School Pictures

I hate paying for the school pictures!! They are outrageously expensive and I pride myself on the fact that I can take a picture just as well as they can...sort of. Anyway, these are the pictures I took of the kids today for picture day. I don't have Olivia's yet because she was fighting with me this morning and I had an extremely long night with Zeke so she doesn't get hers done today! Tomorrow maybe...anyway, here they are.

Nate wanted this last pose specifically so he got an extra picture. I teach him preschool at home with a few other neighbor kids so we did picture day for them too. They had a fun time and felt so special!

Happy Birthday Nate!

 After a grand Super Hero party we had a fun family party on his actual birthday. He got an Iron Man suit last year for his birthday and this year he got the complete set! He got costumes for Hulk, Thor and Captain America complete with all the accessories needed! He changes is costume at least three times each a day! It's fun when his friends come over because now everyone can have a costume.

Nate also got some sports things and a new fishing pole with a tackle box to fill. Our family has done a lot of fishing this summer and he couldn't wait to use his new pole!

 I made a strawberry poke cake for him this year and spent along time on the frosting. So many tips, and colors and bags!...I used the method I describe on my Fibbermigee blog with a coloring page.
Only problem...I forgot to put the wax paper on and ended up frosting the glass!!! Doh! But they still looked pretty awesome!

 Fortunately, my sister in-law had asked me a few days before if I wanted to use the cake topper she had saved from her son's cake and I had good enough sense to tell her, "Well I really want to make my own cake topper but I'll take it just in case!" Ya, just in case... more like the inevitable cake frosting disaster that happens every year on every cake I make! :) All in all it turned out to be a fun birthday and one that he will never forget!

Avengers Assemble!

Nathan had his first birthday party the weekend he turned 5! I can't believe my little boy is already 5. We decided to hold him back one more year before he does kindergarten so that he will be the oldest instead of the youngest. He is not very happy about that decision but he'll understand and appreciate it more when he is older. 

Anyway, Nate is really big into super heroes right now. So of course we had to do a super hero party. I made invitations that told the kids that the evil villains had stolen all of Nate's birthday presents and he needed their help to get them back. They were to report at the super hero training center to learn how to become super heroes to get those presents back and save the day!

In preparation for the big day I made superhero masks for everyone to choose. We had Cap America, Thor, Hulk and Iron Man. I made them out of foam because I ran out of time to make them all out of felt and sew them...next time I will take those extra few hours and make them out of felt! The problem was that I needed to make a dozen of everything. We originally had 16 people invited (whew!) but only had 12 of them say they were coming. Anyway, so I made the masks and I made t-shirts for everyone that said "Super Hero in Training!" on the back. Those did not turn out the way I wanted them too, but oh well. I also made a Cap Shield pinata, from a tutorial found here

and Jason made the cute super hero suckers that I found online. 

and I made super hero popcorn from a tutorial found here

I had a ton of other super hero snacks as well but I did not take pics of everything. I bought little water bottles and made labels for them that said Super Hero H20 that I had for them at the training center and we had pop rocks and Spiderman ring pops and just all sorts of fun things. I found some Avenger pens and notebooks at Target and some for the kids and I can't remember it all and Jason had to be in charge of pictures so that I could take care of the party so there's just not that many of them :)

When the kids came in they found this sign to direct them on where to go. I trained my computer to say the names of the children when they did their retinal scan (a cool silvery glittery head band over their eyes) to confirm their identity. Then I told them to choose a mask and a shirt and get ready for their obstacle course.

Jason, my girls (and a few of their friends that showed up to a little boys birthday party :/ ) and a good neighbor friend were the villains and they stole the children's presents and hid them in our tree house. The kids had to go through the obstacle course to try and get their presents back. We had a few things like a punching balloon with a mean face on it,  balloons with mean faces on that they had to shoot with these little ball guns, tunnels to run through, damsels to save that were locked in the highest tower on the playground thing, cap shields to throw through hoops made out of pool noodles and then a "tire run" also made out of pool noodles. Then they had to grab a can of silly string and use their "spidey webs" to get the villains. Once they caught the villain in their web they had to fly off (jump on our little trampoline) and go to the tree house to rescue their present! The kids had a blast. Then we did the pinata and opened presents. I made cupcakes with super hero picks and bought little individual ice cream cups for the kids. At the end I gave everyone a certificate declaring them an official Super Hero! They filled their treat bags with all of their goodies from the pinata and the extra things I had for them. A Super fun day!!...but I'm still trying to recover from it! :)