Alyvia's 6th Birthday!

Alyvia Chase is 6 years old!

Livi decided a on mermaid theme this year.  We started with her friends party at the Princeville Pool.  I was nervous about being responsible for a lot of little girls swimming, but it turned out great!  We had a total of 7 girls, including Alyvia and they had lots of fun!

 She was excited all. day. long. for her party to begin!  Little brother was pretty hyped up too :)  Her friends all came and they swam, jumped off the diving board, dove for "buried treasure" (pink coins) and jumped for toss rings! 

Searching for treasure!

We took a break to eat cupcakes & ice cream and open presents

Yummy!!

Tana, Mekaya, Alyvia, Paige, Sofie, Lizzie, Alexis

The girls had lots of fun together and it turned out to be the perfect party!  The next day, we headed to Chicago with Nana for what has become Alyvia's annual trip to American Girl :)  She always has the doll she wants (or in this case 'dolls') picked out before she goes.  Once we get there, she wants to buy the doll immediately.  She can hardly look at anything else until the doll is in her possession!  This year it was the bitty twins with dark hair. 

Meet Jack and CiCi-she named them all by herself!  You'll notice Coconut their dog too!

 

We brought Ruthie, her doll from last year, to get her hair done.  She told us Ruthie was excited to go back to the store she used to live at :)

And she took her picture with Saige, "girl of the year"

Such a fun place to visit!  We headed to lunch after shopping.  Alyvia chose Ed Debevic's.  We had never been there and it turned out to be so much fun!  Livi got really into the "rude" waitstaff!

Nana and Livi, she loves her Nana so much!

Our waitress, Bubbles, dancing!

Livi's birthday dessert.  Notice the candle is not lit, Bubbles blew it out and "stole" her wish!  She said, "you get free dessert and I get your wish!"  Hilarious.

Me and my girl

We had her family party this weekend.  On Saturday, her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins came to our house to celebrate!  We continued with the Mermaid theme for her party.

My banner-I'm still proud of it, ha!

Sparkly starfish,"mermaid wands" & salt water taffy

 

Alan created the fishing net light fixure, such a good husband/daddy!

We ate, visited, the kids played outside and of course we had cake, ice cream and presents!  It is unseasonably cool right now, it was only about 70 degrees on July 27th!  

Birthday girl with Dad & Mom

Kinsley & Alyvia (matching headbands!)

Livi with her new rain boots and umbrella!

Crazy boys!

Singing "Happy Birthday" to Sissy

Present time!

It turned out to be another fun party!  Our families spoil our kids rotten, how lucky are these kids to have extended family that loves them so much?!  As if that wasn't enough, we went boating at Oak Run today.  The men went golfing in the morning, I stayed home with the kids and Alyvia opened her presents from Dad, Mom, Cole and Kendall.

After Kendall's morning nap, we packed up and left for the lake.  Did I mention the unseasonably cool weather, it was 68 degrees at 12:30!!

Bundled boatin' babe!

It did get a little warmer when the sun came out from behind the clouds!

Birthday girl!

Peek-A-Boo!

Colson and I braved the water for a little while!  Brrrrrrr



Anne and Livi braved tubing!

They were really catching some air!

Even though the weather was less than perfect, it turned out to be a perfect day!  Alyvia's birthday weekend was fabulous and I think she had lots of fun!  6 years old?!  I just know it will be 16 before I know it :(  Livi Chase, you are so special to us.  I think my favorite thing about you is how sassy you are.  Somedays I am not a fan of the attitude, but I do hope you always have that determination towards everything you try to accomplish.  You are a wonderful daughter, sister, granddaughter, neice, cousin and friend.  Happy 6th birthday baby girl!

LOTO 2013

I am finally getting around to writing about our vacation this year!  Since we got back, I've been busily preparing for Alyvia's 6th birthday party (6?!).  She will be 6 years old this coming Sunday, crazy!  July is always a busy month with vacation and Livi's birthday.  We left for vacation on the 6th and for the first time, we all drove down to the lake seperately and not in a big caravan of cars/boats.  I worked 4 days the week we left for vacation and we packed mostly Friday night after I got home from work, yuck!  We got it done though and were ready to leave Saturday morning!

We stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, yummy!

We made it to our rental house after about 7 hours.  The kids were really good traveling, we really couldn't have asked for much better!  We spent the whole week relaxing, boating, floating and eating way too much!  The kids slept great, Kendall napped every morning and they were all happy boaters!! 

Livi LOVES the diving board at the house!  She loves even more when Aunt Anne lets her swim without her life jacket :)

This guy quickly learned to love the water after we just dropped him in it (with his puddle jumper of course!)
"I simmin' by myself"  "I simmin' on my tummy!"

