Halloween Fun and Ava's 5th Birthday!!!

Well we are in full swing of Birthdays in our house, half way there!  Birthdays, in our house, are basically the last six months of the year.  So this weekend we celebrated Ava's 5th Birthday.  Its hard to believe this sweet girl has been in our lives for over 5 years now.  Ava had a really fun Birthday.  She had her school Halloween party, which I think, she had a blast.  Ava will have her friends party in a couple weeks.  But we celebrated with our little family by going out to dinner.  Its been quite a while since we've gone out to dinner as a family and I have to say I was very pleased with how well-behaved the kids were during dinner.  The next day was our ward Halloween party at the church.  The kids got dressed up in their costumes and played games and went "Trunk or Treating".  Since Halloween fell on a Sunday this year, that was our big Halloween celebration.  The kids had tonns of fun and got more candy than they could handle.  Here are some pics of our weekend.  Boy do I love these guys!!!! 

For Ava's class party I made pumpkin cake balls.  Since she is in french immersion I decided to write Happy Birthday in french!

Pumpkin cake balls!

Cake balls I made for Steve to take to work.

Happy 5th Birthday Ava!  We love you soooo much!!!

Ava's Jessie cupcakes she requested for her Birthday. 

She LOVED them!



Our little Strawberry, Jessie the Cowgirl and Spider.

HALLOWEEN PJ'S!!!!!

Silly kids!

Happy Halloween everybody, sure hope you had as much fun as we did!

First day of school...

So, today was Ava's very first day of school.  The day started out pretty chaotic with us running around trying to get everybody ready for the day and wanting to get there a little early since we didn't know who her teacher was going to be.  We woke the kids up just before 7:00am and as I was looking for clothes for them, Ava turned over and tried to go back to sleep, as she did I told her that she needed to get up because she was going to school today and she sat right up and said "yeah, am I a big kid now?"  So cute!  Shes been saying the funniest things lately.  Ava is such a sweet girl and has gotten really quiet and shy with people she doesn't know.  We've been working with her the past few months and trying to get her to talk more to people, especially with school starting and us not being there to coach her through theses social situations.  So, when we picked her up from school we were asking her a million questions.  All we got out of her was "I just don't know".  Steve had asked her if she talked to any of the kids and she said the little boy beside her asked if she was finished her lunch and she said yes.  Oh, and she asked the teacher if she could go potty.  That was all she really said, at least that's what she told us.  I can see her being super quiet all day because when she was at soccer we saw her not say a peep to any of the kids. 

School is just as overwhelming for me as it was Ava.  The thing I'm going to have to adjust the most to is that its EVERYDAY!  As we walked her into the school, I found myself getting overwhelmed and emotional.  Once we got into the classroom and found her desk, the teacher said for the children to say good-bye to mommy and daddy.  As I looked around at the other parents, one mom looked so surprised and said "already?"  and I just lost it, tears started streaming.  Thankfully, Ava was not around to see my little melt-down as Steve was with her at her little desk.  As I saw her come running over to say good-bye to me I pulled myself together and said bye to her.  What a moment that was, saying good-bye to my little 4 year-old and sending her off into the world to fend for herself.  I can only hope and pray that she will be in tune with the Spirit of the Holy Ghost to guide her and help her make the right choices.  Ava has such a spirit about her and I hope that her teacher feels that sweetness that she has in her and treats with love. 

All and all the day was good, we all survived and are ready to get up in the morning and do it all over again.  Thankfully tomorrow is a Friday and we'll have 3 days off.  Here is Ava on her first day of school, all ready to go with her new backpack that she wanted so badly!

Jessie from Toy Story 2&3!!

Look who had a Birthday!!!

This past week has been so busy with celebrating Sienna's birthday and our Anniversary.  Not to mention getting Ava ready to start school.  Sienna's birthday was super fun.  We celebrated her actual birthday with cupcakes and her choice of food, which was pizza.  Sienna decided she wanted a Minnie Mouse themed Birthday.  Easy enough, I thought.  Turns out finding baking supplies for Minnie Mouse was harded than I thought.  But we figured it out and everything turned out great, Sienna was very pleased!  This past Saturday Sienna had a few friends come over for a little party.  We had lotts of fun and Sienna sure enjoyed having her little friends over.  Thanks, everybody for making Sienna feel special on her day!  xo

Cupcakes I made for our Anniversary, yummy!

Roses Steve brought home for me for our Anniversary, beautiful!

Cupcakes I made for Sienna on her Birthday.

