Teya's Ariel Birthday Party

Monday was Teya's birthday and we celebrated over the weekend with a much anticipated Ariel the Little Mermaid party. She really really REALLY loves Ariel! It doesn't matter if you give her a stick, a rock, a piece of trash, as long as it has Ariel on it you've made her day. It's hard not to give in when it's that easy to make her happy! Here is a look at her fun birthday full of Little Mermaid happiness : )

We decked the house out in streamers and Little Mermaid decor

The table was all ready for party festivities to begin

Taber found these super cute Ariel plates at the Disney store on clearance! He scooped them up for the party and figured Teya would be happy with the new additions to our dish collection.

Little friends started arriving and Teya was ready to greet them in her Little Mermaid dress-up costume.

We had them search for their hidden treat bags while everyone was still arriving.

Then it was on to the crafts. The girls made foam door hangers with lots of stickers and foam paint.

It's hard to go wrong with little girls and stickers. This kept them busy for awhile.

The finished products!

Then it was on to pin the flower tiara on Ariel.

Each girl got her own flower tiara for playing.

After that Teya requested hide and go seek, so they played that for awhile and then launched into making beaded necklaces while Taber got lunch ready.

Hot dogs, Cheetos and fruit salad, a few of Teya's favorites!

Then it was time for the cake!

You can tell she was so happy about her pretty Ariel cake. We sang and she managed to blow her candles out without any other "helpers" pitching in : )

Then she went straight for the frosting.

It was kind of sad cutting into that beautiful cake but I'm happy to say that it tasted as good as it looked!

On to presents!

Everyone brought such fun and thoughtful gifts, including plenty of Mermaid toys, clothes, books, and dolls. Teya was very happy and grateful : )

After a few rounds of Freeze Dance it was time for friends to go home. When they left Teya came up to us and said, "Thank you for my WONDERFUL birthday party Mom and Dad!" I couldn't help but smile at her sweetness and her genuine gratitude.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful little girl. I love you so much and am so grateful that the last 4 years of my life have been blessed to have you in them!

Team Baking

This year for Teya's birthday I recruited some help for her cake. My friend Laura is very artistic and happens to have a cake decorating kit so together we decided to tackle Teya's request for a Little Mermaid cake.

I've always wanted to do a cake with fondant and since I had backup I decided to give it a try. We got together on Tuesday to make the fondant and although we made a huge mess, it was a lot easier than I thought. Coloring it was a little work but it wasn't too bad. Then on Friday we baked the cakes and got to work decorating.

Teya made up the 3rd member of our team and was VERY involved in the process. She loved tasting the frosting, mixing the colors, and giving us her opinions on how we should decorate. While she and Laura stacked the cake I rolled out the fondant.

Once the cake was thoroughly frosted in buttercream we carefully laid the fondant on top.

Laura smoothed and pinched it into place

Then took a pizza cutter and cut out off the extras

After that she started piping on the scenery

She was so good with all the details and every time I looked back at the cake I was amazed at how well it was coming together.

Here's the finished product. We were quite pleased with ourselves!

We used brown sugar at the bottom to look like sand and melted white chocolate into a seashell mold to make the shells. Teya was thrilled and proclaimed it, "the most beautiful cake EVER!"

Obviously I couldn't have done it myself, so many many thanks to Laura for all her help and yay for team baking!

Friday Foto: Fashionistas

For the last 6 months or so it's been all about the dress ups. I think Teya's cousin Maile introduced her to the idea and as you can see from the pictures, she quickly forgot about her pirate and dinosaur obsession and embraced the girly world of princess fashion.

Teya and her cousin Maile, where it all began.

Then her friend Megan, who has an enormous collection of dress ups, helped fuel the fire.

Working Megan's pretty pink heels

Halloween time and Brinley's on board too

Sadly the only dress ups we owned, besides their Halloween costumes, were a few tutus and a purple feather boa.

So I caved and bought them their own supply

And they've been putting them to good use ever since : )

The Hot Spot

If there is one place in our house the girls love to be, it's sitting at the craft table. It has definitely become the hot spot in our house. When Teya wakes up in the mornng, the first thing she wants to do is paint. Brinley is the same way. She wakes up and says, "I cuh-luh?" (Which, in case you don't speak baby, is "can I color?")

Teya knows where all her supplies are and she will just pull out everything on her own and get to work. She literally paints at least two masterpieces a day.

I love that they gravitate there and it's forced me to think of more fun things they can do there besides just color. Yesterday Teya and I made bracelets and necklaces with chocolate Cheerios. She was so patient threading each little Cheerio onto the yarn.

The end result looked (and tasted) pretty awesome!

Food art seems to be the most popular, although Brinley tends to eat most of her supplies.

Here's a fun food project Taber did with Teya. A marshmallow village made with toothpicks.


It doesn't really matter what they're working on, they just love to be there. Sure when Brinley joins the fun we get the occasional wall art mural, but Mr. Clean Magic Erasers take care of those and it's worth it to have an outlet for them during these cold winter months.

Fun Filled Weekend

This weekend we were able to do a lot of things that made me really happy. Starting with a trip to the Boston temple for our ward temple night. It's been awhile since I've been in a full sized temple and it was just incredible to see how big and beautiful it was.

It was nice being there with members of our ward and was such a great bonding experience. I always feel so much love when I'm in the temple. It really was the perfect way to start out our weekend.

