33 for my 33rd

Today I turned 33 years old and I have to say 33 feels pretty good.  I have been married for almost 10 years to my best friend and have four healthy, growing children who give me constant entertainment and love.  My Farmer and I continue to grow our farming operation and have even been recognized for some of our accomplishments.  I feel comfortable where I am in life and at the same time am inspired to do more, do better and help others.

And that is how come, to celebrate my 33rd birthday, I'm vowing to help others and give back through 33 random (and not so random) acts of kindness.  I already have ideas written down and am going to put my plan in action tonight when I run to town to go on a parts run (because when it's your birthday during harvest, you take any excuse to run to town to treat yourself for supper. 😉)

So now this is where you come in to help:  First, please comment below with any random (or not so random) acts of kindness ideas.  If you know someone in particular that could use some encouragement, feel free to reach out to me, as I would love to help that person through you or anonymously.  Secondly, reach out to someone and perform a random act of kindness yourself.  When we help others we not only uplift them, but make our own hearts full too.

I can't wait to hear your suggestions, as well as learn how you paid it forward!  Remember to Comment for a Cause!

Shell-a-brating LP's 5th Birthday Ninja Turtle Style

I cannot believe today marks one month since our oldest, LP, turned 5 years old!  I can still remember his "birth"day so vividly, so it is crazy to think he is now 5.  As he has gotten older, he has gotten into the whole birthday party thing a little bit more each year.  This year it was so much fun planning his family birthday party with him because of all his excitement and ideas he suggested.  When LP and I sat down to start talking about his birthday after his sister JP turned one, he had the theme all ready to go - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

LP has discovered the world of Ninja Turtles since starting Pre-K.  Despite only seeing maybe three episodes of the cartoon, he thinks they are awesome!  He plays "Ninja Turtles" at recess with his classmates and the coolest part according to LP is that his Dad likes Ninja Turtles too!  That's right, back when My Farmer was a kid, he was a Ninja Turtles fan.  It really is amazing that four mutant turtles have had so much longevity.

So when we started planning his birthday party we had three main things to think through - invitations, food and decorations.  The first thing to get out the door and into the mail were the invitations.  The kids and I have always enjoyed making homemade birthday invitations, so for LP's invite we used blank card-stock cards, construction paper and markers to create them.  We made invitations of all four Ninja Turtles.  LP enjoyed pasting the construction paper to the cards and writing his name on the front of each card.  Here is a look at one of the finished Leonardo (LP's favorite) cards:

Next, to think through was food.  LP insisted on having pizza for supper that night, because it is the Ninja Turtle's favorite food.  So we picked up some pizza from our local pizza restaurant, and served it with a Ninja Turtle veggie tray made with celery, carrots, olives and veggie dip.

And of course cake and homemade ice cream!  The best part for LP thinking through how he wanted his cake to be, he also got to think through how he wanted his birthday treats for school to be.  For the birthday party he said he wanted a chocolate cake that looked like the sewer and had all four Ninja Turtles on it, and for school he wanted chocolate cupcakes of all four Ninja Turtles.  So I did some searching on Pinterest and kind of combined the two ideas to come up with this:

I made a two-layer circle chocolate cake that I decorated the top of to look like a sewer cap.  I then used a cupcake of each Ninja Turtle cake to put on the top of the cake, and we made additional white cupcakes that we put around the outside.  I even researched NYC sewer caps to get my design right for decorating the top of the cake.

The final aspect of getting ready for the family birthday party was decorations.  Now this is where a soon to be five year old's imagination can go a little wild and big, but I think we did a good job of doing what he wanted while still keeping it simple.  We decorated our upstairs door to look like a Ninja Turtle using two table cloths, card-stock and markers:

And then I always like to do something to showcase photos of the birthday kid from over the past year.  LP drew some Ninja Turtle pictures that we then added photos to, and we also made a Ninja Turtle face of each turtle using a paper plate, paint, felt, googly eyes and a marker.

We also used a couple pieces of poster board to make a Ninja Turtle #5:

Overall I think LP had a great time sharing his love of Ninja Turtles with our whole family.  In the words of LP, the party was "cool"!

Clockwise from the cake: LP, My Farmer, JP,
myself and MP

Were you a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  Did you ever have a Ninja Turtle Birthday Party?  Remember to Comment for a Cause!

Be sure to check out LP's other Birthday Parties from the past too:

1st Tractor Birthday Party

2nd Train Birthday Party

3rd Curious George Birthday Party

4th Rocket Birthday Party

Celebrating a Winter ONEderland

Winter is a busy birthday season for our family and with another birthday arriving soon for our family I'd feel awful without sharing about our youngest, JP's, Winter ONEderland.  For all of our kid's we celebrate their birthday with a family birthday party surround by grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  It is always a lot of fun and a great way to get everyone together.

