October! My favorite month of the year (plus December- it's a tie)! I love that Rory's birthday comes the very first week of the month because it feels like it sneaks up on us every year and I love the excitement. We kicked off the festivities this year by letting her open one of her presents two days early. She got a new Rapunzel dress and crown which she proudly wore to Rebecca's princess birthday party. Ada tagged along but she was much less enthusiastic about her Tinkerbell costume. Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty came to the party and the girls were in heaven. I loved watching Rory clamor to tell them all the things she knows about them. She was so excited to be matching with Rapunzel and she excitedly interrupted their story time to tell them about the big princess book that she has that has TWO pages of Sleeping Beauty but only one page of Rapunzel (poor Rapunzel). The princesses read the girls a story, painted their faces and hands, gave them all make overs, and then had a princess dance party. The only thing better than a princess party is a princess party you didn't have to pay for!
A little last minute I was asked to make a cake for Rebecca's birthday party and it turned out so cute. I did a pink velvet cake with strawberry buttercream and it would be hard to say who was more excited about all the edible glitter I used on it, the little girls at the party or me.
Right after the princess party we headed home to clean up, pack up, and head out for Grandma and Pop Pop's house! We woke up in the morning to watch General Conference (or as Stephen likes to call it, "golf") and finish up some last minute birthday party prep. After the afternoon session the boys returned from golf and were immediately set to work picking up sodas and pizzas and setting up the pinata. The Nielsens were in Rockville with some friends from California and they took a break to come and celebrate with us. John and Ashleigh drove up from Las Vegas for the weekend too, and lucky Nate and Linne get to be in St George all the time. Once all the cousins had made it to the house we sent the kids to the pool, where they all played in the hot tub because the pool wasn't heated and we have a big bunch of desert babies in this crew.
Scarlet gave Ada lots of love and attention, which was wonderful because the only thing that girl wanted to do was play in the hot tub! The pizza and soda arrived and everyone had their fill and then some. After the kids swam a little longer we broke out the pinata. Out of all the designs (unicorn, lama, donut, mermaid, etc...) Rory chose the treasure chest which was just kind of awesome to me. All the kids were able to take a swing at the pinata and I think it was Rhode who finally broke it open. The kids ran for the candy while Rory spent her time gathering as many Doc McStuffins tattoos as she could. I had filled the pinata with 75 tattoos and none of the other kids were interested in them so as many as she could gather ended up being a lot. Ada happily sat in the pile and helped hand out the floor goodies to anyone who would look at her.
After opening WAY too many presents (note to self- we do not have enough room in our house to ever throw her another birthday party again) it was time to tuck in to her cake! I had been planning this cake in my mind just for the entire year and I was so happy with how it turned out! I agonized over whether to try to assemble the cake at the Marshes house or make it at my house and try to transport it safely. In the end I decided to risk the transportation because I can turn in to kind of beast when I'm in the thick of making a cake and I didn't want my in laws to see me like that! Thankfully we had no issues transporting the cake and it looked even more beautiful in their kitchen than it did in mine! The cake was a butter cake with raspberry lime curd and an orange and strawberry buttercream and the theme was unicorn Doc McStuffins.
We stayed to play on Monday and we were able to check out Nate and Linne's new house. It is gorgeous and stocked to the brim with super cool house features, so we can't wait to spend more time there. On Tuesday Stephen went golfing and I left the kids with Lucina while I took off hunting for an outfit for myself for our upcoming family pictures. It was a bit of an ordeal, but in the end I finally found something. We stopped for drinks, got the birthday girl her own (which we learned was a mistake about the third time we stopped for the bathroom) and headed back to regular life with our newly minted four year old.
Because I'm a little bit of psycho I set up a little birthday play date with Rory's friends so she could celebrate with them too. I let the girls decorate cupcakes with the leftover frosting from Rory's cake and then we did a treasure hunt around the house to find the little birthday goodie bags I put together. We watched a Barbie movie and painted nails and ate a special birthday lunch of chicken nuggets and french fries.
We finally had some family pictures done on our own (that we paid for like real adults!) and they turned out so great. I was a little nervous, but now I'm so happy we did them. We ended the night with Handel's and McDonald's (in that order) because after all the stress of getting outfits ready for pictures I just couldn't even deal.
FINALLY it was time to celebrate our favorite guy! For the first time ever Stephen let me make a big deal of his birthday and I was in heaven! He took the afternoon/ evening off from work and we took the girls to Uptown Jungle. Ada loved it as much as we thought she would and Rory quickly conquered her sudden fear of the big slides with the help of her dad.
We stopped by Chick fil A on the way home and quickly scarfed it down while Stephen opened up his presents because I had to take off for mutual. We got him some new headphones (because I manage to ruin every pair he has ever owned), blue sunglasses (chosen by Rory), a book that Rory made for him and a picture for our bathroom that is my new favorite decoration in the house. It features pictures of Rory's bare bum in all our favorite places so it may not be appropriate to share online haha. I left them to eat the cake while I rushed off to the church, but Stephen texted me to say that it was the best banana cream pie cake he had ever had.
I phoned it in for Halloween this year because, frankly, I am tired and family pictures took all my caring about clothing energy. Rory decided to be a unicorn which was fantastic since she had a gorgeous unicorn costume from Grammy. I took the girls to do Halloween pictures with Jax and Rory was the best behaved I ever seen her in front of a camera. I can't stop looking at these pictures, I love them too too much!
Ada on the other hand was apparently ticked that I made her dress up in Rory's hand me downs and had no desire to be Marie. She cried and screamed so hard it was embarrassing. We left in defeat and I cried a little when we got home because I felt so frustrated by the situation. But then we got the pictures and I laughed SO HARD.
Sometimes the best memories are the worst ones? I don't know, but I know that I am going to be laughing at these pictures for many Halloween's to come.
For Halloween we threw our own fall festival at the Avery's house. It was a lot of work and pretty exhausting but the kids loved it. We paused before cleanup to take the girls trick or treating to a few houses and it was impressive to see what people came up with in this Covid era of holidays. Now if you will excuse, I need to go nap for a year.
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