My Little Man Went And Turned ONE!!!

Can you believe he had the nerve to grow so fast? With each of my children I believe the time has started to fly by faster and faster. He's such a cute little guy. We were down at my parent's house in St. George on his birthday so we had a little party for him. And when I say little, I mean it. I did make cupcakes though, and let him tear right into one. I am too lazy to upload those pictures from my camera. Here are a few things about Andrew that I really don't want to forget:

* He sleeps through the night 90% of the time, but still has to be rocked to sleep
* When I rock him to sleep he likes me to tickle his arms and snuggle him really tight
* He will answer, "yah, yah" or "dah dah" if you ask him anything in a questioning voice. For example, we will go through the whole family asking, "Do you like Marin? Mom? Dad? Kate?" and he'll say "yah yah" after each question. Then he gets this huge grin on his face like he's done something amazing.
* He can open any toilet lid and has been found splashing many a time in the toilet water. (I promise I have become a bathroom-door closing Nazi so he won't drown in the toilet or get some disease!)
* Marin thinks everything he does is golden. She will always be running in to tell me something I just have to see that Andrew is doing.
* This is my favorite: when he wants to get somewhere fast, he turns his head to one side and just crawls/charges forward. He looks like a swimmer when they come up for air. It's pretty dang hilarious.
* He is into EVERYTHING. He has 3 favorite drawers in my kitchen that he empties many times a day.
* He is the first of my children to figure out how to climb out of his highchair, even when he is strapped in tight. It totally boggles my mind how he can get out, but he cannot be left unattended!
* He loves outside more than anything. If someone walks out a door and he sees, he'll crawl to the door and just pound on it and howl until I at least walk outside with him for a couple of minutes and then come back in.
* He loves our swing set bucket swing and he loves to swing HIGH.
* He is a mama's boy in a good way.
* His hair turned blond!
* Sometimes he will flail around and shake his head side to side just to be silly and get a reaction out of his sisters.
* If Kate or Marin laugh he will laugh too no matter what
* He is such a pleasant little fellow it's sometimes hard to know when he's tired or hungry because he'll just keep smiling!
* I am thoroughly enjoying being a mom to this little guy (well, most of the time ha ha)! 

Ooh La La!

Marin has always loved dressing up, princesses, and all things girl, so of course we love Fancy Nancy books at our house! It was only appropriate that Miss Marin requested a Fancy Nancy themed birthday party. Oh I had fun planning it. It was divine (that's fancy for very wonderful). Mitch was a little surprised when he walked in and saw everything I had made because I've just kind of been puttering away at making the decorations for the past few weeks (usually when Kate and Andrew are napping). On a sappier note, I can't believe my little princess turned 6 years old. Time flies when you're having fun. When I was setting out the decorations Marin said, "This party just keeps getting fancier!" That's what I call success!

The fancy birthday girl

These were the invites. They came in these little purse shaped envelopes.

They opened up like this.

And here is what the invitation said... For those of you who are unfamiliar with Fancy Nancy books, she likes to use big flashy words and then explains them in parentheses afterward. She also loves French words. These books are great vocab teachers! 

The spread

The cupcakes

My cute mom reading Fancy Nancy books to the girls as they arrived. She is a teacher so as you can see, she was very captivating (that's fancy for interesting).

More decor

The girls decorating their pots. We potted some purple pansies in them after they were decorated and the girls took them home.

My cute sis-in-law Callie helping with the manicures

And the favor bags.

Au revoir!

Easter 2012

We spent the Saturday before Easter with some of my favorite people, including:

Miss Marin (a.k.a. Egg Hunt Helper Extraordinaire) 

Little Man (a.k.a. Grass Eater)

Matthew Ethington (a.k.a. Designated Baby Holder)

James Ethington (a.k.a. Chunk Chunk)

Jaren (a.k.a. The Favorite Uncle)

Avree (a.k.a. Lookin' Hot 4 Months Post-Baby)

Callie (a.k.a The Cute Easter Bunny *she hid the eggs*)

Me (a.k.a. Tax Accountant Widow)

Kate (a.k.a. Chalk Eater)

Spencer Ethington (a.k.a. Serious About the Egg Hunt)

And Mitch--waayyyy in the background (a.k.a. My Hot Tax Accountant)

The Nelsons (also some of my favorite people) joined us later for a little birthday shindig for Mitch. We ate some pie and laughed a lot. I'm so glad I live close to all of these great people!

Easter Sunday was great. The Easter Bunny did not forget the Moncurs. Marin was thrilled. Kate finally figured out how to find Easter Eggs and that they contain candy. My kids were so naughty in church I was close to tears-- but I did have one moment of the Easter Spirit when I was subbing in Marin's class and I got to bear my testimony about the Resurrection of Christ. All in all, an Easter I don't want to forget (which is why I blogged about it).

