Daddy Daughter Dinner and Dance.

Our ward hosted a "Daddy Daughter Dinner and Dance".  More specifically the Young Women hosted the event.  It was a lot of work and fun to be involved on how to make this event a good one for the dads and girls in our ward.  The first decision that was made, and I think it was the best one, was that this would involve ALL fathers and ALL girls ages 0-18.  My girls were SO excited about this night and as I read posts from facebook that night, I discovered they weren't the only ones!  Seems like everyone was writing and posting pictures about how excited the girls in the ward were about the dance! With all the RSVPs our YW Pres. got, it was going to be an almost perfectly attended activity.  Talk about pressure!!! We spent a YW activity working on decorations and about 3 hours at the church beforehand getting everything all candied up.  At first I was disappointed I wouldn't be able to stay and watch it all unfold, but I ended up having a lot of fun with my boys eating pizza and playing games at home.  All the feedback was very positive!!! My girls had a blast, as did Shane.  So many people also said how much they enjoyed it!  It felt good to be a part of bringing the activity to the ward with the rest of the amazing Young Women leaders!  And even a few moms to who stopped by in the morning just to help out! :)   Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for our next one!  

All decked out in black and white.  Ready for their party!

One of my very good friends snapped a couple of pictures for me. (She is so handy to have around! ;)  She also took some really cute ones of the girls' dance class.) I love this one of Lindsay and Shane - with his most awesome, ever present accessory the back brace.  Sigh.  At least it's black and "goes" with everything.)

And here is our Sophie dancing with the best of friends, who she loves dearly.

Family Pictures!

Last month the great and wonderfully beautiful Becky took our family pictures!  It feels SO GREAT knowing that there will never again be someone missing from our family photos!  Poor Peter hasn't been represented anywhere on our "Family Wall" since he was born. ( I know, I could be the worst mother ever).  So we might look at a picture that was taken years ago and think, "Gosh. Peter was ONE in that picture.  Now he's on his mission!"  But at least all members of the family will be present and accounted for. And this makes me VERY happy! 

When we are finished reading our scriptures and having family prayer, we have a little family huddle.  We all put our hands in and yell, "WE LOVE OUR FAMILY!"  Then give hugs and kisses.  The kids really love it. Peter especially right now.  We usually do it 3 or  4 times for him.  It's one of my favorite traditions.  This picture was taken to capture the family huddle. And I'm so glad to have it!

What a Big Weekend!

 We had some special visitors come for our special weekend!  Friday Peter turned ONE!  I just can't believe my baby is one.  We had a great day!  We have a tradition in our family that the birthday boy/girl gets to blow out candles and get sung to every meal.  We made this tradition because getting sung to and blowing out candles were our kids' favorite part and we felt bad they only got to experience it once on their birthday.  Needless to say, Peter had no idea what to do with the candles.  He kept trying to touch them, but he sure did love our singing to him! We had pancakes for breakfast, jelly sandwiches, string cheese and blueberries for lunch and mashed potatoes with chicken gravy and green beans for dinner, all of his favorites!  We took him outside for a while, his favorite place to be ( can't all parties be this easy??) We waited for Grandma,Grandpa, Great Grandpa and Aunt Melinda to have our little party.

staring at his candle on his pancake.

clapping after hearing "Happy Birthday" being sung to him.

"what's in here, dad?" 

The cake.

He loved his cake!  He couldn't keep his hands off!  He wanted those skittle so bad!

Mmmmmmmmmm.  He LOVED the icecream.  

I have wanted this birthday wreath for a long time and I made one for Lindsay's birthday, but after pinning 180 balloons, I ran out!  So I finished it a week later for Peter's birthday.  The total balloon count? 480 balloons!!  Whew!! But I have to say.... I LOVE IT!

 The second part of the weekend, Saturday, was Lindsay's baptism!! This girl has been so excited for her baptism since she found out about it in January that she started planning it right after the "8 is Great" program was over.  Lindsay was the only one getting baptized that day so we were in charge of the whole she-bang. She decided to ask her grandmothers to speak.  Gramma Shelton spoke on Baptism and Gramma Cracker gave a talk on the Holy Ghost.   Personally, I struggled with how much to do/not to do.  I wanted the day to be about the baptism and not everything else.  There seems to be so much associated with this occasion now and that made it hard for me to find the line that worked for us.  Announcements?  Refreshments? Decorations? Gifts?  The Dress?  How to do her hair?  Pictures? I felt overwhelmed and I REALLY didn't want this day to be stressful at all for us. In the end we skipped almost everything. Of course we got her a dress, but I just decided to take a few pictures and so we framed them and put them on the table with some flowers.  That was it.  And for our family, that was perfect.

After her baptism interview, she told me she was going to cry because she felt so much joy!

We were all so grateful that Great-Grandpa Zenk was healthy enough to come!!!

"small and simple things"