March Recap

Here’s our random March photo dump:

While almost everyone else stayed inside or went to indoor play gyms with their kids on rainy days, we took full advantage! It doesn’t rain very often and the girls always get so excited (plus, I wanted to get as much use out of our rain gear, which mostly gets neglected the majority of the year). The girls love to walk to the top of our neighborhood, place leaves in the gutter and run all the way down the street, following their journey downstream.

Singing in the rain.

Lots of spring cleaning happened, especially on rainy days.

Amelia: “Mommy– do you want to have kids so that they can do work for you?”

Me: “Yes, Amelia. You’ve figured it out!”

Rainy day fort building.

In between the rain we had some random hot days!

Checking out a new park with Gavin.

We go through about 1.5 billion pieces of construction paper per day as the twins LOVE to color/draw/paint, and Meredith tries to copy them (although she is not allowed to have markers anymore until she learns to put the caps back on consistently). The twins’ favorite is drawing hearts, rainbows, our family, cats, and themselves. They’ll run up to show me their creations and even though I’ve explained where they can hang up their most treasured works of art and that we can’t possibly save every single one of the drawings, heaven forbid they find them in the recycle bin! I have to be pretty sneaky about it.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Samantha, Amelia, Meredith, Maliyah and Allie created a “leprechaun nest” at the park in order to hopefully attract leprechauns. On our next visit there, the nest was mysteriously missing, so the girls concluded their experiment to lure leprechauns was a success.

Meredith and Sheela get some one-on-one time.

Our weekly Tuesday park date group!

Cupcake, yum!

Lazy day harmonica playing on the swing.

Park playdate with Parker, Maple, and Jenny.

Bug hunting.

The girls were so excited to have Great Grandpa over!

Post-church walk around the creek.

Meredith is the youngest out of the kids in her little gymnastics class, but she keeps up and can’t wait to go whenever we tell her it’s gym time. Her favorite part is putting on her leotard.

 

Check out my new shoes!

Making waffles on a Saturday morning.

Samantha and Amelia got it into their heads that they absolutely needed to perfect their cartwheels and practiced non-stop.

The twins attended their first baptism for their friend, Kennedy, and now they pretend to “baptize” each other in the bath.

Meredith on her Strider!

I normally don’t include stuff on this blog that doesn’t involve our whole family, but Sheela’s surprise 40th bday party is an exception because the girls helped out with the cake tasting, decor and other party planning shenanigans for months! Sheela’s husband, Todd, booked an awesome private room at a restaurant and was great with putting together the catering menu and so many of the little details. I was very impressed with his party planning organization! Phi, myself and our families had a blast in the months leading up to the party putting together the decorations, doing cake tastings (the husbands and kids were not complaining about that one!) and selecting the desserts. The party turned out amazing and Sheela was so surprised and loved it!

Todd ordered these hilarious “Sheela” face cut-outs, so this is what Sheela saw when walked into the room:

Phi and I were sad when it was over because we had so much fun with the planning! Between Sheela’s and the twins’ party, it was a March full of big events interspersed with everyday fun!

Lots of love,

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Rock Climbing at Sender City

On a rainy day in March, we decided to check out the Sender City climbing gym. One section of the gym was just for older kids and avid rock climbing adults and was covered in wall-to-wall bouldering practice walls and rock climbing routes. The girls were fascinated watching all the pro climbers!

The kids section was fun and colorful, with tons of themed rock climbing walls and random platforms/places to jump off. At first, the girls were a little apprehensive, but once they got used to the auto-belay and realized no matter where they jumped, they would descend slowly, they became more brave!

Samantha just went for it!

 

Amelia took a little longer to work up the courage to climb some of the platforms and jump, but once she acclimated, she loved it!

Poor Meredith was just a few pounds below the weight minimum for climbing with the auto belay and had to hang out in the toddler area.

This slide looked so fun!

Go Amelia!

 

Jump, jump, jump!

 

 

Meredith made a little friend and together they plotted how to bust out and make their escape.

The staff said Meredith would probably be fine trying out the climbing next time we come and the twins couldn’t wait to come back to practice (especially after working up an appetite and having gatorade + an energy cookie afterwards).

