Seven

On the day Lily turned seven we celebrated by going roller skating for the very first time. My friend, Laura, and her daughter, Lily, joined us! And it was a good thing they did because taking Lily and Eli to roller skate for the first time at the same time was a little more than I bargained for! There was a lot of falling. Seriously, a lot. But all three kids stuck with it and took the falls and just kept going. Seriously, if I took just one of the hard falls they did I would have been out for the day! Nope, they just kept going and they loved it (bruises and all)! I tried to get a picture of the three of them, but if it's hard to get a good picture of three kids, then trying to get a good picture of three unstable kids on roller skates is impossible...but funny! And this year on her birthday we started a new tradition...and it's one of my favorites. Eli gave Lily flowers (and even picked them out himself)! Eli was so proud and Lily loved them! And I decided right then that this is something we must do every year. I want Lily to feel special and loved not just by her dad and I, but by her brothers as well.
 Love it.

 
I can't believe that my baby girl is seven!

Volcanoes!

For Eli's birthday party we thought it would be fun to make an erupting volcano (since it was a dinosaur party).  We started out trying to make a large volcano out of salt dough and it was a giant, sticky glob of a mess and no matter how hard we tried we couldn't get it to stay in any sort of volcano form.  I was seriously doubting my ability to shape something into a volcano when we decided to give it one more try with modeling clay.  Success!!  We made one large one and one small one.  After all that work though we never ended up erupting them at his birthday party- there was just too much going on and the kids were just having so much fun with everything else that we decided to skip it.

So a day or two after his party we had our own little volcano erupting celebration and the kids loved it!

Eli's 4th Birthday!

Now that I'm caught up on pictures from the spring I thought maybe I should finally share our birthday pictures from this year.  Yes, Eli turned four in November so it's way overdue.  But hey, at least he's still four!

To celebrate his 4th birthday we had a fantastic dinosaur party with friends and family!

I made a cute little dinosaur hoodie and tail for the birthday boy!  

He was pretty excited for his party!

  Two dinosaur cakes and dinosaur cupcakes! And some dinosaur snacks!  

I bought these great inflatable dinosaurs for decoration, but little did I know that they would end up being a 

major part of the party play!

  It is entirely possible that the only thing really needed for a successful four year old birthday party is a room full of inflatable toys!:) I couldn't believe how much fun the kids had just attacking each other with the dinosaurs (even more amazing is that these inflatable dinosaurs survived the party)!  

After the dinosaur wars the kids went outside on a dinosaur scavenger hunt. The kids searched the yard for mama dinosaurs as well as dinosaur eggs.

On the hunt!

  

Helping a friend.

   

After all the dinosaurs and eggs were found the kids gathered in the front yard to hatch the eggs! The kids and I made the dinosaur eggs out of a baking soda mixture and here they are using little squirt bottles of vinegar to "hatch" the baby dinosaurs out of the eggs. Except that it took a lot more vinegar to hatch the eggs than I was expecting so quickly squirting needed to 

become dumping!

    

And a little bit of smashing! And eventually they ended up dumping a few in the eggs in a bucket of vinegar!  

And Liam was there too, but he spent most of his time inside with Aunt Marianne and cousin Maggie!

After all of the dinosaurs were found and hatched it was time for cake!  

And presents!

  And then back outside to burn off some more energy playing with friends!  

And a dinosaur!:)

  

No kids or dinosaurs were hurt in the making of this birthday party (okay, maybe one dinosaur) and we had one very happy birthday boy!:)