Birthday Take Two! (make that six!)

Happy Birthday Alexander!!

xan shows us just how big he is! six years old...i can hardly believe it! being the wanna-be intrepid deep sea explorer that he is, xander decided to see if he could throw me off my game by requesting an "anglerfish cake". um....okay....

here is the proud birthday boy with the aforementioned cake...i think i did pretty good, don't you? the teeth are white chocolate and the eye is a reese's peanut butter egg. :)

close up...before i realized my terrible mistake. i only put on 5 candles! we had to sing twice.

blow baby, blow! keeping with the deep sea theme, alexander chose to go to the aquarium for his birthday rather than have a "friend party". how cute is that? he wanted to have a "family fun day". oh, and just a funny little thing...we went during passover week, so there were hundreds of hasidic jews there with their big hats, long coats and beards. we were a small island of mormons in a sea of jews...LOL!

even though it was xander's day, hadley stole the show, as usual....here she is dancing at the aquarium.

alexander in the shark tunnel. it's really, really hard to take a good picture in the shark tunnel, by the way.

finally, a photo of me...and yes, that shark DID go on to eat the entire city of philadelphia that you see in the background...CHOMP CHOMP!!!

it's practially impossible to get a decent picture of me with the kids....which gets your vote? why not submit a caption?

photo #1

photo #2

as always i LOVE comments! it's the only way i can tell that anyone is reading this at all. so, come on all you shy readers...come out of your shell and say something already!

under THREAT of hate mail...

i'm finally updating my blog! things have been crazy and fun and busy around here. we have celebrated 2 birthdays, had a week-long spring break, several illnesses, easter, first time fishing (and catching a fish!), and started soccer! we have a lot to catch up on, so i will do it in small batches...keep checking back, i hope to do at least 3-4 of these mini-posts today. so, without further ado....

Happy Birthday Hadley!!

here is the cute little birthday girl with her "ballerina cake". she looks so big in this picture, much bigger than 3! we kept the birthday low-key and had dinner in Princeton with the neighbors, Mitch (MITCHELL!) and Marisa and their cute little Lucy, who hadley told me is her "sister friend". so cute.

A close-up of the cake...yeah, it was a bit squished to begin with...this was the reject cake for the bake-off held in Relief Society. I had to bake the cake twice, since the first one fell in the middle, but i saved it in the freezer and used it for hadley's birthday cake. i was so glad to not have to bake it that day! oh, i won the bake-off, by the way...first prize in the "non-chocolate" category. the second time i have entered this recipe and won. yummy, yummy coconut cake!

hadley got kitchen play things for her birthday from us, because she likes to "help" me when i am cooking and be "chef hadley". here are alexander and lucy playing along with her. lucy and hadley both wore party dresses to dinner and were doted on, as usual.

when i saved this photo, i titled it "girlie giggles". look at that face!

helping me place the candles...see how she is pretending to do it along with me? is that princess aurora on the table? seriously sisters, thank-you for the princesses. they have all kinds of adventures. the other day they were all lined up with one in front and they were having sacrament meeting. she was talking about Jesus and trying to make lucy fold her arms and say amen. (lucy is jewish) it was kinda funny.

i LOVE this picture because it captures the true essence of hadley...the cuteness, the silliness, the exuberance! as i recall, she was shouting "cheese!" and flourishing something (her twisty straw?) for the picture. many thanks again to all of you who sent birthday surprises...it made not being in utah a little easier. between all of hadley's mail, easter packages, and alexander's mail, we got used to fun mail surprises and hadley started to cry the other day when there was nothing fun in the mail. we love you all! stay tuned....