To start off, we made invitations for all of our family members.  For all of the kids' first birthdays the invites have involved their footprints.

To get the "Winter ONEderland" feel, the older kids helped me cut snowflakes, that we hung around the house with copies of photos of her from over the past year, and we made a big letter snowman.

The party started with a soup dinner.  I made chili and chicken and dumpling soups in crock-pots, and I made Jeni Eats's Funeral Sandwiches, which we affectionately called Birthday Sandwiches for the party's sake.  We also had a snowman cheese ball and relish tray out for people to munch on as everyone arrived.

The hot chocolate bar was a huge hit with everyone too.  I think everyone had at least one cup, if not two, before the end of the party.  The hot chocolate bar included individual hot cocoa mixes, mini chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, Heath bar toffee chips, peppermint chips, whipped cream, and wafer rolls.  I thought the wafer rolls would be the perfect "stir sticks" but they didn't last long enough in the heat of the water for that purpose.  So word to the wise, have extra spoons ready to stir your hot chocolate!

After we had the soup dinner, we opened presents.  JP loved having her big siblings help her, or should I say that they loved helping her :)

And all of the cousins had fun in JP's new sled!

After the presents were open, it was time for our traditional birthday cake and homemade ice cream!  I made a snowman cake with a cake pan I received from a family friend's grandmother.  It was the perfect touch for JP's Winter ONEderland party!

Our family - MP, My Farmer, me, JP and LP with JP's cake!

JP always has a smile on her face and is such a huggable, lovable kid.  She looks up to her big brother LP so much and loves to "train" with him as he likes to call it (aka practice walking).  Her and MP already have a sister bond and enjoy playing kitchen and dolls together.  It was so much fun to get our family together to celebrate such a special member of our family!  We all had a great time and felt very blessed.

Do you want to check out the other kids' first birthday parties?  Look at LP's First Tractor Birthday and MP's First Butterfly Birthday!  What is your favorite part of JP's birthday party?  What are some other first birthday party themes you thought were creative?  Remember to Comment for a Cause!

Happy Birthday to a special 2 year old!

Today is MP's second birthday!  First, I can't believe it has been two years already.  And second, I can't believe how much she has grown up in the last year!  We are having a family birthday party tomorrow so I've been going through photos from the past year.  I thought I'd give all of you a little glimpse at how our little miss has grown up during the last year.

Enjoying some ice cream
June 2014

Celebrating Independence Day
July 2014

Enjoying a sucker at a parade
July 2014

Stealing everyone's balls while mini-golfing
August 2014

Hanging out in the field
October 2014

Mom's right hand "girl" during fall harvest
November 2014

Enjoying popsicles
May 2015

Riding her 4-wheeler, wearing her tractor boots
May 2015

Celebrating her birthday this morning
with our traditional breakfast waffles complete with
candle and birthday song
TODAY! May 30, 2015

Happy 2nd Birthday MP!  Any guesses what her birthday party theme is going to be tomorrow??? (If you follow me on Pinterest you can probably tell...)  What birthday traditions does your family celebrate?  Remember to Comment for a Cause!

Blasting Off to LP's 4th Birthday!

Today our son, LP turns 4 years old!  My Farmer and I talked today about how we can't believe we have a 4 year old in our house, but at the same time it seems like he has been apart of our family for a long time.  LP is a curious and busy boy who loves to use his imagination.  He loves building things about of old containers and cartons, paper, really anything he can get his hands on, and he has been building a lot of robots and rocket ships lately.  So, at the beginning of the month when we asked him what he'd like his birthday cake to be this year we didn't really know what he'd say.  He excitingly said - a rocket ship!  We had a great time celebrating with family this past Sunday.

The first thing I always do is work on the invitation.  LP loves doing crafts, so making the birthday invitations with him was a great activity for the two of us.  We used a lot of materials we had in our craft supplies but did splurge and bought some black glitter paper to make the invitation out of this world.  For each card I cut a rocket ship and a porthole out of foam, that LP then assembled together.  We then put the black glitter paper on the front of each card and LP then stuck down the completed rocket ships on top of the card.  For the inside, I wrote the party's information on one side and LP drew a rocket ship on the other.  We put all of our invitations together in just an hour and had a great time doing them!

The next thing I got ready for the party was the decorations.  For all of our kids' birthday parties I like to do something simple to help show the "theme" and also to show photos of the child throughout the last year.  We've been working a lot at home on name recognition and letter recognition, so we made a name rocket.  I then showed LP around a dozen photos of him over the past year and he picked his favorite four to put on stars.