Minnie Mouse pizza!

Happy Birthday, Sienna!

Sienna's Minnie Mouse cake I made for her party.  It turned out pretty good, the bow kinda fell apart when I tried to put on the cake but in the end I was pleased with it and most importantly Sienna loved it!

We had a great week with all our celebrations.  It was nice to be able to talk with our families on the phone, but sure did miss them.  There is always something missing when a birthday comes around in our house.  But life is what it is.  Well, I am off to another busy with the antisapation of Ava's very first day of school.  Stay tuned for a post on that!  :)

Soccer Star

I completely forgot to mention Ava playing soccer this summer.  I'm not sure how that slipped my mind since we were at the soccer field a couple times a week and Steve was even able to coasch a few games! 

Ava sure loved going to soccer and playing with all her little friends.  We saw a different side of her, though.  She was really quiet and didn't talk to any of the other kids.  She was the youngest (and the smallest) on her team and was one of the only ones who had not started school yet.  I think that makes a big difference with simple things like knowing how to form a line-up and basic social skills that she hasn't learned yet.  But all in all it was a good season.  Her team colour was green and they decided a good name for the team would be "Shamrocks"  which I thought suited it perfectly!  Ava was jersey number 1, which made Steve really proud.

Summer

So, its been like forever since I’ve posted anything.  But this little blog has been on my mind for months, literally, months!  The summer has been busy and fun.  The kids are loving the sunshine and being able to wear shorts everyday is a real treat for them.  This summer has been so beautiful, hardly any rain.  So, here’s our summer...

We were able to go on vacation to visit our family in Ontario.  Which was a real treat.  We haven't been back home in a couple years and most of our family hadn't even met Elliott!  A couple weeks before we went on our vacation Ava had an eye test at her school.  Steve took her, so when he got home he told me she didn't pass and was referred to an ophthalmologist.  I made an appointment right away, and to make a long story short we found out Ava needed glasses.  It turns out she is near-sighted with astigmatism and can't see things far away!  Huh, who knew!?  We certainly didn't.  The doctor said this is something she probably had since birth.  We had no idea she had any vision problems!  In fact, I was so sure she didn't have any vision problems that I almost cancelled her appointment, convinced that the nurse at the school didn't know what she was talking about.  Thank goodness I didn't allow my denial get the best of me.  Ava happily wears her glasses and is so proud to wear them.  Shes excited that she gets to pick between 2 different styles and colours.  She looks absolutely adorable in them and I am so grateful that we got this taken care of before school starts.  Her adjustment to wearing her glasses has been a breeze.  The first time she put them on, she looked at something far away and pointed to it and said "mommy look it".  Then she took them off and then put them back on again.  Ava has also been known to get car sick quite easily and we just thought it was from her not eating properly before travelling.  It turns out she just needed to wear glasses.  We saw this be true just a few days ago when we were driving home from a friends home late at night.  I allowed Ava to take her glasses off and within 2-3 minutes of driving she was almost ready to be sick.  Once we pulled over and got her glasses back on her she felt much better.  The day we left for Ontario was the day Ava got her glasses.  We stopped off at the store, picked up her glasses and were on our way to Ontario.  We decided to drive since now that our family has grown and it would be breaking the budget if we flew.  We had heard of other families travelling through the night on long drives with small children so we thought we would give it a try.  I thought it would be a breeze to get the kids to sleep in the car and stay asleep.  That was not the case.  Sienna was our trooper, fell asleep before the other 2 and slept beautifully with no complaints.  But for the other 2, they were quite the little rebels.  They didn't fall asleep until after 12:00am and was up through the night more times than I can count, crying and fussing.  Lets just say it was a long, long night for all of us.  We made better time than we thought and arrived in Ontario early in the afternoon.  We surprised my younger sisters, which was really fun.  We had a wonderful time visiting family and loved seeing our children get to know family members that had never met before.  We were able to stay a little longer than we expected.  We tried to do all the fun thing we enjoyed as a kid growing up.  It was a really great trip, loved every minute of it.  I think I fell in love with my husband all over again.  We tried to have a stress-free vacation and I think it was just that, theres just nothing like the love of your family.  I miss them terribly, but Nova Scotia is where we need to be at this time in our lives. 

