Birthday Cookie (and Rainbows) Party

Rebecca and Esther's birthdays are only 16 days apart, so we chose to have their parties at the same time as one big birthday bash. They had a great time! Rebecca started asking in January for a rainbow party, so I had most of the food concepts planned for that, and I ran across a very cute idea for a cookies & milk birthday party for a first birthday, so that is what we did with rainbows thrown in to make it big enough to feed the masses.

The three dishes along the side were for popcorn and two types of cookies, we had sugar cookies with icing and sprinkles on the left, a rainbow of fruit in the middle, and the girls' cakes in the back with the rainbow of flowers.

Esther's cake was decorated with piped buttercream ruffles.

Rebecca's cake was simply frosted, but there was a surprise on the inside!

Rebecca wanted to paint sun catchers with her friends.

Esther LOVES cards!

Surprise! White on the outside and a rainbow on the inside! 

The colours were done using fruit & vegetable juices rather than the more traditional food colours, which resulted in a more muted set of colours, but lots of different flavours in the cake!

Esther was very excited about her cake! :)

And, what the first birthday cake is really about.... letting the baby make a mess!

Mess-making was a success!

Spring days!

We have had some gorgeous weather in the last few weeks, though this week you would never know it. We jumped from snow to two weeks of 75-80 degree weather. It felt like we skipped spring and jumped right in to summer! We have been enjoying our time outside quite a bit.

I have NO IDEA what he was doing, but he looked cute while he was doing it. :)

I have been catching some of the most amusing expressions on Esther's face lately. She likes to wrinkle her nose at us, and her latest interesting (to her) noise is a really raspy sounding coughing noise. It makes everyone else wonder what's wrong with her, but she seems fascinated with the noise. Maybe it sounds interesting, or maybe it feels interesting to make the noise. Regardless, it is amusing trying to explain that it is just her latest sound. :)

Justin says this is a "blackmail" photo. I thin it is just amusing to look at Esther's face.

This one I think is just sweet.

And, Esther's face is highly amusing here.

 In keeping with what seems to be becoming a tradition, Esther seems determined to make her first solid food grass and clovers. She managed to nearly swallow a clover. It got stuck on its way down so I ended up having to swipe her throat to get it out, but she's very determined her first food will be green. She's even tried grabbing broccoli, kale, avocado, kiwi, and brussels sprouts off my plate!

Elias and Rebecca love to get the dandelion puffs and blow the seeds. Elias calls them his "wishes". I got told off for allowing Elias to blow the seeds. I don't know what child goes through life without blowing those little puffs though! And hey, he's saving the bees by planting their earliest blooming spring flower for them!

My sweet (though very dirty!) little boy. :)

Easter Eggs

We got a package of the eggs that are soy free for Rebecca and Elias again this year. They are great, because they are the size of the plastic eggs (hollow, not solid chocolate) and foil wrapped, so you can use them for an egg hunt! :)

Odds and Ends

I thought I would share some odds and ends from around our home. 

Rebecca, who "wasn't tired" on this particular afternoon, fell asleep in this position at nap time. She has since stopped having naps in her room, and instead has a quiet time in the living room so as to give Elias the ability to have a nap. She was becoming far too noisy in their room, and would talk to him and get him playing so much he wasn't napping. He needs his sleep in the afternoons still, in order to be happy in the evenings. She plays outside for 30-45 minutes while I get Elias into bed and Esther fed and down for her nap, and then comes in and does school with me for about 30 minutes, and has a 30 minute quiet time. Usually we hit about 3pm at that point, and we get a snack ready and play outside for the rest of the afternoon.

Esther now likes to watch what is going on from the floor on occasion. She still prefers arms many times, but sometimes she will tolerate lying on her belly (or will flip onto her back!) to watch what is going on around her. In fact, just this morning she was fussing in our arms, fussing in her little rocking chair, and when I put her down on the floor she was suddenly perfectly happy again. I'm going to have to scrub my floors so she can spend more time there!

When Justin's parents moved, they left behind many items. The carpet sweeper was one of them, but I hadn't realized it was left behind! I got it out for Rebecca and Elias to use a couple of weeks ago, and they love it! They scramble to clean the play mat and then be the first one to clean the carpet.

We had a neighbour move in a few weeks ago, and the kids begged to bake cookies for our new neighbour, so we made him some chocolate chocolate mint chip cookies. They were a hit with everyone who got some, and were all gone within a few days here. There's a reason I rarely bake cookies. We all eat too many!

While trying to sort out behaviour issues, discipline issues, Daddy time, etc, we tried keeping the kids up until Daddy got home, which varies between 9pm and 10:30pm. It didn't work, so we are back to going to bed before Daddy gets home, but they sure enjoyed it while it lasted. They played games with him, he read them stories, and then he put them to bed. In a perfect world it would work. In our household, I couldn't get schedules shifted well enough and they were still waking at 6:30/7am despite no nap and going to bed super late. Lack of sleep made for cranky children! No thanks!

Rebecca is working so hard at growing up, and wants to do everything for herself. This makes for some interesting hair styles! Hard to believe this little girl was the size Esther is about 4 years ago! :-)