The kids did a little fishing off the dock, we didn't catch anything though :(

We visited Don & Jill at their new condo.  Scott (Josh's friend) made his delicious lasagna for dinner, yummy!



Colson swam with everyone, he did so good!

He also decided he was the captain of our boat.  He settled for driving with daddy, but would have preferred to drive by himself :)  Daddy had to start hiding the boat key!

This little beauty was the best baby boater!  She would just lay back and snooze while the boat was running.  When we stopped to anchor, she woke up and was ready to float in the water!

Floating with the girls :)

We did manage a few boat naps

We barely got Alyvia to ride in our boat at all!  We are already very un-cool to her :(  She did agree to ride one of Don's jet skis with Alan and we FINALLY guilted her into riding our boat once.  She spent the rest of her time in Nana and Papa's boat!

On the back of our boat....but not riding in it!  This girl is a FISH and she was barely out of the water at all :)

Alyvia never even sat by us at meals, so I don't have a picture of her and I



 @ JJ Twigs

@ Topsiders :)  Livi wanted to eat here where "the big kids get the drinks with the fish in them" AKA Fishbowls :) 

 @ Captain Ron's Aargh Matey!  Great fun here :)

  

@ Fired Up BBQ  Aunt Anne, Finn and Colson line dancing! 

Family picture night!

The last night we boated over to The Paradise for dinner and it was fantastic as always! 

Looking out the back of the boat

 We had a great family vacation.  Both Alan and I agreed it was probably the best to date!  We're going for 10 days next year and we are already excited!!

Kendall is 8 Months Old!

This beauty is 8 months old already!  She is the most precious baby :)  Alan and I keep saying we "hit the baby jackpot"!  She is laid back, sweet, easy going and to top it all off, she's absolutely adorable! 

She weighs about 18 lbs. now and wears size 9 months clothes, this girl has done a lot of growing in the past 2-3 months!  Her feet are still tiny, I really never put shoes on her though!  I tried to buy her a pair of cute summer sandals in June, size 6-9 months and they are still HUGE on her.  Oh well. 
She eats so well now!  She has baby food for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still takes bottles before naps and bedtime.  We are working on a sippy cup still, it's been hard to figure out without getting too sloppy :)  She still takes 2 good naps a day, morning and afternoon and is in bed around 7:30.  She wakes up with the biggest smile on her little face around 6:15 in the morning.....wish we could get that a bit later :)  But who can be mad at this face?!

The most exciting thing this baby girl is doing now though is saying her first word...."Mama" <3  Now it sometimes actually means "momma" but it also means "I want something that I see" :)  It's still sweet to hear though!

Kendall we all love you so much!  Alyvia and Colson love that you are interacting with them more and more.  Colson is already very protective of you.  When you cry in the car, he holds your hand and tells you it's okay.  He always makes sure you are coming with us wherever we go, we can't leave his "baby".  He is so sweet with you!  Alyvia loves her baby sister and still always gets the biggest smiles from you.  Whenever she walks into the room, you light up!  You guys already have a special "sister bond".  I can't believe that you are close to one year old.  I love watching you grow, but I'm sad you are not a little baby anymore.  As you get big, I hope you are always as happy and loving as you are right now, you are too precious!



The Carnival Came to Town!

Last weekend was Princeville's annual Heritage Days.  My kids love the carnival!  This was the 1st year that Colson really understood what it was, but he joined Alyvia full force for the fun!  Thursday evening was the first night.  Alyvia did a cheer camp on Tuesday and Wednesday with the highschool cheerleaders.  They performed a couple cheers and a dance Thursday evening.  Livi did a great job!

Our friends Kristin and Lizzie came up to watch Liv and have some fun too!  After Livi's performance, we headed to the rides!  The cars are Colson's favorite :)

 The girls did the "Super Slide"

Cole said he wanted to do the roller coaster with the big girls....after it was over he said "too fass, too fass", poor guy. 

This beautiful babe was just along for the ride and she was such a good girl.  We keep saying we hit the "baby jackpot" with her!

Kristin took all the kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl.....I would have been sick for days if I had to ride!

And then Aunt Kristin took them all on the Merry-Go-Round.  Again, sickly mommy can't handle the spinning...

We skipped the festivities on Friday, but went back up for the parade on Saturday afternoon.  We snagged more than our fair share of candy and rode some more rides.  Livi got her face painted, but Kendall wasn't really feeling the heat that day so I missed a pic :( 

 The kids already miss the carnival and are talking about "next year"....we better start saving now!