Great to Be Eight!

This spring Michael and Emily both turned 8 years old. In our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that is when children can be baptized. Both were looking forward to this important opportunity. We coordinated dates so that family from out of town would be able to attend....

Grandparents Maggie & Cy Higgins drove out from Utah; grandparents Brenda & Elliot Haroldsen flew out from Pittsburgh, and Jen's sister-in-law, Mary Haroldsen, flew in from Oklahoma. (We wish all of our siblings could have come but jobs and such wouldn't permit such a grand reunion this time....)

Michael and Emily dressed in white for baptism

In the LDS church we believe in baptism by immersion; those to be baptized and the person performing the baptism dress in white. After being baptized, the participants are given a special blessing confirming them members of Christ's church and granting them a special gift of the Holy Ghost to guide them in their lives. In the United States most baptisms are in small fonts in normal church houses. Baptisms are held separate from other church meetings, with friends and family in attendance. There is usually a small program with a couple talks and some songs and such.

Michael and Emily each chose a favorite song for the program ---- "When I Am Baptized" and "If I Listen with My Heart" --- and they decided to ask their Sunday School teachers, Ami Donich and Katie Sura, to give talks. Sister Donich spoke on baptism and reminded us that as baptism washes us clean from sin, the atonement of Christ is what makes this all possible. She assured the children that although we all still make mistakes, the atonement allows us the opportunity to repent and Christ will make things right. Sister Sura spoke about confirmation and the Holy Ghost. She reminded the children about the things they've been taught about the Holy Ghost --- that he is a special messenger of Christ and speaks to our hearts in many ways... He can guide us in decisions, warn us of danger, and comfort us during tough times.

Emily and Natalie also wanted to perform a special song (and Esther had to be in on the action, too). They love the song "O My Father", especially the arrangement by Sally Deford which sets the lyrics to the tune most commonly associated with "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing".

(Grandpa's Camera battery started complaining so he only filmed the first 2 verses --- this will take you to a lovely mp3 of the whole song as sung by Becki Madsen)

Michael and Emily were baptized and confirmed by their father (Matt), with their grandfathers, Cy Higgins and Elliot Haroldsen standing as witnesses. While the participants were drying off and getting dressed, we played a DVD of some of the kids favorite "Mormon Messages" videos. I think the audience only got to the third story or so, but the full playlist is on my YouTube channel.

The whole evening was wonderful. We're so glad so much of our family, many of our friends from church, and a couple of the kids' friends from school came and joined us. We really appreciate Jan Fannon for playing the piano for the event, Gayle Donich for interpreting into sign language, and for voicing (from sign language) for Ami Donich's talk, and Laurie Ellsworth and Melinda Boschi for providing refreshments after the meeting. We have the best friends and family!

We are so proud of and happy for our Amazing Duo!

Happy Birthday Grandma Higgins!

Our Smilebox for Grandma Higgins:


As always, it takes a few tries to get our video "messages" to everyone's liking.... One of these days I'll have to make an out-takes "reel"... (Today's favorite is when baby Benjamin sneezed during Esther's song, and her comments on it)

Hope you have a good day, Mom!

Emily's (Birthday) "Garden Party"

We had the idea for Emily's birthday party way back in April, and I'm very glad she didn't change her mind.... When I saw a bunch of cute little Easter hats in the dollar bins at Target, I thought it might be fun to let the girls decorate them with fake flowers, etc. Then, because we were shopping for birthday presents at the time, I realized that might be even more fun for Emily to do with her friends. So, I introduced the concept of a "Garden Party" - and told her that's like a Tea Party except with lemonade and ice cream.... The important part is you still get to "dress up"! Fortunately, she thought that sounded great --- and even more fortunately, she stayed enthusiastic about it through the ever so long months until we finally reached her Birthday!

We sent out invitations to 3 girls from church and 4 from school (2 of whom are twins, so Em got around my usual guest limit - you can have as many guests as the age you are turning). I experimented with how to attach the flowers and reluctantly settled on hot glue. (Luckily the low-temp kind held ok so I escaped without any blisters this time!) Many thanks to Julie and Cheryl for lending me glue guns!

When the guests arrived, the girls took turns playing some little card games and such in the front room and coming back to the kitchen to decorate their hats. I thought it would take me half the party to glue them, but my aunt, Jana Boschi, came to join the party and jumped right in to help! One of the little girls' grandmothers, Barb, also stayed to help, and I'm glad Natalie and Esther took an immediate liking to her!

After the hats were completed, we took the young ladies out front to play (an extremely simplified version of) Croquet. When they tired of that, we came in to open presents, and then have cake and ice cream. Then I herded them back outside to play until their parents came. I had wanted to teach them Bocce, but didn't find a set in time, so we just used the croquet balls again and bowled them at one of the posts...

All in all, I think things went quite well! (No tears, at least, which is saying a lot for 6-yr-old girls!)

