Prima Ballerina

Berkleigh and her BFF Tessa are in Ballet together.

It is super cute to watch them do this together. They love it.

Rachel and I take turns taking them, or we go together and just talk while they are dancing in the other room.

In December just days after we got back from Louisiana and the day before we left again for California, Berkleigh had her winter dance recital. It wasn't a huge deal like the end of the year recital, but it was fun to get to go into the studio with her and watch what she has learned so far.

Berkleigh at the barre.

Here are the cute girls getting ready to dance.

She is such a cute girl.

At the end of the performance, Cory (Tessa's dad) gave Berkleigh and Tessa roses. It was so cute. I had my mind on so many other things, that I forgot to do something like that. Good thing we have such good friends who take care of us when we forget.

Emory had never been to dance because it is during school, so it was fun to have her there to watch!

Such a pretty pretty ballerina. We love our dancing girl!

Merrick's Lego Party

I will tell you, boy parties are way harder than girl parties. Merrick's party exhausted me. 9 boys at my house was enough for the rest of my life. :) It was amazing to me how different the two parties were, boys are crazy.

I love having a theme and going crazy with it ... 

It is also fun to just find decorations around our house to use to for the party. Everything you see was in our house. The streamers, the legos, the baby food jars turned lego heads, the paper bags, the paper for the hats...

Alot of these ideas came from pinterest, and were so easy...

The favors were supposed to be the baby jars painted with one of the "secret"- open - see - what - you - get mini lego figures, but I couldn't find them anywhere, so last minute I bought lemon jello and cleaned out more (meat) baby food jars and filled them with jello!

 We played Pin the Head on the Lego Man. I had fun drawing the different lego faces...

(Lady Lips was Berkleigh. She was the only girl at the party.)

In to the other room ...

Is where are the Legos were. 

These are not our Legos. 

We have some friends that are clearly OBSESSED with Legos and we borrowed the blocks from them.

These are just the Legos from their childhood, the kids have their own now, and they have them built and up in their house. Seriously this is barely touching the amount of Legos the Parkers have...

and I am thankful for them because it made the party better!

We played Musical Legos. They had to stay at a station and build, when they heard the music, they moved and when the music stopped they had to start building where they were. We had some interesting creations!

We had some relay races with legos..

A piñata...

(Again, thank you Rachel!)

Lego head cake with lego candles...

And presents, which I am pretty sure Merrick has the best "opening presents" faces.

And that is the conclusion of the craziest birthday party weekend ever.

I think if Merrick's party was first I would have thrown in the towel early. 

Little boys are crazy! :)

I love my Merrick and I love that he loves Legos and wants to be a builder when he grows up.

I can't believe he is 6.

Berkleigh's Birthday Bash

Here is the invitation I made for Berkleigh's Party...

I cut a little hole out of the window of the tower and put yellow yarn braid through it to look like Rapunzel's hair.

I decorated the walls with yellow streamers that started at the top of the stairs, moved all around the room and ended at the front door...

Our first activity when everyone arrived was finding where Flynn (Tyson) hid his satchel...

They looked everywhere and finally found the satchel and inside the found Rapunzel's crown for Berkleigh and party hats (I made) for everyone else.

We then went downstairs and painted on little canvases. Rapunzel was an artist... so of course she would want that at her party. :)

I made bunting flags with the sun on it like in Rapunzel's kingdom...

After we painted, we wrapped our Flynn's in Rapunzel's hair (yellow streamers) to see who could use up the streamers first... Hilarious to watch, but the best part was Tyson with his nasty goatee he found at the party store.

After this little fun relay, we had this piñata. My kids have wanted a pinata forever. Everytime we go to the grocery store, they want to go down the aisle with all the pinatas and pick the one they want.

My friend Rachel, found a tutorial on how to make a paper bag pinata, and then she took it a step further and made one for Berkleigh and one for Merrick. How do I always find the coolest people to be friends with? :) Thanks Rachel! It was awesome!

And yes, we did hit the piñata with a frying pan, there is just no other way when having a Rapunzel party.

We watched the Lantern Part of Tangled while I got the cake ready...

Pascal guarded the cake from any little fingers until it was time...

I really wish I hadn't done the tower cupcakes last year... 

but then again, I am kinda glad, because I didn't want to have to make those when I had so much other stuff to do as well.. 

The sun cake was the alternative. It was yummy, and easy to do.

We made paint brush rice krispie treats and stuck them in a frying pan.

 It was so fun to see her so excited to have her friends over and to celebrate with them...

I wonder what her wish was...

Such a happy pretty girl!

I love seeing these girls interact with each other during present time.

And this was the highlight of the night... I planned the entire party around this one moment.

I bought sky lanterns and kept it a secret from Berkleigh. She had no clue we were doing this until I pulled them out. I thought every little girls there was going to DIE of excitement.

Tyson and Berkleigh lit it, and let it go...

But the party didn't end there...

It flew directly into our cherry tree...

 and then caught itself on fire...

It was probably one of the funniest experiences. Tyson loves fire, but was scared to let something go that flies through the air while on fire... (however wet Oregon is...) so when it got suck in the tree, I haven't seen someone climb a tree so fast. Tyson scaled that thing like Edward Cullen, and by that time it had caught itself on fire...

He got it out of the tree and that lantern took off. We watched it until we couldn't see it anymore, and then we decided one was enough, even though we had 3 more...

Maybe another night when we aren't outnumbered 10 princesses to 2 adults.

It was such a blast, and I hope Berkleigh knows how much she is loved. 

I can't believe she is 6!