Ella's Birthday 2010

Ella turned 6 yesterday. Justin had just left for Thailand so I was on my own for this party. Actually, Mikaela, Nate and Alexa were quite helpful. Especially Mikaela. Ella had a great time so it was worth it.

Ella in her second outfit of the party. Why she chose a sweater dress, I have no idea. I guess because it was sparkly.

Part of the lunch.

Hayden was the only boy at the "dress fancy" birthday party. He kinda hung to the sidelines. He didn't want anything to do with the actual group of girls. He and Ella play fabulously though.

The rest of the group.

Mikaela turned the basement into a runway for the girls to model on. Ella and Gracie were trying it out before the party. They were quite the posers.

The effect was much better when the lights were off and the party lights in the corner (thanks Ryan) were flashing. I got some pretty funny video clips.

They call each other BFF (they didn't get it from me). Gracie and Ella.

Ella opening her presents from mom and dad bright and early. She is one of the happiest people I know. We love her sooo much!

Sister's Night Out

I love having sisters for many reasons, but one of my favorite is that I get to go out on birthday lunches/dinners with them. Connie suggested that we make a night of celebrating the June/July birthdays and do dinner, scalp treatments and then a movie. We usually just do lunch. I was all for the extended time out. We hit Zupa's for dinner then went to a beauty college for the scalp treatments and then went to see Letter's to Juliet. Laurie, Connie and I missed at least half of the movie because Laurie's hairdresser was as slow as molasses. I was the driver and Connie knew where we were going. I am sure that I can rent it sometime later to catch what I missed. It was a lot of fun.

The ladies after getting their hair styled. You man never see my mother with flat hair ever again.

Laurie was doing her best to avoid the camera, but I caught her eventually.

Whitney and Connie. Whitney and Holly usually join us if they are around.

Holly, Becky and Tiffany.

Tiffany, Mom, Julie AND Laurie :).

School Shopping

"Who are the beautiful models behind the window?" you are surely asking....While staying in Midway, Laurie drove up to join us for a day of school shopping in Park City. The girls had a great time hamming it up as manequins to see how many people they could fool (not many :). Unfortunately you cannot get the true image because of the glare, but I am sure you can get a good idea. Nate unfortunately was back at the condo throwing up. I felt bad that he missed out at first and then realized after that he would have been bored out of his mind.

The lovely ladies (and Logan).

Midway

Justin had a few days of meetings at Midway this August. The kids and I joined him on Friday and Saturday. I was worried that we would get bored just sitting in a hotel room for two days and was wondering if it would just be a nightmare trying to keep five kids under control the whole time. The meetings were at Zermatt (don't think I spelled that correctly) and I didn't realize that Justin would have a two bedroom condo, not just a hotel room or I would have gone up earlier. It was actually really nice and we had a great time. Other than swimming, the kids favorite thing to do was to go see the goats. Each time we went the kids wanted to feed them. Being the cheap mother that I am I put it off for as long as I could but eventually gave in and took them to go buy some goat food. They gave us a few bags of what looked like dog biscuits and we walked back up the hill to feed the goats. As soon as the goats got wind of the food they started jumping the fence and putting their hooves up on the kids chests. I was thinking "Oh crap! How am I going to get all these goats back in.?!" I was also laughing my head off. I sent Mikaela to go find some worker to come help us and in the meantime tried to keep them contained. Ended up being quite fun. Ella did start to get a little nervous though as they chased her around trying to get to her bag of food. Good times.

This is Ella feeding the goats some grass she found before we went to buy the food.

Trying to corral the goats.

Lagoon

I am finally getting around to uploading some pictures from this summer. Now I will make quick posts about each of the events starting with Lagoon.


Nate won this plastic bat and gave it to Kate. She held on to it the whole time. She started calling it "Buddy". That night as we were trying to get her to sleep in the trailer (see previous post about Lagoon) we heard her saying as she tucked it into bed next to her "It's okay buddy. Go to sleep." I am not even sure where it is now.

I loved this ride as a kid.

Ella and Kate loved consulting the map as they waited for the older kids to get off rides.

Love these people.

Nate and Mikaela are a good pair for the dizzy rides cause I can't do them without getting sick anymore. They have always been good friends.

Nate is very proud of the fact that he is almost as tall as me. It is weird to see him getting so big.

Still one of my favorite rides.

Kate is finally warming up to the rides. This is one of her favorites.

Ella not a fan of the rattlesnake rapids.