Here is the little "scrapbook" we put together about the party:

This free digital scrapbook generated with Smilebox

Michael's Treaure Hunt

For Michael's 6th Birthday, he decided he wanted to do a Treasure Hunt. We decided not to really do a Pirate theme, but be Explorers, instead. So, after much pondering (and countless lists), Mike finally invited one boy he knows from church, and 3 boys and 2 girls from school. (I've imposed the same rule as my Mom did - you can have as many guests as how old you are turning... and after age 8 or 10 it will theoretically turn into just a couple friends for a sleepover or equivalent activity)

So, guest list made and invitations sent, we eventually came up with several "adventuresome" games: an obstacle course, "Sinking Rocks" (a cross between musical chairs and a cakewalk-type game), "Storm" tag (like freeze tag except you "sink"), and "Don't wake the Guard Dog" (which is like Red-Light Green-Light --- trying to sneak up on someone without getting caught moving). Unfortunately the weather was nasty so we had to build an indoor obstacle course, which I (of course) neglected to take a picture of... We also swapped the tag game for a signal flag matching game (with international nautical flags copied off the internet).

Instead of individual prizes, the kids earned pieces of our "Treasure Map", and when they put it together and figured it out, it led to a group reward: little treasure chests Mike had helped me paint, filled with glass "jewels" and very shiny pennies. There were also candy bags for each of the kids, too. (The map was a simplified diagram of our house that Matt drew for me and the big treasure box was in the oven.)

Fortunately that killed enough time to move on to presents and then cake & ice cream. Matt had been entertaining Esther (and keeping her from getting trampled) for most of the party, but he joined us in time to offer to help cut the cake --- with his chainsaw!

I think the kids had fun --- they certainly were Loud Enough! Sheesh! I guess I should have expected as much... So, here is a little collage of the whole shebang....



And this (just for fun) is the really cool e-card I wish we'd found in time to send for an invite:

Natalie's "Super Why" Birthday Party

Natalie loves the PBS kids show "Super Why" and we decided that would make a fun birthday theme. The show is about kids who live in "Storybook Village" and turn into Super Heroes to solve problems. They go into storybooks to find the solution by using "Alphabet Power", "Spelling Power", "Word Power," and, of course the "Power to Read." Throughout the story of the day they find "super letters" that spell out the solution to their question/problem.

With that general structure in mind, I made a super-computer cake with a cardstock screen that I wrote the "problem" on: "Natalie is 4 today, What Should we do? _ _ _ _ _ !"

To start off I had the kids color and draw pictures of themselves as Super Heroes while all the guests arrived. In attendance were our cousin Evie (and her mom and little sis & baby brother), a friend from our old ward, Carissa, and the little boys Natalie plays with when I go up to the school, Joseph and Ethan (and their mom). Michael and Emily weren't officially guests, but they were my super-helpers, guiding the younger kids through the games.

Our first game was an alphabet treasure hunt. I hid prizes around the room, stuck letters near the hiding places, then had the kids draw letters from a hat and match them up to find the treats.

Then we played a letter "bingo" game. I made 9-square grid cards with various common letters and bought some cute party favors for tokens. Instead of saying the name of the letter for them to cover, I showed a picture and had them decide what sound/letter the word started with... It went pretty well!

By then we had discovered our five "super letters": P-A-R-T-Y
That meant time for presents and cake!

Here's a collage of the festivities:



All in all, I think it was a success. The cake turned out ok, the games held the kids attention and we wrapped it all up in two hours. Guests went home with a small bag of candy, a set of magnetic letters, and a copy of the "bingo" game board and tokens. (Hopefully the parents won't silently curse me for the number of small pieces this ended up being!)

Esther's First Birthday!

Hard for us to believe, but our little Esther is one year old! We tend to keep baby/toddler Birthdays fairly low-key, just getting together with family, but I do like to try for fun cakes. Feeling somewhat uninspired, I turned to her older siblings for cake/theme ideas...

I asked the kids, "What does Esther like?"

Emily giggled and said, "Peas!"

We all laughed, because it is very true --- One of Esther's favorite foods is frozen peas (and she eats them while they are still frozen). We joked around a bit about decorating the top of a cake with frozen peas and decided it would be icky when they melted. (Eeeeew!) I had been expecting the girls to say "princeses" or "fairies" (because that's what they like), so I combined some ideas and decided to make a "Princess and the Pea" cake!

I wanted to use fondant (smooth playdough-like frosting) to make blankets, but I'd only used the store-bought kind and it tastes nasty. Fortunately I found a recipe on the web for making fondant at home from melted marshmallows (and lots of powdered sugar). The project was still kind of tricky, since this is only the 3rd time I've worked with fondant, but I think it turned out ok:
On the weekend, we got together with family over at the Boschis, since Esther shares her Birthday with Uncle Dennis (as well as my sister Lisa and Matt's dad!). Katie made a really yummy chocolate cake for Dennis.

We had all had a good time. I think Esther quite enjoyed destroying (her part of) the cake and ripping into presents!

