Birthday Party

On Sunday afternoon we had Emily's Birthday Party at Monster Mini Golf.  Julia had her party here earlier and Emily loved it and wanted to go back.  The kids played hot potato game, had cake, opened gifts, and then played putt putt which gave them a 40 count ticket bonus.  After that we handed out quarters for the kids to play arcade games and earn extra tickets.  They could use the tickets to purchase toys which we used at their party favors : )

Tara once again did a wonderful job making a "Frozen" cake for Emily:

 

 

 Rachel brought neon face paint so the kids faces would glow under all the black lighting:

 

Getting ready to play putt putt:

 

 Riley with her purchases from her arcade tickets:

 The group minus Tessa and Abigail.  They were both over putt putt by then:

Emily is 7!

Emily is 7 years old today!!!!!!!!!!!!

She woke up extra early because she was excited about the day.  We had gifts for her from us, PawPaw and Dee Dee, Grandma, and Aunt Chelle:

 

She wanted to spend her American Girl gift card and $ from the grandparents so we got dressed and headed to the store.  She picked out an outfit with shoes and bracelet for her doll and a book on running a cafe:

 The pink dress is the outfit she bought:

She also requested Mac n Cheese pizza for lunch.  Luckily she wanted to go back home so we ordered it to go.  This allowed Joe and I to eat something else other than pizza : )

 We sang Happy Birthday with cupcakes:

Happy Birthday Emily!  We love you so much.  We are very proud of how well you are doing in school and love to see your imagination come to life when you play.

Shopping Day

Today, the First Grade had their shopping day to spend the "money" they earned all last semester for behavior.  Each day they got a stamp of a penny, nickel, dime, or nothing depending on their behavior.  The teachers counted up their money and gave them a card with the amount of quarters they had earned.  Then each classroom had a station where you could spend your money.  I did face painting for 50 cents.  They also had cookie decorating, hair glitter, nail polish, tattoos, and a store with school supplies like fun erasers and cool notebooks.  I had a blast helping with this:

 

 

After Emily spent all her quarters she hung out with me trying out the face paints:

Because it was so close to Emily's birthday I stayed to have lunch with Emily and we passed out cupcakes that she helped decorate:

I really enjoyed myself.  This was the first time I was able to help out in the classroom.  Before lunch I laminated and cut out some things for the teacher and then after lunch I helped the kids count their "jungle tickets" to get items from the treasure chest.

Starting in January I also start teaching the 4 year olds/PreK class at church for the winter semester.  We have a big class this year and were brave enough to let them paint one Sunday!  Abigail is in the class with me this year:

January so far

Well this January has been full of COLD weather and National Championship trips and the flu!

We ended what we thought was the end of the school break by meeting Julia and Liliana for roller skating.  I've never taken the girls before and we only got to skate for about 30 minutes because they were closing early.  But for our first time going 30 minutes was probably all we needed.  It took Emily a few minutes to warm up to the thought of skates but she ended up having fun:

 

 

Abigail decided she just wanted to try to skate on the carpet.  Which was fine with me.  

 

She kept her skates on for about 10 minutes and then decided it was snack time : )  I'm thankful Rachel was there with me because I spent the first 10 minutes running back and forth between Emily and Abigail and making sure they were ok.  So glad the skating rink allowed me to just get on the rink with my shoes on.  That made the running back and forth a lot easier.  But I wanted my girls to have their first experience with roller skating so I called the afternoon a success.

 

On Sunday, Joe was offered a free plane ticket to head to the National Championship game if he wanted it.  So we had to make a quick decision for him to go.  We quickly made hotel and car rental reservations, bought a ticket to the game and ran out the door to get him on his plane.  

 His ticket got him to Tucson, AZ Sunday night and he drove to Pasadena on Monday:

Once he made it to the ticket office, which happened to be an Elk's Lodge, I had to find him directions to a place to park that had shuttle buses.  I really don't know what people did before the internet and GPS : )  Once he got parking and a ride to the stadium I felt like I could finally relax:

He made it to the stadium about an hour before the game started.  We were so excited for him to be able to go!  His seat had a good view but unfortunately was in the FSU end zone : (  He did have a few Auburn people around him though:

I watched the game at home and sadly in the last couple of minutes of the game, Auburn lost 31-34.  We were ahead most of the game so this was a hard loss to take.  I wanted Joe to have such a fun experience seeing his Auburn Tigers play in the National Championship.  They still had a wonderful season, War Eagle!

Joe had breakfast with his sister and husband the next morning right across the street from DisneyLand:

He was able to go in the gift shops and get the girls some Minnie ears and dolls from Frozen:

We were excited to have him home on Wednesday night and the girls loved their new toys!

I also spent the weekend organizing the play room:

And just when we thought school was going to start back up on Monday, the South got some of the coldest temps since 1970!  So this was the coldest temps I had felt in my lifetime!  While Joe was in sunny California, we had a low Tuesday morning of 5 degrees!  The high was only in the 20s on Monday and Tuesday.  It snowed Monday morning so the girls had fun playing for a bit in the snow:

 

The girls finally went back to school on Wednesday.  I think everyone was ready to get back to a routine after two and a half weeks out of school.

We also said goodbye to our old faithful car seat that we used for Emily and Abigail for the past 5 years.

And last but not least the flu hit our house on Friday!  Joe got home Wednesday night, and then went to work on Thursday but by the end of the day he was very fatigued.  On Friday morning he woke with a high fever and bad headache.  I took him to the doctor Friday afternoon and he tested positive for the flu.  They started him on Tamiflu that day and by Sunday he was weak, but fever free.  I went to the doctor on Saturday morning to get a prescription for Tamiflu just in case.  Glad I did because by Saturday afternoon I had a fever and headache as well.  So I filled my prescription and Joe came out of quarantine just in time for me to go there.  We took it easy on Sunday and Joe was able to go back to work on Monday.  The girls were troopers thru the whole thing and watched lots of TV and played well together.

Here's hoping 2014 is better than how it started!