The next day we did another thing I love: Exploring Boston! Taber was able to get some discounted tickets to the Boston Museum of Science so we decided to take the girls down there and check it out. It was an unbelievably gorgeous day. Sunny and warm (well, warm for my standards : )

The girls were so cute, walking hand in hand and checking out all the exhibits. They stared at a perpetual motion sculpture for literally 10 straight minutes. It made me wish I had one of those in our house!

We were up against some crowds since it was the first day of winter break and a lot of people were there. Sadly some of the big exhibits like the butterfly garden and Harry Potter were all sold out. We still had more than enough to do though, that place is soooo big!

Dinosaurs were one of the highlights for the girls. I personally was fascinated with all the hands on science stuff. I wish I had been to this place when I was taking Physical Science in college!

I think the girls favorite part was the Discovery Zone. They really got into all the hands on kids stuff.

I just loved seeing their faces light up when they saw or tried something new.

On Sunday we took one final trip down to Boston to have dinner with some old friends that we haven't seen in almost 8 years! James and Taber go way back, they met almost 15 years ago at a summer camp at BYU. They also ended living on the same floor their freshman year and after their missions we all danced together in a group called MSO. James's wife Melissa is from Alaska and Taber knew her family growing up, and then another couple we danced with, Richard and Kristal were also there. All of them are working or going to grad school in Boston so it was a fun little reunion for us.

I had to post a picture of our dinner to make me dad jealous : ) We ate palusami, kalua pork, lomi salmon, pineapple and Asian salad. So yum!

Here's a pic of all of us together. I took the top one and then we asked Teya if she would take one with all of us in it. It came out pretty decent!

I'm so glad we got to get in so many of my favorite things, temple, family fun, and seeing old friends. Definitely my kind of weekend : )

Friday Foto: Frame Worthy Accomplishments

Last year Taber and I took on running as a new hobby. We really got into it and both of us ended up finishing our first full marathons by the end of the year. My studly brother in law Kevin, who ran my marathon with me for moral support (and who is pretty much my running idol) Decided to help us immortalize our accomplishments by building us these gorgeous frames with our running bibs, medals, and race pictures.

I can't imagine what it would've cost us to hire someone to do this, but he did it as a gift. I've been meaning to post pics of them and to thank him for awhile now, so here they are. Thank you Kevin, you are the man.

and here's a picture of the back of Taber's frame. I guess Kevin felt that Taber's post marathon toes needed to be immortalized too : )

Side note:
It's been tough keeping up on our running hobby with the holidays, winter weather, and our big move. These frames are up in our house now though, and seeing them everyday has motivated me to get back on track. I'm currently training for the New York City Half Marathon in April. If you enjoy running blogs you can follow my training on bittenbytherunningbug.blogspot.com.

Valentines Weekend top 10:

1) Making Valentine cookies with the girls. (Even though we didn't have a heart shaped cookie cutter and ended up with pink gingerbread boys : )

2) Teya coming home from her Valentines Daddy/Daughter date with pure joy and happiness written all over her face.

3) Finding these funny pics on the camera after their date.


4) Taber holding shopping bags from Claire's and the Disney Store full of bright pink nail polish and Ariel the little mermaid jewelry. There's just something really attractive about a man who will shop in girly stores for his daughter. : )

5) Exchanging Valentines gifts with each other and with the girls.

6) Getting to go out without the kids two nights in a row!

7) Spending a fun night with friends and a fun night just as a couple

8) Scoring a $50 gift card at the white elephant exchange! totally didn't didn't expect to see a gift like that there, let alone end up with it!

9)Trying a new fabulous restaurant together. We went to a popular local restaurant with out of this world seafood. Their appetizers were amazing too! Fried tomato bacon salad?!! SOOO good


10) Toasted coconut blueberry swirl ice cream (so good it earned it's own bullet : )

Happy Valentines! Hope you all had a great one!

The Love Plate

Last night we had dinner with a SUPER fun and awesome family, the McFaddens. They have 5 amazing kids and their home is just full of life, love and energy. They were the first people to come and introduce themselves to us when we moved here and they've gone out of their way to make us feel at home since.

Anyway, I wanted to write about a tradition they have that really touched me and that I want to start in our family. I don't know how often they do it but at dinner they bring out a big plate decorated with hearts known as the love plate. One person is given the love plate and then everyone takes a turn saying why they love that person. The only rule is you can't repeat what someone else says.

Well I was the very lucky girl to get the love plate last night. I'm still kind of blown away by the sweet things that were said about me, especially by the children. They haven't known me very long but the things they said were so thoughtful and sincere. Here is a little sampling of the ego boost I got last night. (some of these are paraphrased because I can't remember everything they said but this is the gist of it)

13 year old daughter: " I love Becca because she's really giving. I'll never forget how the first time we went to meet her she gave us cookies. I also like that she's so happy all the time."

10 year old son said, "I love Becca because she's not shy. She's just really friendly and she isn't afraid to talk to new people."

7 year old daughter: "I love Becca because she's really generous and I like the way she spends time with her girls like when she made that bracelet with Teya."

4 year old son: "I love Becca because she's really fashion-ish." (he said more stuff after that but I couldn't remember because I was laughing so hard at the fashion-ish remark!)

Jeremy and Becca (the parents) said nice things too about me being down to earth and that my eyes reflect light and happiness. I can't tell you awesome it is to hear someone say something like that to you. Having the love plate seriously made my whole night and thinking about it continues to give me a lift today.

I guess it made me realize how important it is to give out compliments freely. I think positive things about so many people but I don't always take the time to tell them how wonderful they are. From now on I'm not going to hesitate. If I think someone is generous, friendly, kind, or even fashion-ish, I'm going to let them know!