Monday, January 7, 2013

Baby and Me Party For Our 3 Year Old

Somehow life can get ahead of you sometimes. That’s how November felt for me. Suddenly it was two weeks before Beka’s birthday and she announced she really wanted a party… sigh… what kind of party do you want? A friend party or a family party? Friend… double sigh. 

For me when planning a birthday party, I need a theme. With a theme you can plan the decorations, games, treats, and invitations. Also, keeping in mind that my brain is still fried from having a newborn in the house well I really struggled to figure out what my sweet Beka Boo likes. She pretty much likes anything Emma is doing. However, the one thing she really loves to do is take care of her baby dolls. She loves to rock them, take them for walks, pretend to give them baths, change diapers, feed them… of course she also like to draw on them and throw them around but it’s all good!

So, a baby party it was. I started surfing the internet and a fabulous site called pintrest for ideas. I came up with a few ideas and it was off to the races. Now, I’d learned a lesson from Emma’s party. Her party went too long. So, I planned a 1 hour party for Beka and it was perfect!

We got baby shower invitations at the dollar store.  We took the invitations to a couple of friends from church and a couple of cousins.  We used a baby shower table cloth and little baby bottles as the decorations… Which of course I forgot to take a picture of! beka's party invites fixed

I decided to set up stations for the girls/boys to take care of their babies.

The first station was the check in station. I totally forgot to take a picture, ugh mommy brain… We had a small kitchen scale to weigh the babies. They got birth certificates with their baby’s weight, height, and name. Then they got to listen to their baby’s heart.

Station 2 was a diaper changing. I used this pattern to make little diapers for each kid to take home with them. Then I used the extra scraps for wipes.

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Beka's birthday party 010Station 3 was giving your baby a bath. I brought our little baby bath and filled it with rubber ducks (no water!). They got to use scraps of felt for their washcloths. They had  little felt sheets to use as towels for their babies.

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Beka's birthday party 022  Station 4 was a portrait station. I got the cutest pictures of some of our little mommies and their babies. I  had grand ideas of using these for thank you notes… but I didn’t get all the kids over to the station. Sigh, it’s all good!

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I took Beka through all the stations before her friends arrived. They were so excited! Everyone parked their strollers and came to the check in station. The most popular station was the bath.

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After everyone had a chance to do all the activities, I had the kids sit at the table to make a paper diaper bag. Each of them put their babies down for a “nap”.  It was so cute! They were each given a white paper bag, crayons,  and a bunch of Tinkerbelle stickers (Beka’s favorite Disney character) Beka's birthday party 038

Love how intent they were! The bags doubled as the grab bags.

As the decoration wound down, I gave each kid a cupcake to decorate. They LOVED this! Beka had picked out the flavor and icing.

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I LOVE Beka’s face! How can you not get into your frosting. She was so happy!

After cupcakes, I had the kids get their babies and we took them to story time. I had them sit in on the rug and listen to two of Beka’s favorite books. Then with everyone sitting and a little calm we did presents. I was a little nervous about how this would go. When Emma was three we tried to open the gifts with all the guests and it didn’t go well at all. But this time it went just fine. Beka’s favorite gift was from Grandma and Grandpa Peterson. She got her own stroller! She’s been using Riley and Emma’s.

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After the gifts were open we took the kids outside to do a stroller parade! This was the best:Beka's birthday party 063 Beka's birthday party 089 Beka's birthday party 071 

Such a fun time for all. Beka had a blast, and loved her new stroller. Grandpa was the hero and put it together while we took the kids outside.

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And then it was over! We loaded each kid up with their diaper bag, diaper, bottle, and birth certificate.

I can’t believe our little Beka Boo is 3! She is very excited to start primary and loves to help mommy in the kitchen. She’s is constantly into something, and is generally laughing about it.

We love you Beka Sue! You defiantly keep us on our toes, and we wouldn’t have you any other way!

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Pretty Little Witch or in other words we found Fallish

I love my pretty little Emma. She lets me play with my camera and take all kinds a crazy pictures of her. She’s such a good sport about it, following directions and helping me find the best light. It really helps to have someone who will let you practice on them :)

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The Sunday after Halloween we took the kids to Floyd Lamb park to find fall. I need to see the pretty leaves, and knew that Mt Charleston’s leaves had already fallen off. I think we found it don’t you:

It's fall, web

I love this picture… I have big intentions of printing it poster size and putting it up in my bathroom! heehee  

Now back to my little Emmaline. We brought her Halloween costume with us. I really loved her costume this year, and wanted some fun pictures of her in it. The ones on Halloween didn’t turn out like I wanted. So, this was my second chance:

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Isn’t she fun! She wanted to be a friendly witch! I love love love the tights we found to go with.

