Happy Birthday To MARK

Well it has almost been a week since Mark had his birthday but better late than never. Mark spent the day at meetings for church sunup to sundown-no really I think two of the kids never even saw him on his actual special day. Fortunately we plan ahead and anticipated this and celebrated his day on Saturday instead. Who really knows when anyone's real birthday is around here? I made Mark a party cake with party frosting because it is what he enjoys best and I have to admit there is something yummy about it. I could write a million ways that Mark is awesome but really it just comes down to that he can and does do everything. So here are some pictures of my January Boyz.
This year Mark
has learned car repair-something he has shunned in the past but has taken to like a fish in water.
is able to teach two different classes at the exact same time do a scheduling error-don't ask how but it involves a lot of work.
was made Second Counselor in the Bishopric.
turned a moldy bathroom into a work of art.
built a chicken coop and is now working on a second design.
somehow manages to still put 4 crazy girls and a jumpy little boy first before anything.

Happy Birthday to the MAN

party cake

running auto shop-the muffler replacement that started it all

getting pick pocketed

going on the rides that make mom want to hoarf

getting pounced everyday

4-A Delayed post from 3rd January

Today's topic is Ed and his special day.  We actually celebrated his birthday a couple of days ago in New Hampshire but I have to talk about him today anyway.  In the beginnining of last year when asked his age he would say fourteen, eight, twelve, forty whatever then he settled on fourteen and then when people would correct him they would say, "You mean four?  Very good!  What a big boy!" etc. etc.  Since he is a little taller than most he passed for four and he finally got to a place during the second half of the year when he would tell people he was four when asked.
I figured it took so long to teach him to get out of the double digits and he would be four soon anyway so why bother correcting him?  I know good parenting.  :)  It took me and all of his sisters a good part of his fake birthday to persuade him that while he may think he was turning five because as he told us "five comes after four" he was indeed still just four but a real four now on his fake birthday.  It was then that I realized that there was no way that I was going to wish him a Happy Birthday on the third because then it would probably confuse him more.  I can't say this is unique since I think with all of our kids we changed their birthdays to suit our scheduling conflicts. I suppose if you want to get technical his birthday was yesterday because of the NZ time difference-maybe he is five?  Whatevs.

ED FACTS

• Ed prefers to be called Eddie.
• Lately Ed loves to be Iron Man only he doesn't know who he is and has morphed Iron Man into a super villain.
• Ed's favorite Top Gear episode was the one featuring drifting and he was so excited to get a remote control car for Christmas and make it drift on Grandma Ruth's hardwood-thanks Ruth.
• He loves to break words into syllables.  Don't look at me I couldn't even teach him to count (see above)
• Ed loves gumballs and jumping.
• Ed enjoys sharing and to be honest is a bit of a food pusher.
• Orange is Ed's favorite color. 
• Ed loves to say "sure".
• Ed talks about his classmates as "my preschoolers".
• I really really love Ed!
• Ed always has something on his face-whose fault is that?

Blowing out his candles with Grandma Ruth.

Pirate Cupcakes from Grandma Penney

Awesomely wrapped present from awesome mom.

Happy Birthday Eddie

It is hard to believe but my little Ed has turned 3. When we ask him how old he is he either puts on a cheeky face and says Ed or adamantly states, “4”. I guess four is closer to three than when he said he was eleven, or thirty. So far Ed remains pretty low key but I would be lying if I didn’t say he didn’t act spoiled at times. It is hard to say whether the spoiling is because he is the first boy or because he is the youngest child of my brood. Either way I am just enjoying him at the moment and he is good company during the day. One of my favorite love/hates about Eddie is that he thinks his head is a teatowel. Whenever he gets anything on his hands-stickers, sauce, chocolate, water he has to wipe it off on his hair. I will have to post pictures of those times later. For now here is a picture of him each year until he turned the big 3. We got him a new glide bike, a chocolate bar, a hot wheel, a broken candy cane and some after dinner mints from a restaurant. Not surprisingly he was most excited about the broken candy cane, mints, and chocolate bar. He graciously shared his chocolate until it was gone. We just got home from our vacay on Sunday morning so I wasn’t sure if I would get to the cake or not. I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he said, “green….big…..a really really big green cake….with skittles”. I had a good laugh when I was talking to my dad on the phone only to have Ed walk by with a chunk of his yet to be frosted cake. I patched it back together as best as I could. I still feel like my cake was a success because I met his criteria for the perfect birthday cake. I even let him help me decorate because I am a nice mom. :)

Recipe for the Best B-Day Party Ever

I am not one for birthday parties. They make me nervous-even when I was a kid they made me nervous. I am too worried about whether people are going to have a good time or not. Will the activities planned be deemed "lame" and if no activities are planned will boredom prevail? Aida on the other hand does not shy from a party. So, I put aside my own insecurities and planned away. She wanted quite a big group of girls and I didn't want to deal with a sleepover so we did a movie night from 5-10 and watched the premiere of Wizards of Waverly Place the movie. The night went absolutely perfect! I am actually going to go as far as saying that I had fun as well. It was the perfect balance of the 10-year olds having some space but me still being present. Here is a breakdown of the party-you know in case any of you would like to throw the most talked about party of the year.