Little Man and his personal stash of Goldfish crackers

Marin carrying Little Man in to see what the Easter Bunny brought

I knew I would be pictured sometime so you can see I wore my nicest PJ's

In Which An Easter Decoration Became More Than I Bargained For...

All of these ideas on Pinterest are lovely and I always have grand plans for the finished product... but it's the execution of the plan/project that is always a drag. This project in particular took so much longer than I imagined it would. But once I bought the stuff and got done wrapping about 3 eggs (this is the point where I thought, "uh oh"), I couldn't quit. One thing I learned, if you ever want to attempt this little baby, is to get the fattest yarn you can... for obvious reasons. It would have been a lot less tedious not to have to wrap these babies a million times and use like 50 hot glue sticks. I am posting pictures of this a) to brag because I thought it turned out super cute, and b) because I only finished it last week and Easter is almost here and I'll have to take it down so I need to get all of the leverage out of it that I can. (How is that for a run-on sentence my English teacher friends?) So here you go-- my One and Only Easter decoration:

 Here is where I hung it:

 

Happy Easter!

Kate the Great Turns 3!

When I call Kate "sweetie" or "cutie" or something other than her name, she always corrects me and says, "No, I Kate da Great!" She knows it, and she is so full of personality we almost can't handle her, ha ha. She is wild and darling at the same time, and our family would not be the same without her. These pictures are all complements of my sweet sister-in-law Callie (okay, and Jaren took a few too). Thanks guys!

And thanks Pinterest, for almost every idea I had for this party! Rainbow cupcakes, a fun kids treasure hunt, rainbow candied popcorn, tissue pom poms, rainbow fruit tray, and of course Skittles and Starbursts!

Kate got lots of Toy Story themed presents!

And behold! The cutest bike I've ever seen! It even has a cute little bell! And guess who blew right past it to get to the table and eat her Cheetos from Aunt Avree?

Oh, now she notices it!

A little nervous at first, but she's getting the hang of it.

 

This is where I finally helped Kate blow out the candles after 30 seconds of her spitting on the cake!

And the highlight for Kate was that my parents came up last minute to join in the festivities. My mom just couldn't miss it! What a fun day with family and friends!

Family Fun

I feel like our family is in such a great place right now. Andrew is close to 1 year old, all of my kids are sleeping through the night (well, 80% of the time), and well, I feel like I have jumped out of survival mode and back into doing some of the things with my kids that I want to do. Here are a few fun things we've been up to:
FHE Popcorn Night (Mitch got a popcorn machine for Young Men's so we tested it out the night before)

 Notice our little toothless Marin! She lost both of her front teeth in the last month.

Kate was loving the popcorn machine! 

Last night for Leap Day we had a party. We played leap frog and other froggy games and had pudding parfaits. Ha ha, they aren't much to look at but they were Oreo and Pistachio pudding and they were surprisingly good! 

I have to say, Marin helped me tape together this poster and I had to push aside my OCD and let her not line the pages up exactly perfectly, ha ha.

Obviously this is not all we have done in the past month, but it is all I took pictures of. Thanks to Pinterest and my returned sanity, we have lots of fun things planned for March and April (April is our birthday month, 3 of our family members have birthdays then). Hopefully I'll remember to take pictures!

All You Need Is Love

Thanks to Pinterest, I am turning into one of those moms who does crafty things on holidays besides Christmas. I finally jumped on the wagon last week and there were some really cute Valentine's ideas. Of course I didn't go nuts, but I did a few cute things I want to share. I say I'm not very crafty, but what I mean is that typical "crafts" like painted wood and vinyl stuff, well, they're not really my decorating style so I don't like to make them. But I do like do-it-yourself ideas and I try to do them, but I generally don't have the skills or patience to follow through with my ideas. Or they turn out looking sadly different than the pictures. See this post if you don't believe me. I had a similar experience with trying to make cake pops. Disaster! So I am right proud of myself for actually creating something that looked like the tutorial. These are the little hair clips we gave Marin's friends in the neighborhood for Valentine's Day.  Here is the link: Felt Flower Tutorial

I made these cupcakes in a jar for Marin's teacher and the girls I visit teach for church. I got the idea where I have been getting all of my good ideas lately, my friend Emily Nelson's blog.

 Here is a link to the chocolate cake recipe I used. Not that I think you'll all go out and bake a chocolate cake just because I posted this, but because this is going to be my new go-to from-scratch chocolate cake recipe. It was so easy and so yummy and it doesn't use ingredients that you'd have to make a special trip to the grocery store for. Here is the recipe: Dark Chocolate Cake

The frosting is just a basic buttercream with a tiny bit of red food coloring. I also sprinkled crushed up Oreos on the frosting layers. I did a few more things but they were not spectacular enough to post. We had a fun day. Marin told me it was "the best Valentime's (that's how she still says Valentine's) Day ever!"