Happy 36th Lars!

Lars took the day off today for his birthday...which was nice because Ashton happened to not have school because of parent teacher conferences. So first on his wish list was to get up and go to the gym to work out, then he came home and had the breakfast we made for him. Then we all got ready and went to Ogden for the day. We went to lunch at a little mexican restaurant downtown called the Sonora Grill. It was pretty good...

(the boys loved the huge tortilla chips)After lunch we took them to the Treehouse Museum for a couple hours, then Baskin Robbins, then came home. I had baked him a cake in the morning but didn't have time to frost it, so I did that while the boys played. Lars has just recently started playing basketball again in a city league, so I decided to put my ball cake pan to use again and made him this basketball. It looked pretty good as long as you were looking at it from the top :)

Anyway Happy Birthday hun! Hope you had a fun day..We love you!

MiLeStOnEs!

This week was full of milestones for Gunnar...well 2 to be exact.

I think this time I can confidently say that he is POTTY TRAINED!!!

During the day anyway...I am so so proud of him!

(and he's pretty darn proud of himself too :) He has been doing really well for 10 days or so now. Today we even ventured out to McDonald's for lunch, then went ice-skating and his cute little Yo Gabba Gabba undies came home clean and dry!! I really kind of wanted to put a pull-up on him, but he said "No...I'm wearing undies!

Milestone 2 won't have quite as many exclamation points behind it. Okay none.

Sadly his crib tent has been removed due to it's broken zipper...it was pointless to keep it on anymore :( It was a sad day. I loved the crib tent and would use one again in a heartbeat. Thanks crib tent for giving us so much more sleep the past year.

Anyway after removing it, he obviously started getting out of his crib on his own again and smacked first his nose (on the edge) one morning, then his chin the next day, then yesterday he split his bottom lip on it getting out.

That did it, a change had to be made, so we actually got to take advantage of the toddler bed feature of his convertible crib. Something we never did with Ashton because he NEVER once got out of the crib...we just moved him into his twin bed when he was 3 right before it was time to pass the crib on to Gunnar.

Needless to say Gunnar was super excited when he came home to see his "new" bed after Daddy had fixed it. (or "broken it apart" as he told me)...

I guess for me it's just one more sign that he's getting bigger.

Saying goodbye to the crib and his baby-ness is sad :(

This is pretty cute though...he will always be my baby.

But he will be 3 in two short months. Excuse me while I go cry myself to sleep.

Sledding fun!

A couple weeks ago when we actually still had some snow...the sun was finally shining, so we took the boys to our favorite sledding hill a couple miles away. It was so fun to get out.

Gunnar loves that he can do it "all by himself" now...he just lays down on his sled and pushes off and down he goes. He even climbed back up the hill by himself almost every time...

Almost...

Ashton has taken to "snowboarding" on his sled & got pretty good at staying up all the way down the hill this time. Lars and I even had fun taking his big ice-fishing sled down...it went fast!

As we were driving up there the temperature said it was only 15 degrees! But wow what a difference it makes to have some sun shining on us. It was a beautiful day.

Once again we had to drag them away...

Six on the 6th!

It was a special birthday this year...Ashton had his golden birthday turning 6 on the 6th! So I had to do this special invitation for it :) We had a fun day that day...we started out by going to McDonald's for breakfast. Daddy even got to join us on his way to work.

Then we went home and since it was his birthday his request was to play the wii "all day". Well he did play for awhile that morning, but then it was time for lunch and school. Gunnar, Aunt Kelli and I joined him at school for about an hour and brought his class these cupcakes. We also took in his poster (that we made for preschool, but updated a little last year and this year). And he got to read his "All about Me" book to his class. We forgot the camera :( But it was fun to get to be there for that. He had the whole class laughing as he was telling about his poster and reading his book about himself. And he wanted Gunnar to sit on the same chair with him while they ate their cupcakes...I'll have to snag a picture of that from Mrs. Coburn.

We decided to do Lego Star Wars for the theme of his party and cake. He LOVES the game on the wii right now and I was excited to attempt a lego cake. It was my first time using fondant. I guess it was pretty easy...just super messy making it. And pretty time consuming when it came to covering each "lego piece" with it. But I think for my first time they turned out pretty good. I made them the day before his birthday...

(I used the big Duplo Lego Blocks to measure them out...)

...then on his birthday I baked the second cake that makes up the bottom part of the cake. I wanted for part of it to be covered in real frosting and actually taste good! So after frosting it, I put real legos all around the bottom of it, then stacked the cake legos on and around it. Then to finish it off, I put all of Ashton's mini Lego Star Wars figures on the cake and lego pieces and added his name and stars to the cake board. It was fun and turned out actually better than I thought it would, but it was kind of a lot of work!

He and his friends loved it though...so it was worth it.

No one makes Lego Star Wars party supplies yet...(that I could find anyway), so I made my own plates... We had originally planned to have his party at Fredrico's Pizza here in town...had called and reserved the room there, but luckily my sister called a few hours before party time just to see how the room was set up and they told her that our party would have one big table in the room and another party would have the other! So they double booked the room and failed to inform us of that small detail! There was no way that it would have worked...so I started calling around trying to find a new place to have it. Luckily Firehouse had their room free, so I reserved it and called everyone to let them know the change of plans. It worked out great and I was so glad it was available!

We ordered their huge pizza (that is about the size of 5 large pizzas). All of the little boys thought it was so cool! And some random guy from Sweden came in and asked if he could take a picture of it. Ha!

Check out Ashton in his bandana...this kid has his own sense of style. Gone are the days of me dressing him however I want.

This is the look he came up with for his party...

So we ate, then played "Pin the Light Saber on Luke Skywalker"......then picked our winner for "Guess how many Legos in the jar". Cute little Brayden won :) He guessed 130...there were 131!

Then we sang to Ashton, let him blow out his 6 candles, then cut up the cake. Of course all the boys wanted the lego pieces and about half of them even ate the fondant!

Finally it was time for presents & that was just a madhouse! Ashton got lots of neat stuff and had so much fun with all of his friends.

Then it was time for everyone to go, so we handed out party favors...And said goodbye.

If I could sum up his party in one word it would be "LOUD!!!"

Okay 2 words...LOUD & Fun!

Happy Birthday Ashton!

I think more than any of the excitement of his birthday and party, he's just excited to "finally" be 6!!

As I sit here and think...how in the world is my sweet baby 6 already??