Sam Sleepover

My friend, Liz, came over the other day and brought her kids to play.  I absolutely love hanging out with Liz, she is sooo funny (totally without even trying) and she is very very laid back and super mature in her walk with God!!!  AND she has 3 kids, so I don't feel like my 4 overwhelm her (she was 1 of 7 kids herself, so she says our chaotic house is totally normal to her, ha!).  Anyways, we hung out for a while, that's right us 2 adults with our 7 babes, and yes we rocked it out!!

When they went to leave her oldest asked if he could stay the night and Stevie was so excited (they both share an Angry Birds love).  I said yes, as I love fun and I love sleepovers :)

 

I didn't make them take a nap (a-not enough rooms and b-this meant they would fall asleep easier at night and c-I am a "cool" mom hahaha j.k)

 

This is how well they played with one another while the younger babes napped :)

They played in the pool out back for a while.  I moved the slide closer to the pool so that they could slide into the pool, I have never seen 2 kids have that much fun!  They were both laughing and giggling soooo much!  I wish I could've gotten more pics of them, but both of them had stripped down and I didn't feel like those pics would be appropriate ;)  But seriously, they were having a BLAST!!!

We ate dinner once Seth got home, then the boys baked us some cookies :)

Stevie Joy let him wear one of her SIX Angry Birds shirts she now owns, hahaha!

While the cookies were baking, we played in the front yard with some colored bubbles the kids' Auntie Claren gave them

Since Sam staying the night, was spur of the moment and not planned, he had no spare clothes, he ended up wearing some of the girls' pants (they had a bow on them, so he turned them around backwards) hee hee

little stair steps :)

Rocket watching the bubbles fly away 

 

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Back inside the kiddos played, watched movies and settled down *eventually* ;)

How cute do they look right before bed time

 

The kids had a lot of fun with their friend staying over.  Sam was wonderful about playing with all the kids even Titus :)  And, BOY can this boy eat!!!  Like he seriously ate as much as ME!!

The girls are staying the weekend with him and his sister (who is Neela's age) in two weeks while we go to a wedding up in Atlanta (they are going to have so much fun!!).

A Little One with Lots of Names

While I was pregnant with Olive, my kids called her "Rocket".  Stevie Joy came up with the name and it just kinda stuck :)

I was curious when she got here what they would call her.  SJ called Neela "baby" for the first year of her life!  And when Titus came along, the girls called him "baby boy" for the longest time!  Now that Olive is here, this chic has a lot of names!!  Like she will probably take forever to respond to her name being said, because we use SO many different names for her :) Like...

Olive

Rocket

 Baby Duck (Seth's name for her)

Ollie

Mama's girl

lil' bit

The Babe Babe (we actually call her this one a lot)

and my favorite to call her is:

Miss Priss :)

Stevie's Angry Birds Birthday Party~4 years old

This past weekend we celebrated Stevie Joy's 4th year of life!  

We are all about our kiddos picking out their own theme for their parties :)

Here is a recap of her past birthday parties:

 This year she has been totally into Angry Birds and she chose her theme MONTHS ago, hahaha.  

The decor was actually pretty easy because all the birds are primary colors and fairly easy to draw :)

Therefore we were able to make our own of pretty much everything, which saved us a lot of money.  Thankfully, Seth and I love working together and make a great team!!  We enjoyed staying up late Friday and Saturday night putting things together for the party.

Party planning committee hard at work ;)

 

here's the spread!

We had her  favorites: pizza, star sandwiches (pb&j), chip baggies, candies, and of course YOO-HOO's!!

and Seth's mom made some AWESOME Angry Birds cupcakes

Aren't they incredible, they tasted just as good too!!

This age was sooo fun, she was able to help out a lot with the party, she picked out her guest list, the food options, most of the decor (almost everyday leading up to the party she would ask to look at her Angry Birds party (a.k.a Pinterest board, ha!).  She made this little book for the table.

We even made this little countdown for the days leading up to the party,,,she was sooo pumped!

She worked on this little banister all day :)  I didn't have the heart to take it down (I was planning to spread her birds all around for decor throughout the room), but I mean it IS her party ;)

Here is her face when she got up from her nap rest time

She was so happy and pleased with the way it turned out!!  

Two thumbs up :)

Made all that hard work totally worth it!!

Guests arrived and mingled for a while and played on the sling shot, yes, we made a sling shot, we are so cool :)  It was all Seth's creative idea and he got so into it.  The sling shot was actually pretty easy to make, but the 200 water balloons he filled up took some time!!  it was worth it though, b/c that thing was so fun

 

 

Seth is showing the kids how it's done!

  

Once all the guests had arrived, we prayed for the food, and since everyone was already gathered we decided to go ahead and sing as well, that way everyone could go ahead and get a cupcake too :)  We feel that sometimes at parties people fill up on other sweets that they never eat the cake when it's served later in the party.  Also, we have 3 other kiddos to think about running around, so it's easier on us as host/hostesses to have our party guests to be pretty self sufficient ;)

Singing Happy Birthday 

 

I love having all the family together!

After people finished eating we sent the kiddos inside so that the adults could hide eggs (in the game the bad pigs are trying to get the eggs, and Easter is coming up so it just kinda worked out)

Olive woke up as we were coming in, so my sister fed her for me (love this! I miss my sis so much, and wish she lived closer!!)

this was the only part of the party where things went a little *too unstructured

Once the kids were done with their bags they just kinda RAN out the door and started hunting eggs, some kids took decorating their bags more seriously than others, so they did not all finish at the same time, meaning they did not start hunting at the same time, meaning some kids had 10 eggs some had barely 1 :-/ 

oh well, we tried ;)

We made little Angry Birds masks for the guests to wear, we knew Stevie Joy would think it was really cool (and she did!)

The guests were so good about sportin' them too

Autumn was so kind and sweet to take some amazing photos of the party for us, it was a huge blessing!

SJ was the yellow bird, yellow is her fav!

 After the hunt, we opened presents

her friend Shelby was sooo sweet, and sat there they whole time and watched her open each and every gift, and was so truly happy for her friend receiving such wonderful things (we should all take a lesson from kiddos, huh?)

Party Summary:

 After presents the rest of the party was pretty chilled :)  playing, talking, laughing, loving on babies, my kind of day :)

Titus was the space bird :)

  

Playing some more on the sling shot

High five, dude we did it!! :)

well, *almost* I want a family pic....

The party was a big success and she had a BLAST on her special day!  The weather was wonderful!!  She loved having all her family and her closest friends all together! 

Happy Birthday Stevie Joy, we love you so much and you make us very proud to be your Daddy and Mommy!!!!!!!