaries were able to come and help us out. We were just expecting two, but four showed up! It's funny how everything just kind of fell into place. I'm very thankful for the help that we received. It went so smoothly, it was awesome. Kristin was kind enough to bring her truck over, then watch the kids for us while we went and got the sod.

Before.

Ugly, nasty old dirt! Which just happens to make up the majority of our backyard.

The one downside to living in the desert is all the dirt!

Aaahh, nice, green grass!

So much better!

I now feel like we have an actual backyard. I've never liked our backyard, because it has always felt kind of trashy and not very put together. It's still a long ways from where I would like it, but this grass sure makes it look better!

Now, we just have to hope it survives the summer. Ideally, we should have put it in a few months ago, but we just weren't really thinking about it at that time. And we didn't feel like waiting till the fall, so it just kind of happened now. We don't have a sprinkler system out back, so we have to water it ourselves. We'd like to put more in. We'll see how this sod holds up and most likely will put more in, during the fall.