The final thing to take care of, and probably the most important was the food!  We actually had our baby daughter JP's baptism Sunday morning at church, so following church we had everyone to our house for crockpot chili and crockpot chicken and dumpling soup.  I also made an overnight salad and shrimp pasta salad to serve on the side, along with beer bread, corn muffins and crackers to go with the soup.  Following dinner, we opened presents and then had cake and homemade ice cream!  To make LP's rocket ship cake I made a 9x13 chocolate cake and simply cut the top at a curved angle to make the point of the rocket, and then I moved those two pieces to the bottom of the cake to make the fins on the bottom of the rocket.

We had a great time celebrating LP's special day on Sunday and all day today.  LP and I had fun doing a few simple DIY projects to make his party special for him and all of our family.  Check out these other great and fun DIY projects we have done for LP's previous birthday parties:

• Curious George 3rd Birthday
• Train 2nd Birthday
• Tractor 1st Birthday

What was your favorite birthday party theme as a child?  Remember to Comment for a Cause!

Thank you Birthday Express for recognizing LP's birthday party with their 

Best Birthday Award!

How to celebrate a BIRTHday as a family

Today JP turns one month old!  Part of me thinks "Wow! She's already a month old!", while the other part of me feels like she has been part of our family forever.  To celebrate her being a month old today, I thought I'd share how we celebrate BIRTHdays in our family.

It is the big day - your baby is born!  Family comes to visit, friends send their congratulations, and all you can think of and care about is that little baby you hold in your arms...  I wish it was that simple!  As a Mom of more than one child you not only are cherishing everything about your new bundle of joy, but you're also worried about your other baby or babies at home.  Are all the kids going to get along?  Is there going to be jealousy?  How is adding one more going to change our family dynamics?  To help decrease any of these anxieties, our family celebrates the new baby's BIRTHday in three simple ways:

Sibling Gifts:  Big Brother and Big Sister gifts can be as big or little as you like.  First, we (Mom & Dad) always give the new sibling(s) a big brother/sister shirt they can wear at the hospital.  Second, the new baby gives the older sibling(s) a gift the first day at the hospital.  We always tell our kids that the baby feels so lucky to have them as their older sibling that they brought them a gift.  The sibling gift starts with a special bag (when MP was born our son LP received a John Deere backpack he'd been eyeing for a couple of months, and this time when JP was born both kids got personalized Cinch Sacks).  The great thing about these bags is that they are reusable and can not only store all of their things at the hospital, but wherever and everywhere after the baby is home.  Inside the bag we include a new book, activities (such as coloring/sketch books, games, cards) to do at the hospital, and snacks for the hospital.  Both LP and MP really enjoyed their cameras in their bags from JP.  We got LP a disposable camera (which he actually did take a few good photos) and MP a play camera.

Share Family Photos:  Make sure to bring a family photo or a photo of your older child(ren) to the hospital to display.  This way your older child(ren) know that this is a special time for your entire family.  We have always put a photo of the older sibling(s) in the baby's hospital bed.  We tell them that that baby loves looking at their photo, and that all of their nurses and doctors know that they are the baby's big brother/sister.

Throw a BIRTHday Party:  What kid doesn't like a birthday party, especially if they get to help plan it?  On the first full day in the hospital we have a BIRTHday party complete with cake and ice cream picked out by the older sibling(s).  The morning of the first full day My Farmer takes the kid(s) shopping for a going home outfit for the baby, a cake and ice cream (and sometimes whatever else they deem necessary while out shopping...).  We tell all of our visiting family that cake and ice cream will be served all day to celebrate and the older sibling(s) are the host(ess) of the party.  They welcome everyone to the party and get the special role of introducing their new baby sibling to guests.  Be sure to sing Happy Birthday too!

Those are three simple ways we celebrate the arrival of a new family member.  What are some things your family has done?  Remember to Comment for a Cause!

Happy 1st Birthday to our Baby Girl!

A year ago today we welcomed our second-born, a beautiful baby girl, MP.

And now, I know it will sound cliche, but I can't believe that she is 1 year old!

We had family over to our house on Monday for dinner to help our Little Miss MP celebrate.  We decided to go with a Butterfly theme and had a great time.  Here is a glimpse at MP's 1st Butterfly Birthday Party:

We made butterfly birthday invitations by making butterflies
from two painted foot prints

We had butterflies hung throughout the house
with pictures of MP on them for decorations

Here is MP's Chocolate Butterfly Cake made from
4 heart cakes and 4 cupcakes with candy decorations

MP had plenty of help opening her gifts
from her big brother and cousin 

She got into it too by carefully examining and opening everything

She also had fun testing out several of her toys such as her grocery cart,

first pink tractor, 

and baby doll bed.

After presents it was time to sing "Happy Birthday" and blow out her candle

and eat cake and homemade ice cream!

Happy 1st Birthday MP!
We Love You Very Much!

What is your favorite birthday tradition?  Remember to Comment for a Cause.