Party like you're 10 years old

Olivia had a couple of weeks celebrating her birthday.  She had a few friends over for her 10th birthday "late night" party.  We took the girls out on a photo scavenger hunt, played crazy games, watched a movie and stayed up late.  Olivia's favorite animal is an elephant and that was her only request when it came to the cake.  She and I made the cutest invitations with a photo that we took.
Our 10 year old Olivia loves:
Drawing
Writing
Harry Potter
Wearing Necklaces
The colors lime green and blue
Historical Fiction
American Girl Dolls
Reading
clothes
and she is learning to play the clarinet this year and is still taking piano lessons.

Friends

One of Sammie's best friends from school was baptized last weekend.  These girls were so cute and wanted their picture taken together.  Sammie has a cute little group of friends at school.  They aren't in the same classes this year, but they seem to have stuck together and really get along well.  They don't see each other outside of school all that often either, so it was fun for them to see each other at Audrey's baptism.  They were all giggles...at the appropriate times of course.

Yesterday...

Yesterday Sammie worked all afternoon on making this car out of a cardboard box.  She covered the whole thing with purple construction paper, put on headlights and a license plate.  Then she cut out a pretty impressive steering wheel and put in a dash board and stereo system.  She even made a key ignition and keys made out of paper on a paper key ring.  She was so proud of her creation.  I don't think play cars have the same seatbelt laws that we do in real life.

Cheetahs are my favorite animal

Abby is just so cute.  She was so happy before preschool yesterday and wanted to show off her "cheetah" leggings.  She says, "These pants might actually be leopard print, but I'll just say they are cheetah because cheetahs are my favorite animal."  She really knows her wild cats I guess and I think that she may actually be right about the pants being leopard print and not cheetah.

Buster

When my parents came last weekend, the girls insisted that Buster came too.  They requested that I call my mom and tell her to bring Buster along.  My girls have never really liked dogs until recently.  I think Buster may have something to do with it.  He is such a friendly, happy dog, and they just love him.  They have since warmed up to dogs in general and aren't as scared around them, even really big ones.  When I was scrolling through the ipod I found a whole bunch of pictures of Buster and thought they were so funny.  Someone was having a little fun with the camera.  He's a little scraggly and needs a haircut :)

Inspired

My girls were inspired by the circus.  I was suspicious of this set-up in their room, and on closer inspection...Barbie acrobats!  I laughed out loud.

 

A Decade of Olivia

Olivia turned 10 yesterday.  She is such a beautiful young lady.  10 year olds are definitely fun and funny.  She is starting to have her own tastes in things and likes to feel old and young at the same time.  She loves Elephants, American Girl, drawing, clothes, wearing necklaces, the color blue, historical fiction, chocolate milkshakes, and oatmeal cookies. She loves to read and reads and reads before bed each night.  She is becoming really good with little kids and is very kind to her friends.  We are so blessed with this girl in her our family.  My parents came for the weekend to celebrate and she has a party this coming weekend.  Lucky girl gets to celebrate practically all month long.  We took some pictures after church on Sunday and them before school, yesterday, on her birthday.  Here's 10 pictures of our ten year old.

 

The Circus

Last weekend we went to the circus.  I haven't been to the circus since I was a tiny little girl.  All I remember was that it was in an actual tent and I remember seeing clowns.  It's a very vague memory.  There was so much going on that my kids were mesmerized the entire time.  At intermission I told the girls that it wasn't over yet.  Sammie said with big eyes and a huge smile, "There's more?!"  They loved everything.  We saw trapeze artists, clowns, a trampoline act, people spinning from the ceiling, clowns, a dog show, tigers, elephants dancing, horses doing tricks, a tight rope act, someone shooting out of a cannon...and more that I can't even remember.  After the show on the drive home we were talking about all of the things that we saw and I couldn't believe it.  The girls were so giddy and happy.  I only had the phone to take pictures so they didn't turn out so great and things are a bit blurry.  Most of the pictures are from the pre-show.  We got to look at the animals and go on the floor and watch a few of the acrobats and the elephants!  Olivia loves elephants so it was a complete feeling of satisfaction that she got to see them up so close at the pre-show.  The elephant was literally walking right in front of her.