Who doesn't love some Lalaloopsy Fun?

Gini & Kaity turned 7 last Thursday! It was so much fun going to BounceU and letting all the kids go crazy! I, of course, loved getting into the theme - Lalaloopsy. Since it wasn't at our house, I didn't get to get all decked out. But, I did what I could :)

For invites, I could've just used the invites that were provided from BounceU, but what would be the fun of that? I found this cute, brightly colored chevron paper at Hobby Lobby. It had both of Gini and Kaity's favorite colors (pink and blue). Then I downloaded some free fonts that complimented the Lalaloopsy style - "Things we said" and "KBAStitch in Time". After, I attached them to the BounceU invite (which had the signed parent waiver in it) with a cute green paperclip.

BounceU had rules that I wasn't allowed to bring any outside food or beverages with the exception of cupcakes or a cake. I choose to go with the cupcakes. I just made simple cupcakes from a box (hey, they're kids, right?!) with bright pink frosting and added a button cupcake topper.  Instead of having just cupcakes on their counter, I had something more fun. After all, this is a Lalaloopsy party! Between Kaity & Gini, they had 6 dolls that I thought would make the perfect table decoration added with some spools of yarn and some bright buttons. The gift bags were so cute, I added them to the party decor too. Also, I found some mini colored frames in the dollar bins at Michaels. I couldn't resist. I bought them and used them for little name tags for the gift bags and cupcakes.


I kept the gift bags simple, but dolled them up. Michael's had a great some ribbon, bright pink and bright green, in their dollar bins that matched perfectly. I had a bag of bright buttons - put the two together and you got a cute Lalaloopsy bow! I attached the bow to the gift bag for a little added cuteness. Gini & Kaity had Lalaloopsy pencil toppers, so we decided it would be fun to give each of the girls a matching set of the pencil toppers, the doll with their pet. For each girl, we found a picture of their doll that matched the pencil toppers we gave them and put it on their take that said "Thank you SEW much for coming to our party!" Target dollar bins also had some good finds too. I found some orange polka dotted sandwich bags that I used to put the button snicker doodle cookies and the bag of skittles in, tied with cute ribbon of course.They also had a set of mechanical pencils to go perfectly with the pencil toppers. And my favorite find, was the self adhesive rhinestones that the girls could use for stick on earrings. I found some cute coloring pages of some Lalaloopsy dolls and their pets and printed a few out for each bag. Overall, I think the gift bag turned out super cute!

The real fun was getting to watch, as well as, bounce along with Gini & Kaity with their friends at BounceU in the main room and also the COSMIC (glow-in-the-dark) room. We had a ton of fun! It made for a great Lalaloopsy Party!

Happy 7th Birthday Gini & Kaity!

Okay...I am going to attempt this again

I guess something that I don't really love is blogging, as I haven't posted since 2011!!! Wow! Well, I decided that I need to get back into journaling somewhat of my life and the things that I love about it. So, expect to seeing more on here :)

I love VIRTUE

This week was my first YW Evening of Excellence as young women's president. The theme for the night was virtue. To prepare for this we had a few activities beforehand.

Our first activity was a virtue photo shoot. We did this about a month and half before. We had a brother in our ward, Ron Aguilar, who was so kind to bring his equipment to do a professional shoot. We dressed the girls virtuously and in biblical attire. They turned out super cute! The girls didn't know what they pictures were going to be used for yet, but they suspected it would be for the upcoming excellence night. Here are a few of their more casual virtue shots:

Then we had an activity a few weeks later where we read and learned about 12 different women of virtue in the scriptures. After, we put the names in a jar and the girls randomly selected a women for them to study. They were given the assignment to list all her virtuous qualities and then relate themselves to this women.  Each of the girls wrote a short paragraph on this and sent it to me. It was fun to read all that they learned and how they saw themselves in comparison to the women in the scriptures.

Finally, the night arrived this week. My fabulous presidency decorated the chapel beautifully between the dessert table and the display table! The display table where the girls put their personal progress projects and goals was decorated all things gold~ the color of virtue. We framed their virtue pictures to add to their display and put candles surrounding the table. Then the room was darkened so that all you could see was their virtuous works on the display table.

We had a great program with almost all the Young Women participating. Two of the young women gave talks on what virtue means to them. Then we showed the video presentation - Young Women of Virtue. (I had prepared a slide show of the girl and the women they choose to study~ Young Women of Virtue). Afterwards I gave a talk on how our young women are virtuous. Following my talk, the Bishop closed with his thoughts on virtue.  The spirit was definitely felt many times throughout the evening. It was great! So glad it all came together.

What topped off the evening for me was coming home to a clean house (which I had neglected all day to prepare for this night) ~ thanks to Dave and my girls. Also, before I had left, Dave gave the blessing over dinner and had specifically asked that the evening would be perfect. When I came home afterwards, Autumn and Joy asked how it went. I responded saying "Perfect!" not even remembering that Dave had prayed for that. Joy responded excitedly "That's EXACTLY what Daddy prayed for!" So grateful to have such a wonderful supporting family, a great YW Presidency, and virtuous young women!

I love big families!

Yup! I am officially announcing that I am expecting child #6. In early July, Dave and I decided that we wanted one more. AND we mean, ONE more. By August, I tested positive on a home pregnancy test. However, I didn't go rushing into the doctor. I had no idea how far along I was because I didn't do a good job of tracking my cycle and it was really random as it was.

I finally scheduled an appointment with my new doctor as I as concerned with some things that were going on with my body. I was having some spotting. And given my past, I was pretty concerned. By the time I was seen by doctor, he performed an ultra sound to make sure everything was fine. It was! Everything looked healthy and showed no signs that I would miscarry. Then the doctor told me that based off of size and development, I was 9 weeks pregnant.