Lots of love,

 

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Samantha & Amelia’s 5th Birthday Mermaid Party

After much debate and indecision, Samantha and Amelia decided on their gymnastics studio, Cal Elite, for their 5th birthday party. This ended up being a great decision since it was pouring rain that afternoon and all the parents were grateful to have somewhere indoors to take their kids and get some energy out!

We had a major hang-up in that the party coordinator called me three and a half weeks before their party date to explain there had been a mix-up when we booked the party and they were actually going to be closed that day for a gymnastics performance! We were able to reschedule, but had to move the party date up two weeks, so I had to scramble to get everything together! Luckily, most of their classmates at preschool and friends were still able to make it!

I loved that the party coordinator let us bring all the decor ahead of time and store it in the room the day before– I’m pretty sure they were scared seeing all the tubs of stuff I hauled in and diagrams of where I wanted everything! Definitely more than they bargained for. After the party, Jake asked the coordinator and her helpers where I ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being chill party mom and 10 being crazy and they ranked me an 8.5… I guess I’m not the most high strung they’ve ever seen!

The main party coordinator assigned to us was super sweet, but had only been on the job for a few weeks and we were only her second party! I explained in advance where I wanted everything because she seemed confident she could get a lot of it set up before I arrived the next day, but when I got there an hour early, almost nothing was done.

We had to scramble to get everything up, but fortunately, Phi and Parker arrived a little early and she was able to help me with the finishing touches while Parker kept the twins and Meredith occupied in the gym. We were late making it down to the party, but thank goodness for Phi’s help– otherwise, I never would have gotten it done in time!

After debating between a flower party, a butterfly party, and a mermaid party, Samantha and Amelia decided on a mermaid party. A local mom and baker made this amazing mermaid cake for us!

          

All the kids ready to party!

During the party, the gym let the kids have free reign over all the equipment and set up some additional bouncy house and blow up toys. The kids loved jumping on the trampolines, swinging on the trapezes, jumping into the foam pit and practicing their cartwheels, balance beam skills and monkey bar swinging. During the week when classes are in session, the gym is filled to the brim with kids and doesn’t seem that big, but with just us there, it felt huge!

Parker runs with the girls.

Leap!

Crash!

In line for the zipline.

  

Tug of war!

Another pic of the kids being forced to stay still for a picture.

Amelia, Kennedy, Samantha and Sebastian.

Inevitably, we had a few meltdowns and injuries. Not even sure what Amelia was upset about!

Samantha practices her bar skills.

Another injury for Amelia.

Lily was a huge help with the kids during the party and helping us clean up.

Parker was the most awesome big brother to Meredith during the party!

You are my hero, Parker!

Sweet Gavin.

Hang on tight, Sebastian.

Comforting hug with Tanya.

Soothing another meltdown/possible injury.

   

Show off those trampoline skills, ladies!

Amelia, Sarah, Samantha and Maliyah.

Time flew by and we struggled to round the kids up for pizza because they were so engrossed in jumping around in the gym.

Dinner is served! The party coordinator arranged the pizza delivery, which was super easy, and we also had additional snacks, salad, fruit, pasta salad, and catered Italian from a local restaurant for the adults. I was begging people to take plates home because we had so many leftovers and we ended up freezing some trays of pasta and pizza for our own dinners that month!

Samantha REALLY wanted that cake.

Obligatory family photo in which the girls were totally not interested.

“Seafood.”

 

Best dinner ever!

 

 

 

Parker was Meredith’s personal waiter and she kept asking him to get more pasta for her. She stuffed her face!

 

 

Getting full.

Amelia and Samantha with Mila (and Parker photobombing).

Amelia, Mila, Samantha and Tanya.

Big hug for Sarah.

Amelia, Maliyah, Samantha and Allie.

Lila, Amelia, Samantha and Megan with their mermaid photo props.

Can we PLEASE eat the cake now?

After price quotes for chocolate mermaid tails on top of the cupcakes were turning out to be too pricey, I decided just to buy a cheap mold and do them myself. They turned out cute!

PLEASE I WANT TO EAT IT.

It’s finally birthday song time!

So many desserts to choose from!

I painted the oreos with edible gold spray paint to make them look like gold coins, made the “clams” with madeleine cookies and candy pearls, and piped on frosting and used edible pearls on top of the nutter butters to make flip flops. The cookies had brown sugar “sand” underneath to complete the under the sea theme.

