ONE

My beautiful boy is ONE!
He is the most joyful, happy, delightful baby of all time. He's a gift to me in my old age. :-) Happy Birthday gorgeous boy!!!

(Warning - photo overload!)

I had WAY too much fun on Pinterest and found lots of cute ideas for his partay. We settled on a Goldfish party. They are his favorite food and his name is Fionn after all. :-) Perfect.

How cute are these ribbon goldfish invites?!

I made lots of fun decorations:

Our local party store makes these fish balloons - this little guy in our party colors was sooooo adorable!
For party favors, I sewed these little orange butcher paper goldfish and filled them with goldfish! The kids loved ripping them open. :-)


The food!
Who knew you could get sixlets in bulk in your party colors? FUN!

Tuna fish sandwiches for big kids

Sprinkle covered PB & J fishies
Fish jello

Friends

Cake

I love this picture of my happy one year old angel!


Letting the ice cream soften and then scooping into muffin cups is GENIOUS! It was so easy when we were doing cake and ice cream to just take them out of the freezer and toss one on each plate. Genious I tell you!

He REALLY enjoyed his cake. :-)




Happy Birthday BABY!!

Curls!!

I tried this ridiculously simple thing I found on pinterest - it's changed my life. :-) Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration - but WOW! I have never mastered the hair curling thing, I'm not good at it, it takes me FOREVER!! and the curls fall out super fast. This is amazing!! It takes 3, count them, 3 minutes to do, sleep on it and presto!!! Super curly!
This is Clare and I last night, my hair was dry, hers wet:
(disclaimer - this is not sexy! At all. Chris says I look like the mom from that 70s show.)




And this morning: TA DAH!

Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas! This year we...

Got a new Christmas card. (Thanks Heidi!):
We tried on Santa hats:
We made gingerbread men:
(Ok, we bought a kit and we decorated gingerbread men!)


We wrote and mailed our letters to Santa:

We got an adorable Christmas card from Shea:
("Dear Mom and Dad. I love you vary much. Love Shea." The picture is of me at the "hose" on the couch with my laptop (hmmm? Do I spend too much time on the computer??) And dad at BYU in his office.) First grade art (and spelling) rules!
We got surprised on Christmas Eve by Kim and Reilley! Yay!:
We got EVERYTHING we wanted!:

Look how happy we are:
We sewed, and sewed and sewed:
(Until the wee hours of Christmas Eve to get the Belle dress done. She loves it, but loves the $3 one her brother gave her more! Urgg! :-)

We got a family picture!!
(All the Floods minus Michael's family.)
Merry Christmas!!

First Ballet Recital

Her first ballet recital! She loved it. Loved. It.

Waiting in the green room for her class' turn:

Backstage:
I thought she might get nervous and just stand there. But nope! She did every move.


Love you little ballerina.

Joy

Doing laundry with a one year old is one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. Who remembers that pulling clothes out of the dryer is that much fun?? He is thrilled by it!! And who knew that putting clothes in baskets was so exciting? He laughs and laughs and is tickled pink by himself. And then pulls them out again and laughs some more.

And who remembers that climbing stairs was so exhilarating? It's like he has gate radar that tells him the second the gate's been taken down and he makes a beeline for the stairs where he laughs and smiles and giggles the whole way up.

Let's not even mention the excitement and danger of the dishwasher! Oh the thrill! The things he pulls out and dumps on the floor clang and bang and make such fun noises. He's beside himself with joy.

And walking! Walking! So exciting, so much fun! Liberating! Exhilarating!

I adore this child, I wish I were as thrilled as he is by everything around him. Oh, the joy!

Imaginative Play

I LOVE when they reach the stage where they can use their imagination with their toys. Clare is there now and will go for hours off on her own with toys. I overhear the MOST adorable things. This day all the princesses and Strawberry Shortcake were taking a vacation. She lined them all up to see how they looked before they were allowed to get on the plane.




(Oh, and don't you love her outfit? I don't love when they to the stage where they have to pick out their own clothes. :-)

One of my favorite Pinterest finds yet

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this! We've had it a week now and it is totally, completely empty tonight. It's a healthy snack bin. Shea and Clare helped me pick, shop for, wash, cut up and bag all the veggies and fruit. Then we filled the bin. It has a little light ranch cup for each of them and celery sticks, mini cucumbers, baby carrots, fresh broccoli, clementine segments, grapes and some cheese sticks. The idea is any time they're hungry anything in the bin is fair game. No more snacks of goldfish, doritos or cookies!!! They have LOVED it and have eaten more vegetables this week than ever. They are such good eaters and love good food - I wish I'd done this sooner for them. We're off to the grocery store tomorrow to refill our bin - this week, we're adding pickles!!! :-)