Birthday videos

Here are a few videos from Lyla's b-day week. 

Lyla's 3rd birthday!!

Lyla has been talking and dreaming about her birthday for months, and finally the long-awaited day arrived! She was so excited to wake up to pink and purple balloons, princess decorations, and a huge princess balloon. Daddy had a late night so we sang to her and let her open presents while we ate breakfast. She got a shopping cart and some play food to go with her kitchen, and she spent the day playing with it all.

She wanted so much to have a party with all of her friends who she loves, so we planned a princess one of course! 

She loves every princess, and at the last minute decided that she had to be Cinderella. She has worn this full outfit with the black ribbon, blue headband, and glass slippers every day for the last week. It's a huge fight to get her in warm clothes whenever we have to go outside!

I made a strawberry castle cake with all of the princess on top

We made wands for each child- blue for the boys and pink for the girls. We also made tiaras for the girls

We played a few games with the group- such a cute age!

 And of course we danced to Disney songs. They all loved waving their wands around and the boys even liked jumping around a bit.

Lyla had so much fun with her friends and loves playing with them all. She really has taught me a lot about the importance of close friendships and of forming relationships with the special  people in our lives.


We went to get her three year old pictures- and had to get some in her dance clothes since she LOVES dancing. She doesn't always follow along well at dance class, and is often in her own world, but she spends most of her day at home dancing and gliding around the house.

This sweet girl causes many frustrating, about-to-lose-it moments for me, but she is also my world. About an hour after bedtime (when I start to recover) I start missing her and wanting to snuggling and chat like we often do. She usually climbs in bed with me in the mornings and we just lay there staying warm and laughing together. The other day she asked me to dress up as Cinderella with her so I let her help me find a blue dress, pretty shoes, a necklace and headband. We pranced around the house calling each other Cinderella and it was such a sweet moment with her. Her latest request at bedtime is that I chase her around the house trying to put her pj shirt on. She can be so random but has some pretty great ideas and we have a blast together! She and Trevor love reading books together and Lyla is always wanting to help him walk. I love her more each day and am so grateful that I get to be the mother of this sweet, energetic girl.

Daddy's birthday & Family Pictures

 I found a few pictures from the summer- we went to the State fair in Blackfoot and had fun walking around and seeing all that was going on. Lyla got to choose one ride and she was so excited to ride in this boat.

 We went to a little lake close to our house on afternoon after work and got some sun as a family. The water was freezing but that didn't stop Lyla!

On the way to church a few weeks ago, Lyla found some of my lipgloss and she caked it on. I'm getting a little worried about what she'll be like as a teenager!

 We had a fun birthday celebration with Paul. We had his favorite dinner and some cake the weekend before since he never has much time during the week.

 We did our usual Red Robbin tradition and Lyla especially loved it this time

 Trevor just loved playing with the balloons

 On the actual morning of the big day, naked Lyla opened Paul's  presents while he ate breakfast.

 We took some one year pictures of Trevor. He took his first steps on his own over a month ago and can walk well between two people, but our silly boy is lazy and refuses to walk on his own. It's much faster to crawl or be carried so he constantly begs us to pick him up.

Trevor loves to hug and he especially loves his daddy. He cries whenever Paul leaves and gets SO excited in the evening when he gets home. "Dad" is the word that Trevor can say very best.

Happy Halloween and a FUN visit from Grandma!

We had the best visit from Grandma Rumsey last week and are already missing her so much! She was such a good sport to play with the kids all day, dance at Lyla's request, and even go to zumba with me. We looked forward to her visit for months so it was hard to see the time go by so quickly, but we're excited for the next time we get to spend with her, whenever that may be.

 The weather was really nice on Halloween when Sue arrived, so we went to Lyla's favorite park and let the kids play and play. It's been so nice to have gorgeous weather lately and I appreciate every day, knowing that we could be freezing and have snow at this time of the year.

This girl loves to slide!! She and Grandma had fun coming of with new ways to go down.

Grandma was so much fun to be with on Halloween! She got all dressed up to go trick or treating with Lyla for the first time- our little witch was so excited!!

Let's just say Trevor wasn't as excited to be our little cow-boy. Haha- I just loved his costume though so I made him wear it a few times.

Daddy kept up our tradition of a princess jack o lantern. He stayed up late into the night carving Sleeping Beauty at Lyla's request.

We went to a Halloween party so decided we'd better find some costumes. We remembered our Pebbles and BamBam costumes from 4 years ago and decided to try pulling that off again.

  So much has changed from 4 years ago, we definitely look seem tired and less lively now :)

While Grandma was here, she had a little birthday party for all of us since we usually aren't together for birthdays. She was so cute and had us each blow out candles and open presents.

We didn't have the right candles- so Paul had 26 plus a 1 candle to get to 27...

Cute naked baby! Trevor seems to be losing some of his chubbiness and getting taller.

This is still Trev's favorite position. he loves sucking his thumb and holding his hair. His poor thumb is all dried and cracking because he sucks it so much.

Lyla and Grandma had fun making some yummy sugar cookies. Lyla rolled them out and cut them out all by herself and was very proud of using her little rolling pin.

Grandma put on a puppet show with the animal puppets I made and Lyla LOVED it. She thought it was hilarious when Grandma would do the voices

This is Lyla a little over a year ago. I just can't believe how much she's grown up in the last year!