Peyton's Birthday

Peyton's birthday started out like any good birthday should - opening presents!

She got a Rapunzel teddy (want).

A booster seat (need), a helmet (wear), and a set of Doc McStuffins Reading Apps (read).

The other day she told us, "The different sounds in a word are called syllables." Lol, so I guess she's learning something from playing the apps. 

We had heart-shaped donuts for breakfast and then sent her off to preschool.

They had accidentally celebrated her birthday at preschool back in February, but they celebrated it again on her actual birthday. She got a crown and a few small toys/candies. I made her mac & cheese for lunch and she got to watch unlimited shows that afternoon.

Corbyn had a soccer game that night. It was a chilly one, but Corbyn (when it wasn't his turn to be playing) and Peyton bundled up in this big quilt to stay warm. 

They were being rather silly and had a lot of fun with it.

I don't remember what we had for dinner, but I do know we had a Sugar Cookie Bar cake.

We didn't do anything too big or exciting, but she didn't seem to mind. And just like that, she became our big 4 year old!

Finished Room Friday: Half Bath

For this week's Finished Room Friday, here is our half bath on the main level of our house. It's a pretty average half bathroom, but it seems huge to us after the itsy bitsy one we had in our townhouse. 

I used the decorations from the half bath in our townhouse.

I switched out the light blue rug and toilet seat cover for brown ones because the light blue got dirty way too easily. (They are the same color brown in real life - they just came out looking different in these pictures.)

The soap dispenser is also new because I broke the blue one we had before sometime along the way.

Our half bath in our townhouse didn't have any cupboards. It's a simple thing, but I really appreciate having one now because it turns out it is really inconvenient not to have a place to put some hand towels and extra rolls of toilet paper.

The only other difference is I did not paint the blue, tan, and brown stripes because I didn't want to still be working on this room in a year and a half!

Logan woke up from his nap while I was cleaning and taking pictures today, so he helped me finish up - without his shorts on. (He is wearing a diaper.) Keeping it real, friends!

Peyton's Birthday: Family Party

Rapunzel is currently Peyton's favorite princess, so we had Rapunzel birthday parties this year.

We had her family party right after Jared's Commencement Thursday night, so my parents could be there for it.

Pinterest has so many fun ideas for a Rapunzel party from when Tangled first came out. I didn't have time for most of them (darn moving!), but I was happy with what I was able to pull together.

I made a couple quick signs.

I also printed off a Flynn Rider Wanted sign from here.

And a Snuggly Duckling sign from here.

Finally I printed off the picture from when Peyton (and Corbyn) met Rapunzel (and Flynn Rider) at Disneyland and used some of Peyton's Rapunzel toys for decorations.

I made frying pan plates by hot gluing black plastic knives to black paper plates and served most of the food in frying pans. 

For food we had:

Flynn and Rapunzel's Jello Boats (just about every Rapunzel party on Pinterest has some version of this)

Golden Flower Punch

Pascal's Purple Fruit Salad (our favorite mixed berry "salad" that's really a dessert)

Maximus' Apples and Dip (and grapes)

Ruffians and Thugs' Cheesy Roasted Red Pepper Dip with tortilla chips and vegetables

Braided Bread (Mel's French Bread Rolls braided) and Lemonberry Butter

Paintbrush Rice Krispy Treats (idea from here and here)

My favorite part of the party was the cake. There are many versions of this cake on Pinterest. I made my own version after looking at a bunch of them. The flowers are Wilton and the candles are from Walmart. 

We had a lot of food leftover and because we were going out of town the next morning we had to give most of it away since it wouldn't be good by the time we got back. (Tragedy!)

Finished Room Friday: Toy Room

A few people were asking when I was going to be posting pictures of our new house here on the blog. I was planning on doing a house tour when we get it all finished, but since that could be awhile I came up with the idea to post one room at a time as I finish them instead. Other than our living room (waiting for Rog's Uncle Ron to help us build shelves on each side of our fireplace), Peyton's room (basically started from scratch to do a very girly room), and the craft room, most rooms are very close to being done and a few are completely done. I figure if I commit to post one room each Friday, that will give me great motivation to focus on one room at a time and finish up those few nagging things that are preventing each room from being 100% done.

First up, the toy room!

One of the things I wanted in our new house was an area completely devoted to toys. This small room under the stairs fits that requirement perfectly. It is right off our living room, so it's close to where we spend most of our time. It doesn't have all the toys in it. (Both kid rooms upstairs still have a lot of toys in them.) What it has are the general toys that are not really gender specific and the games/puzzles/dress ups (except the princess ones). 

It's perfect because when the kids are saying they're bored and I'm trying to make dinner, I can pull out a bin and say here, play with the Play-doh or here, do a puzzle. It's not big enough for them to really play in it, but it is a great storage area for the toys and it's a fun, cozy place for them to watch shows on the iPad and will be a perfect nook for reading as they get older. (I took pictures with the light off because the light is obnoxiously bright in pictures.)

