Happy Birthday Uncle Brett-family cookout

Normally we have family functions with my hubby's family at my in-laws house. But since the Cicadas have invaded they opted to let us have my brother-in-laws birthday cookout at our house! YEAH!!!! I always love having functions at our house-but we rarely do. Grandpa surprised the boys and brought over a slip-n-slide and big tubs to fill up with water (think little mini pools). Austin was super excited, as you can see below he is enjoying his own personal pool.

Hudson checking everything out!

Hudson was not too sure about the whole water situation today.

The weather could not have been more perfect out. It was a little overcast with a nice breeze so we spent most of the day outside. Here you can see Bernie over seeing the water park.

After a little while he decided it was his turn to take a try at the slip-n-slide. He decided it was better to just lay in the middle of it any enjoy the view.

Hudson was very interested in checking everything out in the yard. He also thought it would be a good idea to taste everything. Here Brad is pulling something out of his mouth (who knows-maybe a rock, clump of dirt or mulch).

Caelex and Zoey joined in too. Here Caelex is playing with his "my Austin" as he likes to say. The kids all seemed to have too much fun.

Here are all the little guys!

After all of our out door fun we headed in for the food. YUMMY~!

After dinner came the real party. Desert time! The kids LOVED the party blowers

Hudson got tired of waiting on his cake and decided to eat the party hat. I tell you, this kid will try to eat everything.

Uncle Brett had lots of candles on his cake this year and had to get a little help from the boys. Grandma snuck in some of those trick candles. Which lead to my dining room filling with smoke.

Hudson had his own cupcake all by himself and decided to try and eat the wrapper as well.

All of the kids enjoyed an indoor picnic while eating there cake and ice cream

After cake, Grandma gave each of the kiddos a flag and lead them in a Memorial Day parade around the house.

I think we all had a great afternoon and the kids all slept good after all the playing together.

Mom's Group Easter Egg Hunt

This morning the boys and I hosted our local moms groups Easter egg hunt at the park. It was so fun to see all the kids hunting for there eggs. Below is a photo of some of the mommies with babies under 2 yrs old. This is a group photo of the over two kids that were at the egg hunt. I cant believe we were able to get them all to sit on this rock so we could actually get a photo. Austin and I made festive rice crispy treats: we had treats in the shape of eggs with sprinkles (these were Austin's favorite), mini-baskets with jelly bean eggs on top as well as bird nest with peeps and jellybean eggs on top

Here is Hudson hunting for eggs for the 1st time. He was picking them up and throwing them like balls. He also would get them and try to put them in his mouth. In the below photo he had an egg in his hand and was taking off down the side walk.

Hudson found one!

He was so happy and proud of him self

Now we did a little better of a job hiding the eggs for the bigger kids.

Austin had a lot of fun hunting and finding them and he was really good at it to. I had to make him stop finding them so other kids could get there share.

Once he was done he had to open them all up and see what kind of treasures were inside waiting on him.

Here is Hudson towards the end kicked back in his stroller.

I have to admit this was a crazy play date for me. It was the 1st time that we had been to the park with Hudson walking so I now had two boys to keep up with. It also didn't help that Hudson thinks he is part monkey and should climb on everything-he was walking up the slides and discovered he could climb the stairs and get on the playground. Needless to say I was a busy lady this morning trying to keep up with my kiddos!

PJ Party With Santa

Last night Belk hosted a PJ party with Santa for the kids to kick start the Christmas season. I was under the impression that Santa would be there for the whole party but that was not the case. For the first hour or so they had a dj and dance party which ended up being really cute. We ran into Aunt Robbin's sister and her daughter Riley, which Austin had a blast with. Austin and Riley had quite the time dancing together. There was no one woman that could hang with Hudson so Mommy and MaMa-Ma had to take turns just to keep up with him.
Austin had his first kiss tonight (along with his 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on) which we caught on camera both with photos and video. Riley was laying them Austin. At first he wasn't real sure about this girl being so forward and aggressive with him-but needless to say he ended up loving it.

By the time the dancing was done and it was time for Santa to arrive the boys were over it and tired (like I said we did not know that Santa would not be there the first hour). They had not had dinner before we left so we decided to leave before Santa read a book to the kids.

Austin's 3rd Birthday Party

This year Mommy decided to make it easy on her self with Austin's birthday party. In the past I have worked on the party for months and months before the big day, but this year I decided to hand that over to a facility. Don't get me wrong, I still put effort and thought into it just not all crazy like this year.

I gave Austin the choice of a Cars or Toy Story party theme this year and he chose Cars (actually he said "Lightning and Mack party Mommy". We had his party at a local bounce house (one of those places with tons of inflatable jumpers inside) and it was great.

Below is the invite to his party that I custom designed (notice Lightning and Mack like my little man requested).
Austin had to have the perfect attire for his special day so I was able to find a cute Lightning shirt and he even had Lightning socks (which were actually seen since the kids had to remove there shoes to bounce).


Of course before the party Mommy had to make sure we got a family picture (more like a few 50 pictures before we left). I always want to get a family photo of us all on any special occasion, however it seems like we never actually get around to taking it.

The party defiantly had the fun factor this year and we tried to capture it as much as we could with photos. The bounce house has two party rooms that you get to bounce in and both have a large slide in them. Of course many of the adults had to test the slides just to make sure they were safe and fun for the kids. Look at every ones faces in these pictures-priceless.

The Party Room where we had cake, pizza and gifts.

Austin had lots of friends and family there to help celebrate his big day!

Here are some photos of Austin with his buddies

Austin had been practicing blowing out candles at everyone else's birthday party for months so he did it perfect!

For the favors I found metal Cars lunch boxes and put a matchbox car, fruit snacks and a pack of M&M's in each bag along with a balloon tied to each box.

Austin racked up with more toys and Fall clothes.

Over all I think the party was a big success and everyone seemed to have fun and go home happy. Austin had a great time!

Super cute & easy cakes

I was just looking around online and came across the below cakes at Kraft Food. You can view all there cakes here. I cant believe how many cute cakes they have with all the directions to make them. Most of them look fairly easy enough to make. I don't know how many people are like me, but for Little A's 1st birthday we spend around $100 on his cake. Now I find these cakes that I could make for less than $10. Are you kidding me. Needless to say I will be trying some of these out in the near future. I don't have any upcoming birthdays but I am sure I can come up with something. Maybe I can take something next week to Little A's school since it is his last week. Anyways, just wanted to pass along this great info I can across. Let me know if you try any of them out. I would love to know how they turn out.