Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Easter Weekend 2011

As promised in the last post. This past weekend was packed full of fun and lots to do. Our "weekend" started on Thursday with the first production of The Living Last Supper at our church. We had two shows this year Thursday & Friday. John & Jordon were both apart of this production they were both disciples. Jordon was James & John was Thaddaeus. Both of them did a wonderful job.

Gabe with "Jesus" after the show. He was very excited!Saturday was the annual Easter Egg Hunt at our Church. This is Gabe ready to go and find some eggs. The Hunt Is On!Ms. Debi let Gabe barrow her hat at the end of the Egg Hunt couldn't resist in getting a shot of him in it. He will LOVE this picture in few years when he is a teenager!Saturday evening we had to take some time out to color eggs. Gabe & Shenira are the only two that I can still get to color them. This is one of my favorite parts of Easter. Might be one of Gabe's favorite parts too :)The kids baskets Easter MorningThis is how I found Gabe when I came around the corner. He was so excited to see what he got but he knows he has to wait until Mommy is there to take pictures! To funny.







After Church we headed to Tekonsha to have Easter Dinner with my Mom & Dad. We had a great lunch and then it was time for the Easter Egg Hunt at Nana & Papa's house to start. Do you think they are ready?Uncle"Egghead" Danny. He's always good for a laugh. The kids loved finding this egg. But Gabe was the only one brave enough to go up and take it off of his head. John hides the kids special eggs every year and every year it is fun to watch them find them. Tony's was in the back of the back board of the basketball hoop. Uncle Josh was going to to help out but Tony got it before Uncle Josh could! Tony thought he had the bad it rough but this year it actually was.....

Shenira that got the raw end of the deal! Daddy hid her egg up underneath the rear bumper of he car. It took her forever to find it!Last year I tried to get a picture of my mom an I and it didn't turn out so I had to make sure that we got one this year. The big & little kids played kick ball after the egg hunt with the gift that Harrison got from Nana & Papa. Easter 2011 in the book one more year with Nana & Papa. These are all of the grand kids minus Elizabeth & Evan and plus Buddie! Poor Shenira & Haley are so out numbered!Easter 2011 at John's Mom & Dad's. After dinner the kids were ready for the Easter Egg Hunt at Ama & Grandpa Fuller's house. They fill their eggs with quarters instead of candy which makes the kids really happy. This year Shenira, Livy, Gabe & Karis were the hunters! Gabe & Karis were or sure ready to take advantage of there couple minute head start!Gabe, Liv & Shenira on the mad egg hunt to see who could collect the most. Karis, Shenira, Livy & Gabe. The numbers of girls to boys on this side of the family are a little more even but the boys still have them beat. Tony, Jordon & Dustin are to old to do this part of the hunt now but Grandma had special eggs for each of the kids & they also have a "Golden Egg" that still had to be found. To find those we headed back inside. Gabe counting up is loot! I LOVE this picture of Dustin. It took him a long time but he finally found his special egg. Last year they hid his egg in Grandma's coffee pot. This year they had a coffee pot that needs to be taken to Grandpa GG's house and they hid his egg in there. The finder of the "Golden Egg" for the first time ever! She was so excited.






Happy Easter everyone!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Weekend Fun

When I lived with my grandparents for a couple of years my Grandma always called me her Go-Go Girl. I'm not much for sitting around and doing nothing. Which is why I'm pretty sure that God gave me 5 children and such and large extended family! Just keeping up with our own kids keeps us going, going & going! So this past weekend was no exception. We started our Friday off with Daddy taking the day off and Mommy having the afternoon off so that we could take Gabe to use one of his gift cards that he got for his birthday and to take him to the new Rio movie. His birthday gift card was "wisely" spent (sorry can't help myself!) on this cute little Owl. I love the mind of a six year old and I can't wait because someday he is going to look at us and say what was I thinking when I named all of my animals? This cute little Owls name is "Friendlee Owelee" oh yeah this was all him! We still had some time to kill before the movie so we decided to take him to see the Easter Bunny before we left. Turns out that 2:00pm in the afternoon on a Friday is a great time to go and see the Easter Bunny there was no one there. So Gabe was really able to just hang out with the Easter Bunny. He was quite funny because he knew that the Bunny couldn't talk but he kept on asking him question anyway. Very fun to watch.
It was then time to head to the movies. We had seen the preview to this movie a month or so ago and John and I knew that we wanted to take Gabe to see it. Going to the movies isn't something that we do very often but it seems like in the past couple of months we've been going more often. A friend of mine got me a gift card for Christmas and we went a couple of time on that. Saturday took us to Myra & Johnny's wedding reception (Myra is John's sister, we went to the wedding in Vegas last month) for family & friends here. John & I all dressed up and ready to have some fun. I love getting dressed up with him.This picture though blurry is one of my favorite pictures from the night. Tony took his little sister out for a whirl on the dance floor. I love the look of pure joy on their faces. He is such a good big brother and they are going to miss him next year. He will still be at home but with work and college he for sure won't be around as much as he is now. Now this kid all I can say is OH MY WORD. I knew that he liked to dance but I had no idea that he really LOVES to dance and that he was nearly as good as he is. He had people taking his picture and dancing with him all night long! He went to bed that night saying "I love reception".zzzzzzzzzzzzSunday was Palm Sunday, Haley's Birthday Party & the Teen Pie Auction at Church.
I'll start with Palm Sunday service. All of the kids get to participate in this service they came in with palm branches singing and then also got to sign two other songs on stage. I love watching all of the kids on stage. After church we headed down to Nana & Papa's house to hang out for a little while before Haley's party. Nana found out that the Easter Bunny was going to be at one of the parks near her house so we decided to go down and check it out before Haley's party. They had a bounce house that they kids loved & of course what kid doesn't just plain like being at a park. This would be the look of pure joy on my son's face. He loves being outside and the simple fact that it was COLD didn't stop that pure joy & excitement.Hayden, Haley, Harrison & Gabe with the Easter Bunny. The birthday girl! I can not get over how fast she is growing up 4 years old already. Here she is showing off her new rain coat, hat & umbrella that Nana, Papa, Uncle Dan & Aunt Bonnie got for her. This is by far my favorite picture of her. Nana & her little princess Haley. Nana made Haley's awesome Tinker Bell Cake. Our last stop for the day on Sunday was back to Church for Sunday night service and the Teen Pie Auction. Every year ladies from the church make & donate a pie to the teens and then they auction them off to raise money for up coming mission trips. My pie is the one on the bottom left. It was my first attempted at this pie. My hope is that it tasted better than it looked! The fun thing about the pie auction is that everyone gets a free slice of pie to enjoy while they are doing the auction. This would be my little man enjoying his free slice of pie!I would like to say that the rest of this week and weekend coming up is going to be a little less full but I'd be lying. We will be going to Church Performances of the Living Last Supper that both John and Jordon are in, an Easter Egg Hunt, Easter Service & Easter dinner at both of our parents houses!















