Wenderful and the Pie Man: A Big Long Post

Hello friends. Grab a seat and relax. If you're here for the long haul, this may take a few minutes. I have a lot of photos to share. They got jumbled up a bit, too, and I'm not going to try and sort them out. You'll be ok.

First up, on Saturday we had tickets to the U of U gymnastics meet. We felt a little out of place amongst all the red, but it was a fun night out all the same.

We got some family photos taken. With 5 somewhat shy littles, someone has attitude when it comes to photographers. This time it was Daisy. We couldn't hardly coax a smile out of the kid.

I sure like those people!

The best part about that photo is that he was smiling at me. :)

Um, when did my kid grow up?

Girls having a picnic:

Best of friends! I'm kind of sad we're sending Lu to preschool next school year, these two play so well together!

Now rewind back in time. Prepping Valentine's:

I had to smile as I saw cute photos of my friend's kids awesome Valentines and boxes and such . My kids did ALL of it on their own this year, which either makes me an awesome mom, or a really bad one. I did help them print out the Star Wars valentines they found online, but they cut them out, taped their treat on and Maren made her box all on her own (she was the only one requiring one this year). It was a shoebox with one paper taped on the top. Classy. :) I am not the mom I thought I would be. This kind of stuff doesn't matter to me near as much as I thought it would. The kids were thrilled, so that's the important thing.

Decorating Valentine's cookies for FHE:

Lu loves headbands. She is always wearing one (sometimes even to bed) and her hair almost always looks this awesome.

Slave labor:

And, the boy's birthday bash. I did a few decorations to surprise the boy in the morning, but Ellie really goes all out, check out our circus, I mean, home:

And if I want to be one thing on this blog it is to be real. So take a good look at my counters. Yep, looks real to me! And yes, when Everett wears those boots it reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite. You too?

We are keeping birthdays fairly simple this year. No parties. It made my day so much more enjoyable, even though I've decided that even 'simple' birthdays are lots of pressure for mom! The boy had a great day, though. He requested dinner at Del Taco, which kind of turned into date night for mom and dad as all the kids disappeared at the playland for a very content long while! Score!

Then, cake:

And presents. He had the best faces and was so excited about everything!

Kids are fun.

Now back to Valentine's Day. We had our traditional "fancy dinner" (see, it's fancy because we were eating fancy food on fancy dishes, nevermind that we were also in our jammies).