Since then, we have had a lot going on, so we decided to wait awhile in telling everyone. I am now 15 weeks pregnant and should find out what I am having pretty soon (I just have to schedule the appointment)! Anyway, I love big families and I love that ours will be one more bigger around April 26th.

I love Halloween!

It's definitely a crazy thing trying to get all 5 of my kids ready for Halloween. BUT, it is fun too! This year we didn't go out and buy brand new costumes like we have done in the past. Instead, we used the costumes and dress ups that we already had. I am glad that we did!

I remember when I was a kid, that was what I did. I either borrowed costumes from friends or made something up from what we already owned. It was very rare that I had a brand new costume purchased for me. I think the only I can remember that was new was my sparkly clown costume. BOY did I love it! But all the other ones ~ Medusa, 50's girl, Hippie~ yeah, those were from what we had. I loved them just as much!

Autumn chose to be Fancy Nancy. She had fun pulling out all the fancy stuff to make up her costume! And I will admit, I had fun doing her hair all Fancy-Nancy-Like! She had curls, butterflies, flowers, ribbons and a crown~ just all in her hair!!


Joy chose to be a Southern Bell ~ or as most would say, Scarlet O'Hara. Autumn was this last year. It worked out great. EVERYONE loved her costume! They couldn't help but say how beautiful she looked. AND SHE DID!


Gini chose to be a beautiful brunette Cinderella. This is the dress that Gini picked out when we got all the girls princess dresses as Disneyland! This is no ordinary dress. IT IS FANCY!! Everybody commented on how it was the prettiest Cinderella dress they had ever seen! Gini of course, would just giggle and flash her cute little smile and bat her pretty eyelashes.


Kaity was a Cat Witch. This is the costume Joy had last year. I must say that Kaity makes a cute and friend Cat Witch. Everyone said that she must be a nice and good witch, because there was nothing scary or evil about her. SO TRUE! Kaity would giggle and say, "Nu-Uh! I am mean witch!" with the cutest grin possible. You can't fool us Kaity!! (or can you? tee hee!)


Jackson we did actually buy~ At the dollar store! We don't have boy dress ups and there aren't any costumes to pass down to him. So, when I was at DollarTree I spotted a pirate hat, sword and patch combo for $1!! Perfect. He could be a pirate and wear his church clothes. He made a great pirate. He would go around saying "ARRRR" as loud as he could. It was surprising that he kept on his patch and hat for so long. We told him that if he wanted to go trick-or-treating to get candy then he would have to wear it all~ and he did! He got right into it . He was the first to say "Trick or Treat," then say "Thank you!" then say, "Yup! I got lots of candy! I need more." So cute!


I definitely love Halloween!

I love carving pumpkins!

This year is a tight year for us. So, we told our kids that we have to cut back on a lot of things. With it being Halloween, we knew we wouldn't be able to buy all the fun stuff that we buy each year ~ pumpkins, new costumes, accessories, decorations, etc. This meant cutting out my favorite pastime of carving pumpkins.

Our children were pretty sad about this too. Luckily for Kaity and Gini, they had field trip scheduled for school to go to a local pumpkin patch where they would get to pick their own pumpkins. They were pretty excited now that they knew they could carve a pumpkin this year. Autumn and Joy were of course pretty bummed. But Joy asked if she could use her allowance money to buy a pumpkin ~ of course! As luck would have it, when we were at the grocery store, Safeway had a deal to buy one medium sized pumpkin for $5.99 get one free. So, Autumn and Joy combined their money and got two pumpkins. YEAH!! This year we would get to do some carving after all!

We had a ton of fun. Kaity chose to draw her own pumpkin face (as you can see). Happy Jack-O-Lantern face for her. She even named it ~ Roar-y. Gini wanted a cat face for her pumpkin. So we found a simple design that she liked. Catching onto what Kaity did, she named hers too ~ Cute Cat. Joy wanted to draw her own. She came up with a great idea for a design and Dave helped refine a little so it would be easier to carve. Autumn found a scary face that she like and used for her pumpkin.

The girls gutted their own pumpkins~ which is always a gross mess. I actually love it!! We saved all the seeds for Dave to make yummy pumpkins seeds for a desert later. Then the carving began! The girls did a great job carving their own pumpkins, with the occasional help from Dave and I. Jackson was pretty bummed. He kept asking for his pumpkin....Yeah I felt bad that I didn't think about him wanting to do one too!

After we cleaned them up, Jackson helped put the candles in and we put them outside for all to see! Then we went inside and ate some butter and salted pumpkin seeds and cinnamon and sugar pumpkin seeds. YUMMY! What a fun night!

I love to learn new things!

Thanks to my good friend Natasha, I was able to learn something that I have wanted to learn for a long time now....Sewing! Natasha inherited a extra sewing machine and box of goodies and just brought it on over for me to use. And not that, but she came over several times to teach me how to read a pattern, cut out a pattern, how to thread a bobbin, how to thread the machine, AND how to Sew! Wow I am lucky to have such a great friend. (Thanks Natasha!)

So, I picked out fabric of my girls favorite colors and ribbons to match and I sewed some skirts! They girls were very involved once I told them what I was working on. Each day they were asking what I had done and if they could watch me work on it some more. It was a lot of fun! And I couldn't stop at just skirts....I had to make flower pins for their white shirts to match their skirts. AND I had to make bows too...Okay, a little overboard...I know. But I love it!! Today the girls got to wear their new outfits to church. They just loved it!

Now...I need to learn how to sew curtains....next project? I think so!