It’s a pARTy!

Today my little Avery turned 6 years old! She’s not so little anymore! She wears skirts and dresses almost all the time now, she loves to carry her 11 month old baby sister around, she’s going into 1st Grade in the fall, she is a great reader, and she is just so beautiful! For the past three years we’ve been doing princess birthday parties for her so when I saw some “Art party” ideas start popping up on Pinterest I convinced Avery to let this be her theme. She loves arts and crafts so it didn’t take much to convince her!

We did a paint palette/rainbow color scheme. We invited 9 of her friends but only 5 could make it, which was a perfect amount for me! Here’s the invitation we sent out:

I thought they turned out pretty cute! I spent pretty much all week (and some of last week) shopping, crafting, and getting everything figured out for the party today. I found so many cool ideas that I didn’t even end up using. We were going to do most of it outdoors but it was about 90 degrees today and since we had 7 kids and our table holds 7, it worked out perfectly to do everything indoors.

Here are some pictures of everything set up before the guests arrived. An easel set up outside the front door:

The creating room!

Popsicle stick easels we made (so quick and easy) and glued on name cards, plus art supplies in cans and jars.

I taped up some brown Kraft paper on the wall for the kids to color, plus I hung up aprons that I made for each guest (out of a Target outdoor tablecloth and ribbon). Plus I got that purple frame at Good Will, removed the picture and painted it purple for the kids to do a photo shoot.

I set up a “Masterpieces” table for all of their art projects to dry on. I decided to do this last minute and I’m glad I did – it really came in handy.

I cut out this palette shape out of foam board and we played “paint the green on the palette”.

Ahh, the food! The “Starving Artists: Feed your Creativity” station was pretty fun. The mini waterbottles were labeled “creative juices”, rainbow fruit kabobs, rainbow goldfish, palette cookies, and a cake. (We also had pizza.)

These were fun. I just made circle sugar cookies and then iced them to look like palettes and added M&Ms. A crowd pleaser!

Avery and I agreed that we wanted to WOW the crowd by leaving the cake an unassuming white color, so we could get some good reactions when we cut into it!

I found these cute notebooks at Michael’s and added a little tag and ribbon to go in their goody bags. They also got a sparkle gel pen, pencil, stencil, and a couple homemade crayons (we took all of our old crayon bits, chopped them up and melted them in a mini muffin pan to make rainbow colors).

So here are some pictures of the fun times at the party! Our first craft was decorating their goody bags. I bought plain white bags, wrote their names on them with puffy paint and gave them stickers, crayons, and markers and they had a lot of fun. We had to stop them after a while because we had other things to do!

Our next project was painting a masterpiece. I talked to the kids about painting, gave them some ideas on what to paint, and every kid got a canvas board to paint something on. We used egg cartons to give them 4 colors to paint with and they all did great. No big messes and everyone’s paintings turned out great!

Then we did the pin the paint on the palette game while Merrick (my trusty helper!) cleaned up the table for us.

Next we made headbands but I didn’t take any pictures of it. I bought plain black elastic headbands, hot glued on a felt heart shape and then they just glued on some sequins. Pretty quick.

Then we ate lunch and while the kids were working/eating I did some face painting on their cheeks. It was my first time face painting but it wasn’t too hard! And the kids seem to like it – what kid doesn’t like getting their face painted? We took pictures of the kids in the purple frame and I thought they were cute.

They decorated the wall too.

Lastly we ate cake and opened presents. The light from the one little #6 candle was really bothering Avery’s eyes so she had to blow it out with her eyes closed, haha.

The cake turned out to be a big surprise and they were all happy to gobble some up. It was a little bit more work than a normal cake, but I’m very proud of it!

The kids got to bring home their paintings and their apron too. It was a great party and I had a lot of fun getting things ready. Thanks to all of our family for the gifts and well wishes you sent to Avery! She has had a nice day so far! Merrick took her and Camryn to see Brave this afternoon, so that’s why I’ve had time to do some blogging… plus I couldn’t wait to show everyone how much fun we had! Happy Birthday Avery!

