Cupcakes!

I love cupcakes! (Who doesn't?) My good friend Leslie, whom we bond in all things unhealthy, found a little gem of a bakery. It is "Let Them Eat Cake". Awesome bakery and well named. We ventured out into scary Phoenixville to buy all the cupcakes we could get our hands on. Among them was a Celeb of the Month cupcake. Yes, MJ was honored. It was a white vanilla cake with chocolate filling, white frosting, black jimmies around the side, and a sparkly glove on top! I am not making this up. Besides being supper yummy, it made for a great photo op as well.
.

Potter Madness

Since the first Harry potter came out, our family has been
hardcore Potter fans. As the 6th movie made it's appearance
so has the need for more Hogwarts crap in my house. We got
creativity cheap this time and made the kids their own "wands".
(Minus unicorn hair and phoenix feather!)

Nicks is made of Elm and
he dremeled the heck out
of it.

It took 3 days to complete them but they love them!

Can you guess our next vacation?

So we got invited to Kauai for a week from Nana and PopPop!

It is going to be over Jason's 16th birthday, so we decided to

take him and Nick with us. It's no car for his b-day but this is

pretty dang cool instead. He doesn't know yet, as he is at camp,

but we wrote it into our "from you parents" letter he will get at camp. I'm so excited to see him when he gets home. We only have 4 summers left before his mission so we are going to make this

one to remember. Snorkeling, swimming, zip line, and then over to Oahu for more fun. Thank you Nana and PopPop for the invite and we can't wait!

Ryan's 9th Birthday

We never do big parties for our kids on all their birthday's. Just on the big ones,
you know, one, five , eight, ten, twelve, sixteen, ect... Ryan thought he had to
have a big friend party, even told all these kids at school about it. Liz warned me
after she had picked him up at school telling her kids all about it. I quickly
threw together a "friends" party. Now of course they are mostly my friends
but they do have kids around his age who are also his friends, just not the ones
at school. It turned out we were both happy and he got his party.

Ryan with his minky
blanket I had Kelly
make him. He loved it!

He saw this cake and had to have it.

Ryan with my mom,
Grandma Hatch.

Ryan's Party - Take Two

Yes, I know it looks like we have a bunch of boozers in the jacuzzi, but it's kids
with ice cream in cool margarita cups. All above board, I swear!












I decided to get 120 snowball for his party for a great snowball fight. As I predicted, there was some tears.

















MJ decided to make a appearance. All of us girls loved the attention from him.

Father and Sons

Cole decided that this year he would actually go to father and sons.
He has ditched it for 2 years citing "too much trouble for only 1/2
a day of camping". He took Friday off and went with the Mabb, Linford,
and Dennison males. They went fishing first and I think Chad, Nick, and
Tyler were the only ones who caught a fish. They then camped with the
rest of the ward at the Tom's Creek area. I heard they had a blast and no
major injuries, so that's always a plus.
On the girls end, I went out with my
friends in the ward for Liz's birthday. We visited her baby Jake's grave, went
to Red Robin's, and went to see "17 Again". I was never a Zac Efron fan, but
man, he looks good in that movie! All in all a great 2 days for the whole family!

Happy Birthday Alene!

Alene was born on April 15th and no one has yet done a tax theme b-day....until now! Chrissy, Jenn, and I surprised her at her work and arrested her for "tax fraud". We then took her out for a pedicure at Jimmy's. Sorry guys, but still not mine or Chrissy's favorite.
Here we are with the Birthday Girl! We didn't totally surprise her since she saw my car and vanity plates. Big give away. Oh well.

Jenn decided to do a manicure instead. Baby Chris got to hang out with us and was so good, till we got to dinner at least.

We had a huge group meet us at Cheesecake Factory to round up Alene's birthday. We were able to get her a nice Cannon camera which she needed since hers died 2 weeks ago. We had Liz, Shelley, Debbie, Jen T, Susan, Christina, Maya, Michelle, besides ourselves from earlier. Donelle, Leslie, and Kelly sent their love as well.

Happy Birthday Alene! We all love you!

When you give a boy a camera

We went to the riparian so Jason and Trevor could work on their photography merit badge. We also took along Chris and T.J.
When we got home to look at their photos, they had gotten some real good ones and ones that were all boy. I wish I had T.J.'s. Pics of urinals. more dead fish. pencils in peoples cracks. It was lovely. Sorry Kelly that I didn't edit them before he left.


Dead fish was a recurring theme among the boys.




This one got fixed up with a red berry in it's eye for that evil look. Nice touch.
This one is all out the white stuff next to the duck. They were amazed at output and quantity of this poor duck.

Backyard Campout

Almost as soon as I saw my first born son I realized I would have to be
a part of the scouting program. As my fifth boy was in my arms, I knew
I was now doomed to at least 15 years to scouting. Trevor needed to go
camping and cook outside to get his outdoors man. Since Cole goes camping
once a month with the Deacons, you can bet he doesn't want to go with his family for fun. He and Nick
were gone this weekend as so it fell to me. I enlisted Jason and his friends Chris and T.J. ( They were not much help.)
So here is my attempt at cooking with the kids, putting up a tent, and getting out of actually sleeping outside.
The kids loved it and he now can get his Arrow of Light as well, which is the highest award a
cub scout can get.


Cooking with the kids.










MJ is looking out for us!












My three little kiddos.












My three big kiddos. They did help out by sleeping outside so I didn't have to.

The Roaring 20's

The Howard's gave a 20's themed murder mystery dinner in honor of Gary's 30th birthday.
They put so much thought and effort into it. Each of the rooms were decorated with a theme, a menu printed with drinks were you could order, they even had pictures of their girls dressed as mobsters all over the house. And as you can see, even all the guests
put a lot of effort into the dress. I'm so sad I didn't get a picture of all the guys. Liz, please post a picture of Tyler. It's a must see.
Thanks to the Howard's for a great evening.

All the gals.















They all bought the same wig at Party City.














Cole and I . I was suppose to come with a black eye
as part of my character. My dress was beautiful but
this picture is not!


















Liz and Alene. They played their parts splendidly!














Alene was the MURDRER!