Tuesday, April 12, 2011

My Baby is 6

April 3rd was Gabe's 6th birthday. I really don't know when he went from being a little baby to being 6 but I really don't like it. Time seems to be flying by so much faster the older I get and I feel like I'm missing so much. But anyway back to the birthday fun!
Gabe's birthday started on March 31st. Because of spring break Gabe celebrated his birthday at school the last day before break. By his request I made the Little Green Men & Hamm from Toy Story for his cupcakes. Grandma Fuller went into school that day to read to the class and took all of the kids a coloring book.
April 3,2011 The actual birthday. This day was jam backed full of fun. Because of Spring Break we pushed his party to the following weekend but we wanted to make sure to make his special day fun. So we asked him what he would like to do and that is exactly what we did.
We started our day off with Church. Our Youth Pastors son was born last year on Gabe's birthday so we had to make sure to get a picture of our birthday buddies.

This is Gabe & Jonas.

After Church Pastor Dave & Kelly went with us to meet Daddy at McDonald's as this was Gabe first request for the day. Lunch at McDonald's. After lunch daddy had to go back to work for a couple more hours but, Dave, Kelly, Gabe & I headed to...... Chuck E Cheese's for some fun, this was the second request for how he got to spend his special day. He wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese with his best friend Kelly. He had some tokens left from a previous visit and got 25 more free ones because it was his birthday. So this stop cost nothing which made it even better. Dave and Kelly played all kinds of games with him and road the roller coaster with him too. Dave and Kelly had to leave so Gabe and I waited just a little bit longer for Daddy to come and pick us up so that he could head out to our next stop. The Movies! Nana & Papa took all of their grand kids to the movie to see Hop. It was lots of fun to have most of us together. After the movie we had one more stop to make to complete his birthday.Meeting Aunt Debbie, Uncle Carl, KatiBeth, Kenton & Chelsea at Red Robins for dinner. This was a surprise for Gabe he knew where we were going (he got to eat free, if you can't tell I love the free stuff!) but he didn't know that someone was meeting us there. He was so excited. We had a great dinner. The staff came over to sing to him and he ignored them the entire time. It was pretty funny because most people get embarrassed but not my kid he just pretends that they aren't even there!


April 9, 2011 The Toy Story Party.

This year we invited friends from Gabe's class. We were able to get the church again so having extra kids was great. At Gabe's request he wanted to open presents first. This is just one of the many cool birthday gifts that he got.

After presents were opened we headed over to play a couple of games the first game we did was "The Claw" we hid 25 little green men in beans and the kids had to use a tong to find them. We also hid one Woody doll in there and the person that found that got a special prize. This game was so simple and the kids had a great time. Next we played pin the nose on Mr. Potato Head. With the help of Gabe's big brother Jordon & sister Shenira we ended up with a great potato head. Jordon drew the body, Shenira colored it and I added the rest with a great new cricut cartridge that my friend Dawn got for me. The Cake. The Downs' bought Gabe every single Toy Story character that was in the movie and mommy made his cake and added them all to it. This was such and easy cake to make and he loved it with all of his toys on it.

Front of Cake

Back of Cake.No birthday is complete without a birthday wish. Not sure what he was wishing for but he sure knew how to put some effort into it! I LOVE this picture with all of his friends looking on!This is Gabe with all of his friends. There was no way that he was going to have this picture taken without his best friends Kelly & Kati.


Gabe with his birthday sign. This wrapped up our party day.
He is growing so fast and making these memories with him are so very important to me. I love that God picked me to be his mommy and I can't wait to see what this year will bring with our now six year old little man. Happy Birthday Gabby, Mom and Dad love you tons!