Wisconsin Dells!

So the Sunday after school got out we had some company come into town – Merrick’s family! Everyone except Taryn and Brian came. Lindsey flew in first from DC and everyone else was supposed to be here Sunday afternoon but on Saturday night we got a phone call saying they checked their tickets and they weren’t until Monday, haha! So we just went with it and it all worked out!

Lindsey helped us pack up Monday morning and we drove up to our condo we stayed at on Lake Delton. It was fabulous. This is the view from our deck! I highly recommend this place (here’s the vrbo listing). It fit us great and even had a couple huge walk-in closets for the kids to sleep in. Plus we got to enjoy that little beach with only a few other people every day.

The first night we were there we hung out on the beach, most everyone went swimming and then Merrick took his siblings to the Tommy Bartlett Waterski Show. They said it was really cool. 

Tuesday we went over to the Wilderness Resort to go on waterslides. It was kind of a chilly day to be wet outside (about 70 for the high) but there were tons of indoor rides so we rode those too. These two new slides were unanimously the scariest and I did not attempt them!

The red one has a plate you stand on and then the plate drops out from underneath you and you free fall down 3-4 stories high. The blue one is the same deal but you do a big loop too. I didn’t try that one either!

I actually didn’t take any pictures at the waterparks because I never had my camera with me. But we had a great time. Everyone went back Wednesday morning but I stayed back with Lily and Brett. By lunchtime they were all tired and came back to chill with us at the condo.

In the afternoon all the men went to Noah’s Ark Waterpark, which is the biggest waterpark in the Dells (and actually in America). They wanted to check it out and try all the big rides. They said it was pretty awesome!

Thursday we had to check out of our condo but we stayed up in the Dells checking out some of the other things to do for a few hours after that. Lindsey, Lily, Merrick’s parents, and I went on the Upper Dells Boat Tour. It was a cool tour that taught us why the Dells are so famous. 

There are only three places in the world that have these kind of flat stacked rocks (called Dells) and Wisconsin has the greatest deposit of them.

It was a pretty neat tour, although a little long for Lily. She did great most of the way, just got a little antsy after a couple hours.

While we were doing that Merrick took his brothers and the girls to Pirates Cove to go miniature golfing and over to Timber Falls Adventure Park to ride the Hellcat roller coaster. We got to do a lot of these fun things because of these 4 Season Opener cards we got from the radio station. They gave us free or $3 admission per person to all these things. I think we spent about $58 doing all these things (Noah’s Ark, Waterski show, boat tours, mini golf, and roller coaster) whereas normally we would have paid about $300. Not bad!

So then we drove back to our house (less than a 2 hour drive) and everyone was pretty tired so some people read books, other took naps. We had to squeeze in a family picture of course!

For dinner we just went over to Culvers. It was a good choice though because we ran into Donald Driver (Green Bay Packer and winner of Dancing With the Stars!). Merrick was a little ashamed that I didn’t know who he was. Brett, Tanner, and Lindsey got a picture with him.

And then all the Utah family had an early flight the next morning, but Lindsey got to stay with us until Saturday evening.

She took the girls shopping for a swimming pool and enjoyed the really hot day outside with them. She even braved the slip n slide with them. What a great aunt!

So all in all, we had a fabulous week with great company! Thanks to everyone for making the trip out to Wisconsin to visit and have fun with us! It was a perfect transition into summer for my girls too. They weren’t bored for one second all week!

And Lily got to show off her walking skills! Yep, at 10 1/2 months she can take about 5-6 steps and is getting more brave every day! What a sweetie pie.

Ducks and Bikes

School got out on a Thursday so Friday was wide open for us. We decided to celebrate Summer Break and head over to our favorite park, Oakwood Park, to have some fun. We packed a lunch and ate that first in the picnic shelter. Then we headed over to the duck pond and fed the ducks.

