7 years old...REALLY!?

On April 23rd, Ally turned 7 years old!! It just doesn't seem possible that we could have a 7 year old...but then we can't begin to imagine that she hasn't been with us our entire life!

The day started off with breakfast in bed...one of her very favorite things!

We then went to our friends the Simons who were so nice to invite us over since Jonathan had to work that night (although he was able to come for a little while). Ally wanted banana cream pie for desert-one of her dad's favs as well!


Then on the weekend we had her real birthday party. This year we decided to do small birthdays with just our family. She wanted to have a luau party which turned out so cute!





Instead of cake we had yummy sorbet in real fruit shells...it was perfect.
We even braved the limbo stick...it was a good way to turn seven-if she must!

Ally's Field Trip

I was so excited to go on a field trip with Ally and her class this year. I haven't been able to help a lot in her classroom because of Jonathan's crazy schedule and having Isabel at home. But luckily Jonathan was able to take the day off to stay with the other kids at home while I got to go....he went on the field trip to the zoo earlier in the year. Every bit of it was fun!!

We loved riding the bus together and chatting the entire time!



First stop...the Children's Museum. All the kids had such a good time! I had the most darling little group with me...then I looked around and every group was darling. She has such a nice class and an amazing teacher!





Outside the museum they were handing out little milkshake samples to get a milk mustache and get your picture in front of a "Got Milk" poster.



Then we were off to the park where the kids ate lunch and played in the water.


This is Ally and her cute friend Tina. It was a GREAT day!!!

Naughty! Naughty!

Ally was helping me clean one day when all of a sudden we both noticed that we hadn't heard or seen Isabel in a while. This is what we found....naughty, naughty baby!!

Butterflies

This year for Christmas, the 3 older kids got bug kits. Austin got an ant hill, Isaac got a praying mantis habitat, and Ally got a butterfly pavillion. They all were such hits! We had the most fun watching them all!! These are pictures of the day we let Ally's butterflies go (I knew they'd probably be disturbed if they had to watch them die). It was almost magical for the kids to be able to hold the butterflies on their fingersWe will DEFINITELY do this again!!.

Easter

Easter is always so special! This year we really tried to focus our kids more on the real meaning of Easter...it made it all that more special for all of us! I ended up getting so sick at church and had to have Jonathan bring me home early...so we didn't end up getting any good family pictures. But being the AWESOME dad and husband, he took the kids out and got pictures of them without even being asked...what a guy! We are so in love with these 4 cute kids!!!

April Fool's

April Fool's day was so much fun this year since the kids are actually getting old enough to play tricks on...and so that's exactly what we did! For breakfast I had poured orange jello into their cups to look like their drinks. Ally instantly broke out laughing SO hard when she found out...Isaac still didn't quite get what was going on or why I would do such a thing. For lunch I put a gummy worm in their apples. And for dinner we had cupcakes.



(Meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting....they were really good actually)

Then for dessert we had baked potatoes.






Isaac was NOT happy to have potatoes for dessert.....


until he realized they were made out of ice cream!


I guess the jokes were a success!!