I printed out these faux movie tickets on business cards I had lying around and we mailed them out.

From 5-6:15pm Guests arrived and we made personal sized homemade pizzas. The kids loved 'em. I made and prebaked the crusts the night before as well as the sauce so it was easy.
From 6:15-7pm We had set up the front room to be a disco with a mini laser and lights. I cleaned up the pizza mess-which wasn't too bad since the messy stuff was done before.
7-7:15pm Aida opened her presents.
7:15-7:30 Ahhh THE cake. Also had the kids decorate their own goody bags for their sushi and any snacks they buy during the movie. EASY!
7:30-7:50 I set up our kitchen island with Sushi ingredients. Kids made sushi while i cleaned up the cake mess from the table.
7:50-8:00pm Kids bought concessions and entered the cinema for the movie at 8pm.

I know you are all speechless. "But Sara" you say- "Where is the pastel?" Thank goodness for the good folks at wilton that sell decorator icing that fits your metal cake tips! The "popcorn" is actually formed from marshmallows. After YEARS of making cakes that only left a creepy mark in peoples minds, I finally made one that impressed albeit 10-year old girls. They were all AMAZED. That's me amazing.

Proof that the above cake was mine and not pulled off the internet. Oh and Aida is cute too.

Candy sushi-kids loved doing this. The ones with the "groovy" fruit roll-ups were really cute.

The snack station. When the kids handed their tickets over to Lucy to enter the cinema she handed them each 10 "puppy bucks" to spend on snacks. We had popcorn, a huge bag of those mini candybars, and sodas. They decided how to spend their money and yet were still limited to how much candy they could have-genious right?
We hung up a sheet to make a "big screen" for our cinema. Also we closed the curtains when I wasn't taking pictures. :)


Lucy got to be in charge of selling the goods. She LOVED doing it and it kept her involved with the party but gave Aida some space with her friends. They bought stuff on commercials.

--------------------------------FIN---------------------------------------

Happy Birthday Aida

I know this is late, but this is one of those "special birthdays" for Aida. It is hard for me to believe that I have a daughter that is in the "double-digits", a daughter that seems to be moments away from being taller than me-a daughter that is immensely talented in so many ways. I could go on and on about all the ways that she amazes me but I have written many of those to her in my yearly letter to her. Mostly I am proud of the person I see her well on her way to becoming. A girl that is not only smart, beautiful, and talented-but a girl that has an incredible amount of compassion for others, empathy and patience. I have seen her voice her opinion and stand up for what she believes in-a higher "good" and decency that I am not accustomed to in my own personality. It never ceases to amaze my how much we can still learn from our children. It started out with a great humbling that now, at times just becomes a sort of jaw-dropping awe. I love you Aida and here is to being 10 and moving on to the next phase of life as you enter middle school. Here is a bit of Aida through the years. Keep a look out for pix of her ROCKING Party!


Aida at 2 months in her blessing dress made by her Grandma Penney. I can still remember all that hair-it just kept growing and growing. Aida looked like a little doll and was an inspiration to many to have their own children-she was THAT cute.

One Year Old
Still cute-one of the dresses I stressed over making for her. Look at those cheeks!

Two Years Old
Aida always loves the beach. Here she is learning "muddy mountain" building from her cuzzies.

Three Years Old

4 Years Old
The year we moved to New Zealand and had Maya. What a big help Aida was!

5 Years Old
Full of Idears.

6 Years Old

8 Years Old

7 Years Old
Finally got her nerve up to hold one of our butterflies.

9 Years Old
Aida was into monkey bars in NZ BIG TIME at this age.

The Big One-O
Celebrating her actual birthday with family.

Today Is Ed's Birthday

What Ed Does

By Maya Berg

Today is Ed's birthday.

I wonder what he will do. When it is time to eat cake will he use his hands or his fork?

If he uses his hands, then we will have to clean him up.

If he uses his fork, then we will not have to clean him up.

I know! He will use his hands to put the cake on the fork.
We will have to clean him up.

I can't believe my baby boy is two already! I know many of my posts are on this little guy but I just have to say that I love love love him! Ed spreads joy and is so much fun to watch, to talk to and to play with. Unfortunately for Ed he had a sore tummy all week and had a bit of a bad rash. I will spare you the details but let's just say he was in a lot of pain. The poor little guy put on a brave face and tried to enjoy himself anyway. I made one of my famous cakes for him and it was a little reminisent of his "problem". Oh well. He really wasn't hungry for cake so I missed out on my shot of him making a big mess. Grandma Ruth just so happened to have had a card fitting the rocketship theme and he enjoyed flying it around and got a little possessive of it. Aida bought him some toy cars and attached two dollars (one for each year) to a balloon for him. Maya wrote two books for him, the one illustrated above and another one about a birthday crown which she also made for him to present with the book about making him a birthday crown. Lucy was very good at helping him open his cards and played cars with him all day. Hopefully sometime this week I will be able to write him his yearly birthday letter. I guess I should write the girls theirs first though...
Anyway, Happy Birthday Ed and thanks to all those well-wishers!