There were a few ducks that were bigger than babies but not quite adults – teenager ducks? It was fun to see.

Another reason we love this park is this great bike path that loops around the duck pond. It’s probably a little more than a 1/4 mile long, so just right for two little bikers. Camryn has gotten so good on her bike but we haven’t ventured out of the driveway much so this was good for her to practice braking on the hills and going really fast on the straightaways.

They loved it. We finished up the trip with playing in the sandbox and playground. By then we were ready for a nap! But of course Lily was the only one who got one. :)

Last Day of Kindergarten!

Avery’s last day of kindergarten was a couple weeks ago now. She had a great year. She did full day kindergarten and really learned how to read and write so much this year. She made some good friends and absolutely adored her teacher.

It was a gorgeous morning so Lily and I saw her off (she rode the bus to and from school all year- nice!)

Here she is waiting for the bus…

And there she went on the bus for the last time as a kindergartener. She gave her bus driver some M&M’s.

Merrick and I got to go to her school at noon that day to have lunch with her on the playground. It was hot but it was nice to have some 2-on-1 time with her. She was pretty sad for me to leave, though. Said she wanted to go home! I told her that she had to stay for her last 3 hours of Kindergarten!! She made it through somehow. :)

When she got home I tried to make it fun and used an idea I saw on Pinterest. Here she is, right off the afternoon bus.

I made her some cookies and we got to dig into that huge pile of papers from her teacher!! Fun stuff.

Now on to First Grade!!

Camping

Last weekend was Memorial Day and since Avery had school off on Friday and Merrick got off work at noon, we thought we’d take the kids camping Friday afternoon – Saturday. Well we were very naïve to think that we could show up at two different “first come, first served” campgrounds at 2:30pm on the Friday before Memorial Day and still get a spot! They were all full, which was a major bummer.

But as we pulled out of the driveway on our way, I said to everyone, “Something may not go right. We may forget something or whatever. But let’s just go with the flow!” And so we definitely had to do that. We went back home and Merrick set up the tent at the very back of our backyard (which is almost a full acre field). After each taking a couple long trips to and from the driveway to drop all of our gear off, Merrick finally decided to just drive the minivan down the hill and across the lawn to our spot. Worked great.

See how far it was? We borrowed a tent from a friend and set up an air mattress, pack n play, and the girls sleeping bags. Fit great.

Luckily our neighbors had a fire pit we could borrow and so we set up around that.

Lily had fun crawling around in the grass, and I must say it was nice to have her in the grass rather than in the dirt, which is probably how it would have been at a campground.

So after we set up it was about 4pm and we all made a pact that we were going to stay outside the rest of the night, only running inside to go potty. We did cheat on one thing, which was to stick our tin foil dinners in the oven instead of using the fire pit for that. But we did roast marshmallows for s’mores on the fire.

It sprinkled off and on but we were able to stay outside and have fun. It was nice to spend some time together outside. After we ate dinner, Merrick took the girls on an “adventure walk.” Back behind our backyard is a large uninhabited area with waist high grass and stuff. Anyways, he just took them back there and they explored around for 20 minutes. Camryn said it was her favorite part of the whole camping experience.

The night went pretty well – we put the kids to bed later than normal, waiting for it to get dark. Lily went down first and then the girls tiptoed in the tent and went to sleep in record time. They didn’t wake up all night!

Merrick and I stayed up and played Cribbage next to the fire. It was really fun! The night went okay until about 4am. Lily had woken up and was in the bed with me, our air mattress was half empty, and it was off and on thunderstorming. That’s when I called it quits and headed inside with Lily for a few hours of good sleep in my own bed (and Lily happily collapsed in her crib).  

Anyways we had a good time and we’re excited to go camping as a family again sometime, but hopefully at a real campground next time!