 Once we were home and settled from our vacation,  we celebrated my birthday.  I made a cake (yes, I made my own birthday cake, because that’s what I like to do and its cheaper!) and went out for dinner.  Our summer has consisted of the beach, lots of BBQ’s, lots of trips to the park, and preparing for school.  Our summers, for the last 3 years, have ended on a great note.  Our Wedding Anniversary and Sienna's Birthday.  We celebrated our 8th wedding Anniversary this past Monday with a BBQ rib dinner and my wonderful husband bringing home 2 dozen long stem roses.  What a surprise that was-they sure are beautiful!  And then the next day, we celebrated Sienna's 3rd Birthday (she was born early in the morning, the day after our 5th wedding anniversary!)  What a blessing Sienna is to our home.  Shes a feisty little one, full of personality!  We sure do love our little Sienna.  Happy Birthday, baby girl!

 In one week Ava will be starting school.  I get butterflies just thinking about that day.  I am so excited, nervous and proud to send her to school.  She is one sweet little girl.  She always has been.  As a small baby I could feel her sweet little spirit.  She is really excited to go to school and meet new friends.  But I don't think she realizes the work involved in going to school.  She thinks shes going to go to school and play, all day long.  Ava going to school is going to change our lives, as we know, dramatically....

To end this post, here are some photos.  But since my camera battery is dead enjoy the limited photos I was able to get off of it before the battery died!

My sweet Ava sporting her new glasses, just adorable!

We enjoyed a lunch with just our 2 girls at the "Rain Forest Cafe" 

while Elliott stayed home with my mom.

 Again, at the "Rain Forest Cafe", they LOVED it there!

                    We had so much fun at "Marineland"

                                Ava really loved the Killer Whale.

                              The girls really loved feeding the deer.

                 Sienna and Ava on the tour bus at African Lion Safari.

                                Daddy and Elliott on the tour bus, too!

                                They loved bing able to get really close to the animals.

Thats all I was able to upload from the camera, come visit again in the next couple days to see how we celebrated Sienna's 3rd Birthday!

Kids!!!

Oh how I love those babies of mine!  They CAN be so sweet and loving and other times they might just send me to the mad house one day!  But its the sweet moments they have through out the day that I will always remember and remind me that in the end its all worth it!  We have been doing really well lately.  Kids are happy and healthy.  Its been nice outside, so we've been out to the park a lot.  We've also had a couple nice hot sunny days where I can get out our teeny-tiny little pool that nobody wants to sit in, just stand in.  We also have a little water table the Elliott loves.  I will have to get the camera out next time we play out on the back deck.  But for now, here are some recent photos that I took while we were at the park one day a couple weeks ago...

                                                      

      Sure do love these guys!!

xoxoxo

Footprints...

Last weekend Steve's dad and step-mom, Clayton and Rose, as well as Steve's brother, Mike, came to visit last weekend.  It was a wonderful visit, the kids had lots of fun getting to know their "Omah and Opah" and their "Uncle Mike".  And I had fun cooking and baking for a big crowd.  Making cinnamon buns, baked fench toast, and homemade donuts (oh they were heaven, hehe) just to name a few things!  Along with our visitors they also brought with them a turkey, a giant 25 pound turkey!  It was wonderful to have a turkey dinner, with all the fixings, in May!  But there was a lot of left overs, alot!  We couldn't possibly eat it all, and sadly I forgot to throw the 2 ziplock bags full of turkey in the freezer.  So as I was cleaning out the fridge I discovered the turkey and thought I should probably throw it out since it had been sitting in there for a while.  Instead of taking it out of the ziplock bags and throwing it in the compost, where it belongs (because we all know how fun that can be!) I just tossed them in the garbage (I know, I know, i'm horrible and lazy, but honestly lets face it people, it GROSS!!  lol).  As the garbage started to fill up over the next couple of days, Steve decides to put the garbage out on our back deck and thinks to himself he will later place it in the locked shed.  Well, that didn't happen!  The next morning Steve gets up to find that some animal had gotten into the garbage bag and went right for the turkey!  I was in the shower at the time, so Steve had kindly cleaned it all up for me, what a sweet guy, :)   But it had left a small grease stain on the deck.  I poured some water over it to try to clean it up, but that didn't work so well.  So, this morning when I woke up, I came to find that the animal had returned last night!  It must have thought it found a gold mind with all that turkey!  I never did get to see our little friend, but it gave it self away.  There were these cute little foodprints all over the deck, must have been from the turkey grease!  We're pretty sure it was a raccoon...

All because two people fell in love...

We've had these black and white photos of each of the kids hanging in our kitchen for a little while now.  About a week ago we bought this sign that we thought would go perfectly with these photos and complete the wall.  I love this so much that it inspired me change the name of my blog!  I finally found a "name" for this blog that I'm actaully happy with.  Finally!!  ;)

The quality of the photo is not the greatest, but I think you get the idea. 