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

It's Finally Em's Turn to Party!

For Emily's birthday, she had a "Princess and Pony" Party. This pretty much just meant that the girls were invited to bring their "My Little Pony"'s over to play with for a while before the festivities...


Fortunately, Em didn't request a Pony cake --- that would be a bit beyond me! She giggled and said she wanted "bugs", so we made ladybug cookies and put them on a field/flowers cake....

One of her friends, Ainsley, couldn't come, but Emily had a good time with Cassie, Emma, and Gwen. They played a while, then we went out on the back patio for cake, ice cream and lemonade. Back inside for presents, and then the girls stayed and played a while...

Mike's 1st "Boy" Birthday (Party, that is)

Well, in our excitement about going to Grandma's, we almost didn't end up throwing a party for Mike. We figured we'd celebrate with the family while we were out in PA.... However, upon contemplating the fact that his sisters had/would have "friend parties", too, we kind of threw one together last minute for him... We decided we'd call it a "train day" and just invite a few kids.

This is the invite I helped Mike make and email (and we printed out a couple for those whose emails we were uncertain of):



I came up with some (good?) ideas about how to make a train cake --- but it was Matt who made it work. Mike was surprised and pleased when he saw it in the morning!
Two of Mike's friends from church, Nathan and Will, along with their little brothers (Eli and Isaac), came and played trains and had lunch. Later, Aunt Jana, and cousin Evie came over, too. The kids enjoyed the cake, played with presents, and generally had a pretty good time.

Yippe! Yipee! Natalie is Finally Three!

Well, we not only survived but enjoyed Natalie's action-packed third birthday... Of course, I use the term action-packed rather loosely --- based on the age of the participants it was plenty of excitement for one day!

We started off the day by having my aunt, Jana, and our cousins, Melinda and Evie (3 yrs) and Lizzie (10months) over for breakfast. (Aunt Jana and Evie are two of Natalie's favorite people.) The tots snarfed down a pile of muffins and some toast and ran around a bit before we called them back in to unwrap presents. Evie just had her third birthday a couple weeks ago, so she was a little confused and rather disappointed that none of the presents were for her (and Natalie was reluctant to share at first). Poor Evie! Being a toddler is tough!

We sang, of course, and let Natalie blow out candles on her birthday cake, but we only let the kids have one little cupcake (flower) each, assuring them we'd dig in to the big cake that evening. We had some cupcakes set aside to send home with our guests, too, of course.

After the kids played with the toys a while, we packed up and headed off to play at Betty Brinn Children's Museum. Our guests came, too, and Melinda actually snapped more pictures than I did (since I had an armful of Esther a lot of the time). You can see some on her blog: http://1lil2lilgirls.blogspot.com/2009/02/happy-birthday-cousin-natalieat.html

Most of the photos I got were badly blurred - apparently the camera I'm using these days has almost no tolerance for motion; but here are a few that turned out:

We spent a couple hours at the museum before everyone went their separate ways. By the time I got the kids home, Natalie was pretty much asleep in the car and Emily (4 1/2) started crying and said she didn't want lunch, only a nap!!! Those poor kids dropped like rocks! (heh heh heh)

Well, they bounced back by evening and we went to McDonalds for a fun dinner. Natalie wanted to take her new (toy) doggie, but we convinced her that would be a bad idea... We suggested she take her ballons and some of the cupcakes, instead.

Anyway, quite a busy day for us! But, I think it was pretty successful: Nat loved her presents, got to eat food she actually likes, and got to "play" with some of her favorite people; And all of use enjoyed the activites --- and the abundance of cake!

Cake Time!

Ok, I confess, I am fairly pleased with myself about how Nat's Birthday Cake turned out... Or, at least I like the flowers! (The caterpillar is a bit pathetic.)

The flower cupcakes were really fun, and best of all, really easy to make. The centers are sweet-tarts (smarties or whatever would work) and the petals are mini marshmallows cut in half (and pinched a little). We made extra cupcakes to share with friends. The kids were even able to help --- I let them eat their own creations, though, on account of contamination issues....

I found the flower technique on: http://www.cupcake-creations.com/

Party - Party

Well, we had a lot of fun this weekend --- 2 birthday parties to attend!

First, Mike and Em were invited to a party for one of their friends from church, Nathan. His parents arranged for the kids to tour a local police department, and then everyone went back to their house for cake and presents and such...

The kids had a lot of fun - Thanks for inviting us, Nathan!

Later, in the afternoon, we went out to Aunt Jana's for our cousin Evie's 3rd birthday. The kids had fun sleddingand watching the Daddys fire off some model rockets (but I was inside with baby so photos are courtesy of Evie's mom, Melinda). When the kids were thouroughly soggy (on account of it being 50 degrees out!) everyone gathered inside for cake, ice cream, and presents.

Again, much fun was had by all! Thanks for inviting us, Evie! You make a lovely little Princess!