The jello sea water cups with fishy gummies inside went fast– should have made more of those! The starfish and seashell cookies I made turned out cute too.

The sliced almonds kept falling off my homemade sand dollar cookies but oh well.

Thanks for swimming by!

The girls and I made some “mermaid slime” with glitter for the favors and spray painted gold glitter on the lids of small mason jars.

And that’s a wrap! Hopefully, everyone went home full and tired out! Lily graciously offered to stay and keep the girls occupied so that we could clean up and the Cal Elite staff was awesome about packing everything, so we really didn’t do any clean up ourselves at all. The Under the Sea theme was one of my favorites to date!

 

The twins and Meredith were partied out and exhausted by the time we got home, but were so happy to hang out with their friends, eat pizza and have cake!

The after party: it was way past bedtime by the time we got home and everyone was cranky from coming down off all that sugar. We let the twins open one present each before bed, but we probably should have just stuck them straight in bed and closed the door because they were crazy tired/melting down for no logical reason:

Lots of love,

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Samantha & Amelia’s 5th Bday

Samantha and Amelia had been obsessing for months over when their birthday was coming, and finally the big day was here! They were especially jealous after Meredith’s birthday in January, constantly whining, “That’s not fair her birthday comes first!” Never mind that they are 2.75 years older than Meredith… they loathe the fact that her birthday is the first in our family of the year (after Bandit).

FINALLY their birthday week arrived. Samantha and Amelia were looking forward to their preschool birthday celebration for weeks!

At drop-off, the other kids love to pick up Meredith by the feet, mid-section and head and carry her around like a “big fishy!”

The girls each made a poster of pictures of themselves from ages 0-5 to share with the class and got to “walk around the sun” five times.

The kids’ favorite part of their bday celebrations is making a cake in class. This time, we brought in brownie mix instead of cake. Such brave teachers.

So disgusting, but the teachers let the the birthday kid lick the spoon after the batter has been poured! They are old-school here!

Happy birthday, Samantha!

Amelia was so proud of herself making her brownies and selecting helpers from the class to assist.

Brownie face.

Samantha’s birthday interview. Always interesting to find out what they have to say! While Samantha’s favorite veggie is definitely broccoli, I’m pretty sure that’s not actually her favorite food!

Amelia’s answers seemed more accurate. She REALLY wanted a yellow teddy– sometime when we moved last year, I donated a bunch of the girls’ billions of stuffed animals and the only ones they are super upset about TO THIS DAY are the yellow teddy bears that they won at some fair or carnival game. The other day, Amelia remarked, “If we can get our teddies back, all our troubles will go away!”

The weekend of their actual birthday (March 11) and we celebrated with a wake-up balloon drop.

Before their big day, I had asked the twins what their ideal birthday would look like. They said they would like to have french toast or pancakes for breakfast, hot dogs for lunch and pizza for dinner. And absolutely no chores or cleaning that day!

We went out to breakfast with Great Auntie Lynn and Great Uncle Steve for some special birthday Fruity Pebbles french toast.

Happy birthday, Amelia!

Thanks for celebrating with us!

Birthday party pics will be in a separate post, but the day after their party, we opened all the presents from family and friends.

Their favorite present of all time (from Bandit) were these harmonicas!

The girls were also excited about these karaoke microphones and we spent the rest of the day jamming to their lovely harmonica music and singing Frozen and Moana karaoke on Youtube.

The twins love picking each other presents and one Saturday, I took them out back to back individually to pick out something with their own money. Samantha picked out a Shopkins toy for Amelia (she had no idea what Shopkins was, but apparently it called to her in the toy aisle of Target). Amelia picked out an Ariel crown (sometimes I think she picks out things she herself would like– her favorite princess is Ariel), and a toy pony stuffed animal. Despite the fact that they never pick out the items I try and steer them toward, they always LOVE each other’s gifts!

It’s special to share a birthday with each other! They’ve never complained about having to share their day.. I wonder if that will change in the future!

How did Kennedy and Sebastian know the girls wanted purses for their bday? I want one of these sparkly J. Crew purses for myself!

Practicing cartwheels and wrestling in their Moana outfits.

Jake and I only got the twins their microphones and the harmonicas from Bandit– not sure how they ended up with all these presents, but half of them went into storage for Christmas!

Lots of love,

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