Not too much is going on in our house lately.  Both Steve and I have had terrible colds and are trying to recover from that.  The kids have been wild, like always.  They are so busy, it always amazes me how much energy they have.  They are completely and totally obsessed with Toy Story 2 and often pretend Ava is Jessie, Sienna is Woody and Elliott is Bullseye.  Its pretty cute!  Ava has been in love with horses for a couple of years now so I can see why she likes Jessie so much. 

Well better run and see what my little monkies are up to...

Love Amber

Fun at the Park

So, its been like forever since I last posted anything.  Its been pretty chaotic around here lately.  I don't know if its because of the nice weather or just because the kids are getting a little older and starting to play together more often(which leads to fighting of course) but I find my days are so filled lately.  I have been trying to keep the kids occupied with fun things to do but I'm starting to run out of ideas to keep them busy.  Some days we go to the park twice in one day just to get out!(we have a park right across the street from our house).  Today it was beautiful and sunny out so we went to the park first thing this morning.  The kids had a blast, as always.  And I brough the camera along since I don't remember the last time I brought the camera out a took pictures!  Here are a few.  They didn't turn out so well.  I am still trying to figure out this camera....

My sweet Ava.  She is very sensitive to the light.  So it was hard to get a good photo of her.

Ava climbing.  Can't believe how tall she is getting!

Sienna 

Its funny how when you tell a child to smile and say cheese.  This is the face they always make

(this is how all 3 of my kids look when they say "cheese")

 Sienna likes to climb, too!

Elliott, my little man.

We got his hair cut again since its growing so fast.  

We call this the "Daddy-Do" since he looks just like Daddy with his hair like this.

He loves playing with the rocks, such a boy!

My 3 little monkies!  Love them so much!!

We had so much fun with the "Easter Bunny" visitng our house.  That stinky little rabbit "pooped" chocolate eggs all over our living room (this is the story Steve tells the kids, typical Steve, right!?)  We actually had to wake the girls up because Elliott was up first getting all the eggs!  I thought that if I open the girls bedroom door after I took Elliott out of his crib and started throwing eggs into his bucket that Ava and Sienna would wake up.  Not so, We had to wake them up.  I leaned over Ava's bed and whispered "Ava the Easter Bunny came" instantly she jumped out of bed and started collecting eggs, too funny!  Sienna actually woke up with a fever.  So she wasn't really into the egg hunt at first.  After a few minutes on the couch of rest and really giving her a chance to completely wake up, she was good to go and had fun collecting as many eggs she could!  We had fun.  With every holiday that comes, it gets more fun as the kids grow and truely understand whats happening.  I think I get more excited than they do!  Heres some photos of what the Easter Bunnt left...

A bucket for each one of my babies

These eggs were EVERYWHERE!  

It was so fun to watch them run around!

And lastly, On Saint Patrick's Day I made some cake balls for Steve to take to work.  They were fun to make.  Very green!  Green on the outside and on the inside.  I'm pretty sure everybody enjoyed them!

Well I'm off.  Hopefully my next post won't take so long for me to get to....

Love Amber

Slacker...

Like the new background?  Yeah, me too!  I'm new to the blogging world and had no clue you could get pretty backgrounds FOR FREE!!  It feels so fresh and new, I like it!!  So, I know I've been slacking big time on this blog.  Not sure if anybody stops by to read it often but I actually really enjoy it.  I don't get on the computer much lately, the kids are keeping me quite busy.  Not too much going on in our neck of the woods.  Sienna is offically potty trained, woohoo!!  She is becoming quite independent too, wants to do everything herself.  We've decided to sign Ava up for soccer this summer so that should keep us nice and busy.  She loves anything social and is really excited to play soccer.  Elliott is still into everything and anything he can get his hands on.  He wears me out, *sigh*

This past weekend Ava, Sienna and myself had a really fun time making these adorable little "cake pops".  I discovered this amazing new (well, new to me) site.  Heres our version of "cake pops" chickety style!  Not quite as professional looking as I would like, but I'm learning and know what to do next time.  They were so delicious and moist!  The kids had so much fun making them and loved every bite.  Thats right, theres CAKE inside those cute little chicketies!  I hope to make a Saint Patrick's Day version of these cake pops tomorrow for Steve to take to work on Wednesday.  Will post pics of those as soon as their made...