Luau!

For Caroline's birthday party (2 months ago) we had a Luau at Nana's house. They have a new beautiful covered patio and nice yard but it was still soooo hot!

It was a really busy week with Sam being out of town and having out of town guests so for the first time I did not make the cake myself. I planned on it but just ran out of time. We had a Barbie Hula dancer cake.
I decided to do a Luau and then found out 2 other friends were doing luau parties this summer so I had a lot of decorations to use.

Cousin Nathan

Katherine and Grandad

Caroline and Grammy

We all just hung out on the patio and the kids played in the sprinkler, pool and slip and slide.

Katherine on the slip and slide

Laurie Jane, Samuel and Elizabeth

Grandad, Sam, Shannon and George

Sara and Elizabeth

Liz and Zach

Mommy and the birthday girl (forgive the earrings, they were for the theme)

Caroline and Laurie Jane

Excited about bubbles

Blowing out the candles.

All the kids

Grammy Grandad and the grandkids

And the winner is . . . Comment #2 as selected by random.org. Comment #2 belongs to Chrys. I will get those tickets to you soon. Now, who will you take as your guest?

BOLD Giveaway

I am in the stage of life where all of my friends have young kids or are still having kids. A lot of my friends are very interested in birth and birth stories. I had two very different births with my girls. Katherine was born via c-section because she was breech. Caroline was born naturally with no drugs and came so fast I almost had her in the car.

Apparently my little odd group of friends are not the only people interested in birth stories. In fact, there is a play about this very thing called BIRTH. I will be giving away 2 tickets to see that play when it is in Fort Worth on September 25th.

BOLD stands for Birth On Labor Day and is a global movement that supports education and choices in childbirth. Their goal is to raise awareness and show that birth is a normal healthy process and not an illness or disease.

The Tarrant County Birth Network is hosting a performance of BIRTH, a play by Karen Brody, on September 25th at 2 and 7pm to celebrate BOLD. There are 8 female characters who perform a birth story: hospital birth, home birth, unmedicated birth, c-section, etc. After each performance, a panel of birth professionals such as ob/gyns, midwives, doulas, lactation consultants, chiropractors and nurse-midwives will be answering questions. There is also going to be a Birth Fair and silent auction coinciding with the performance featuring mother and baby friendly items.

This is the perfect “Girl’s Night Out” event. I have a group of friends going and you should, too!

You can either click here for tickets or leave a comment below for a chance to win two free tickets complements of the Tarrant County Birth Network, which is sponsoring the play. For additional entries, "like" BOLD Fort Worth on Facebook or share this post on Facebook or Twitter and leave another comment letting me know you did that. The contest will end Wednesday September 15th at midnight so get the word out!!!

For more information visit BOLD Fort Worth

Happy Birthday Ally!

We enjoyed a party for Ally at their house. She is such a cutie. Aunt Jaime set up tables of play-doh and fun things for the kids. Mainly we all visited, ate and had cake.




Ally decided she would feed her cake to daddy and Sophia.


All four cousins. Right now they are 1, 2, 3, and 4. Sophia and Katherine are 12 months apart. Caroline and Ally are 12 months apart. They have a lot of fun together.

California

I am so far behind in blogging. I have not even mentioned that we went on a family vacation to California about 6 weeks ago. We started out visiting my brother's family to celebrate Ally's first birthday. We took the kids to a science museum to get them all out of the house while Jaime made preparations.

I loved the idea of a dinosaur table instead of a train table. They enjoyed it for a bit.

Caroline was not so sure what to think of the person dressed up as a dinosaur.
Ally crawled around exploring the magnets and mirrors on the wall.
We went to an animal show where they talked about the turtle and the tortoise.

Ally loved the bunny. I think it was almost as big as her.

Birthday Day

On Caroline's actual birthday we had a family day at a local nature preserve and museum. It was HOT! We did not last long outside. There are miles of trails but we just walked the 1/2 mile to the animals and butterfly garden.
Next we came inside to look at all of the exhibits.

There was an Ice Age exhibit going on. Too bad it did not help us cool off. There were animatronic animals from the Ice Age. It was a little scary for Caroline but one of the museum workers said that our kids did great, many are really scared.




It was a really fun family day. I look forward to returning to the museum when the weather cools off and we can explore more of the trails.

Happy Birthday

Caroline really enjoyed celebrating her birthday. A tradition in my family is to sit surrounded by presents. It was hard to get her to sit still and not tear into them.

Of course Katherine had to help with the opening.

She loved getting her very own Bitty Baby doll.

We got them a new double swing for the swing set to replace the baby swing.

We celebrated by watching a movie together. Caroline's current favorite is Monsters, Inc.

I painted a plate for Caroline to match Katherine's. It is a tradition to eat on this place for Birthdays and other special events.

We went to hang with the cousins and open presents from Grammy. Here they are all helping her with the shopping cart.

The weekend wore her out and she fell asleep on the couch.