Now, for little Beka Boo. She does NOT like getting her picture taken. She generally runs away, looks away, or gives mommy a very grumpy look.  It generally takes a big bribe to get her to cooperate.

Beka was Tigger this year. So perfect! The best part is that Riley wore this costume too:

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Oct 2007092Amazing huh?!  Never ever would guess they were siblings… heehee. It’s hard to believe it’s been 5 years…

We had a blast out at the park. Allen and Riley enjoyed trying to fish…We still haven’t caught any, but at least no one ended up in the water this time…

halloween costumes 179 Two last pictures to share. I love both of these, and thought you might too!halloween costumes 116 halloween costumes 132Ephram really is a delight! I love how he smiles in his sleep and sucks on his thumb. 

This is Halloween, This is Halloween!

Ok, still trying to catch up a little… This particular post is going to be just a bunch of the things we did for October.

At the beginning of the month a family in our ward moved.  The kids were so sad! They really loved them. I offered to watch their daughter Ella while their mom tried to get packed up.

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The girls had too much fun :)

We also went with Emma on a field trip to the pumpkin patch:

GROUP PICTURE EDT WEB Pumpkin Patch 030  Pumpkin Patch 041 Pumpkin Patch 039Pumpkin Patch 055 Pumpkin Patch 057

Emma had a blast, but the heat got to her. If you look closely at the last picture she’s getting kinda green… I  hurried her to the car and home. Lots of water and getting cooled off and she was fine.

We also made a few crafts to countdown to Halloween:

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We painted candy corn pots, made ghost out of our footprints, a ghost plate, sugar cookies and several more. It was super fun!

Ephram started giving us super cute smiles:

 

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And his cute candy corn hat:

Ephram's new hat 026_IJFRI got to go to Riley’s class to help with their Nevada day party too:

IMG_5723 And then of course we had Halloween and the wonderful costumes:

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halloween 001_IJFR halloween 011_IJFR Riley has become a huge Harry Potter fan. He’s a little obsessed. He still wears the robe almost everyday!

We had fun at our ward Halloween party and trick or treating. It was a happy October. We had so much fun. And so grateful for the cooler weather!

Ephram’s Blessing

Ok, so I’m kinda behind the eight ball on this… I wish I had a good excuse, but sadly I don’t. November and December  just got away from me. We were busy, I’m sure we were.

This is our sweet Ephram Mark Leavitt:

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He is such a sweet baby, and seems to have a very old soul. We love how his whole face tells what he is feeling.

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Anyway, Ephram’s blessing was great. He was such a good boy. No screaming, crying or laughing, giggling or talking. He was quiet and listened. We had our luncheon after the three hour block. I really enjoyed that. We got to show our sweet little dude off to the ward (his outfit was so cute) and introduce our fun family to everyone.

Then, at Allen request, we had everyone over to our house for lunch. It was crowded but fun. We had yummy sweeten pulled pork burritos and strawberry lemonade.

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This is Allen’s family! Everyone was there, and with the amazing help of Photoshop everyone in looking pretty good! It was really windy (when isn’t it on our special days) hence my hair looks really crazy.

Eprham's blessing day2 031 These are Ephram’s Leavitt cousins. I always find it amazing when I have almost all the kids looking. And yes, it’s my daughter how hates having her picture taken and wont smile!

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Our family of 6! Oh, my goodness! Yep, Beka is still not looking… and you can really see the how windy it was.

This is the proud mommy and daddy.  Can you tell it was a long night? And believe or not it wasn’t the baby getting us up…

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These are the sweet men who were in the circle for the blessing:

Eprham's blessing day2 096Back row: David Kennedy, Benson Murdock

Front row: Mark Peterson, Richard Leavitt, Ephram Leavitt, Allen Leavitt, Josh, Leavitt, Brigham Leavitt, TJ Delvin

We are so blessed to have this sweet guy in our family. We love him so much! Thanks to everyone who came, you made it such a special day!