Birthday Season

My boys have birthdays three days apart, so around here it feels like cake for days! It being Brig's first birthday I wanted to celebrate it separate from his brother's. Everyone should have there own special 1st birthday party. We Did a theme for each this year, Brig's party was The Very Hungry Caterpillar off the book by Eric Carle. Dean's party was Dinosaur Train off the new PBSkids series.

The invites to The Very Hungry Caterpillar party were made with finger prints. I attempted to use my one year olds, but got to messy so i had my four year old help me with the rest. My finger print was the head. Inside It said "COME VERY HUNGRY!" for dinner cake and ice cream.

We had the guest wear antennas to look like bugs.

For dinner we served Pizza, we had a few side dishes which were a fruit salad made with plums, strawberries, apples, oranges (mandrine), and pears. We had a platter with pickles, sausages, and swiss cheese with holes that looked like the caterpillar already ate through them. (I made these with a straw). We had a spring mix salad which is made of many different types of leaves. I also had a watermelon I forgot to cut up and serve at the party. Oh well you get the point we had about everything from the book.For decorations I had red and green balloons down the center of the eating tables to look like the caterpillar. The wind made it hard to use the tables to eat, but I did get one good shot of them. I also made caterpillars out of egg cartons for the food and gift tables.

Presents were not the typical one year old event. Brigham was not interested in the wrapping paper like most kids his age. He wanted the gifts and I had a hard time getting him to move on to the next wrapped gift.


We played two games. We had a caterpillar beanbag game, which we handed dum dum suckers out for prizes. The big hit was the cocoon making contest. we had everyone pare up into groups of two or three and raced to see who could get one of their team mates in a cocoon first (toilet paper) the prizes were gummy worms and lollipops. It was a lot of fun! (it would be a fun game for a Halloween party as well and call them mummys)


My sister made the cakes (zoobiecakes.com). Brigs cake was chocolate and the rest of us had cupcakes, chocolate and white cake. After all the hungry caterpillar ate through a chocolate cake and a cupcake.

Here is about how the cake eating went (pic below). he wasted no time eating it. he even licked the platter clean at the end. Check out video below for more. (Sorry video is not wanting to work)

Dean's Dinosaur Train Party

Dinosaur Train is a new (about a year) show on PBS kids. There are not many things (or nothing) out there like party supplies, so we had to do it ourselves.

Dean's invite was made to look like the train tickets on the show with few alterations. On the back we put: come have a train-tastic time at Dean Lawrence's birthday party. All aboard the Dinosaur train at (place of party). Departure is (time and date) come travel through the time tunnel for a dino-mite of a party.


We started out the party coloring pictures of the dinosaur train caricatures. Everyone got a conductor hat that looks like the one the conductor on the show wears.


After coloring we started our first game of toss the lava rock into the volcano. we then moved on to the game hatch the Dino, were we had small toy dinosaurs in eggs (balloons). the kids then had to sit or stand on them and pop them to hatch the Dino.

They played with their new Dinosaurs for a few minutes then we opened presents and had cake and ice cream.



After cake and ice cream they dug for Dinosaurs. In there goodie bag they got a wooden train whistle, dinosaur fruit snacks, dinosaur suckers, magnifying glasses, notebooks. and they got to keep the dinos they hatched and the ones they dug up, and the brushes they used to dig with.


Dean Had a lot of fun, which is what matters. We only had his cousin show up and none of the four friends he invited so things went fast. I'm just glad I had to cut a lot of things out because of lack of time or practicality. I was planning on making fossils with playdough and paster of paris, but I couldn't get it to work well on the trial run. also I was going to make a balloon arch as a time tunnel, but after Brigs party and the wind I desided not too. I was also going to make large paper mache dino eggs for the goodie bags, but never found the time with two kids wanting to be with me all the time.

Who knew chopping wood could be so funny!

Summer Dayz!

Sorry I haven't had time to post for a while, it has been a busy summer. which is fine and fun! Here is a little of what we have been up too!

My family and I have gotten together to raise money for Alzheimer's. My grandmother past away about a year ago suffering for this disease and with it being a hereditary disease we all have the chance of getting it. We have raised over $1000 doing just bake-sales and a few other random donations. We will be walking in her name on Sept. 18th in Murry, Utah, which happens to be her birthday. We are called Pat's Party! Grandma always loved a good party!

We went to California the first part of July to visit with Rob's family out there. We had a niece and nephew get baptized on the third. We went to the beach, a children's park in San Fransisco, and hung out at Grandma Marva's house. (Rob's mom)

We had cousins from California come visit Utah a few weeks later we went to Pizza pie cafe, Very good. Brig is sort of the star of the show when we get toether with them can you tell?

We also went to the Zoo again, we have a pass so it happens often. Even though we were there in the after noon the animals seemed to be very active this time, it was great! We also went to the bird show, we have never done that before it was fun!

we attempted to go camping a few weeks ago, but got rained out. Dean still managed to get filthy in about ten minutes!

Butterfly Fun!

We received a Butterfly garden kit for Christmas this past year and we decided to try it out. We ordered the caterpillars on line and they came in the mail. We received them on May 21.

They come in a cup and feed off the stuff in the bottom of it.

They seemed to almost double everyday. I was surprised how fast they grow.

Eventually they started to hang from the lid of the cup.

they started to build their cocoons.

It didn't take long to build the cocoons only about 24 hrs or less each.

We then transferred the paper lining from the lid to the butterfly cage.

I thought it would take two weeks of being in the cocoon before they would come out as butterflies. (I guess the Hungry Caterpillar book is wrong) They came out in about a week. On June 9th.

We fed them orange slices and watermelon.

Today June 14, we woke up and one of them had died, not sure why. Anyway we decided it was time to let them free. So we went to the near by park.

Dean didn't really want to let them go.

He loved to chase them after the were out.
In fact the first one landed under his feet and had a sort free life.

Check out this 2 min video of us letting them go.

Memorial Day

For Memorial Day this year we went to Brigham City with Rob's sister and her family. My mother-in-law was born and raised there and they have a lot of family buried there. We also went out to Promontory Point. This as any of you that know my son, knows this was the highlight of our day. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

They did a reenactment of the ceremony to the best of their knowledge. It was pretty good.

The original trains where both sold for scrap of a $1000 each, so these are remakes. The only problem is they had to go off of pictures, because they had nothing else to go off of. They believe they are accurate to a .25 of an inch of the originals. And they are painted the same.

Dean always has his fingers in his mouth in pictures because he has to make sure he is smiling. I'm not sure why?