It was the first room finished because basically everything I used came from Corbyn and Peyton's shared zoo room. We drilled a hole in the back of each of these chalkboard animal prints (since I used the color bar ledges in other rooms) and hung them.

We did the same thing with this Welcome to the Zoo sign. And I put a few of our favorite zoo animal stuffed animals on the top of the cube organizer for decorative purposes.

The cube organizer that was in the zoo room is in Peyton's room upstairs, but I bought another one for this room because it fits perfectly on this wall and it works so well for toy storage. 

I put the games, puzzles, Play-doh, and anything that I don't want Logan getting into up high... 

And the more toddler-friendly toys down low.

Anywhere else these huge pillow pets would drive me crazy, but they're perfect here!

I love that I got to use the zoo decorations again and I'm so happy with how this room turned out! 

April

The night we got home from Disneyland after we got the kids to bed, I saw Logan's Critter Blanket (that I was going to make him for Christmas, then his birthday, and then Easter) half finished and decided to just finish it (instead of being a responsible adult and unpacking). It felt so good to finally finish it!

The last day the kids were on Spring Break, we took a quick day trip to Goblin Valley State Park. We went way back in 2009 and wanted to take the kids there before we moved.

They loved climbing and exploring the goblins.

After Ragnar I decided to keep training and run the Provo City Half Marathon in May. I did most of my long runs on the Spanish Fork River Trail and this day I decided to pick up some donuts at Macey's after my run (because I had donuts on the brain from Ragnar and hadn't gotten my fill).

Jared worked all semester on building and programming a robot to play soccer, so one afternoon I took Peyton and Logan to see the final tournament at BYU. (Corbyn was at school which was too bad because he's the one that really would have loved it.)

His team's robot broke down right at the end and they had to quickly fix it to finish the tournament. They ended up getting 2nd place (losing to a team they had beat many times throughout the semester.) 

Peyton tried on my wedding dress one day when I came across it while packing.

When my parents lived by us they would buy us cereal when they found a good deal. When they moved I had to start finding good deals/coupons for myself again.

Rog helped my dad drive the last load of their stuff to Colorado. They ended up unloading in the middle of a blizzard!

While he was gone I worked on cleaning the kitchen since we were going to be listing our townhouse soon.

Peyton had a classroom demonstration for her dance class. The studio has windows, so I was able to watch most of her classes, but it was fun to watch from the front and hear a description of what they were doing.

Rog flew home Saturday afternoon and took TRAX/Frontrunner home since we were taking our turn watching kids for our date night exchange that night. He had a few minutes to kill, so he walked around temple square. He took this picture to show the contrast between the blizzard in Colorado and a beautiful spring day in Utah.

Rog played softball on our ward team. We moved before the end of the season, but we had fun going to watch him play a few games.

We spent a couple good solid weeks cleaning our house and getting it all ready to put up for sale. I couldn't believe how dirty our walls were! Magic Erasers were seriously my best friend!

And then the month got really busy with major events...

Jared graduated from BYU. We went to Commencement Thursday night since we couldn't go to his Convocation on Friday.

That night while Grandma Lori and Papa George were there we had a family party for Peyton (that I will blog about in more detail soon).

Friday the 22nd we flew to Oregon to buy a house! Tay and Martha watched Corbyn and Peyton for us and we took Logan with us.

We wore him out looking at houses all day.

One of the last houses we looked at that night was this one.

The next morning we looked at one more house and then looked at that one again. We felt good about it, so we put an offer on it (and the rest is history). That taken care of, we had the rest of the day to just hang out at Rog's Uncle Ron's house. I had a terrible cough and a sinus infection (that I had to wait until Monday to have officially diagnosed), so I actually took a nap with Logan!

Sunday morning we went to our new ward for Sacrament Meeting and then flew home. We were so blessed that everything went so smoothly and that we were able to find the perfect house in such a short time!

I had done basically nothing to get ready for Peyton's birthday (other than the family party we had), so I spent Monday doing that. Tuesday was her birthday (blog coming soon).

Wednesday was our 9 year anniversary. The Howards watched our kids for a couple hours during the day, so we could go to the Provo City Center Temple to do sealings.

And then we went to Waffle Love for a quick waffle after.

Thursday Rog had his last class!

And Corbyn had his last soccer game of the season. It was pouring rain, but they had already rained out too many games, so they played anyway. Peyton, Logan, and I watched from the car!

Friday we had Peyton's friend birthday party (yep you guessed it, blog coming soon). And that was the month!

With Ragnar, Disneyland, getting our townhouse ready to sell, our trip to Oregon to buy a house, Peyton's birthday, and our anniversary, I'd say April was just a little busy.