Boopy's official birthday...

Since Boopy's actually birthday fell on a Tuesday, both Papa and I had to go to work, but we woke up Boopy with sweet happy birthday hugs and lots of morning kisses. Sam treated Boopy, Big Boy and Gaby to a fun morning at the new bounce place in town, Bounce U. From what Sam told me and the pictures she sent via her phone, the kids had a ball!

After Papa and I got home from work we took Boopy to Red Robin per her request for her birthday dinner. She was very excited to have the staff sing happy birthday to her.


When we got back home it was still early enough to give the kids some time to play outside for a bit. Our neighbor friends were out in their yard playing with Noah's Slip N Slide and even though it was too terribly hot, the kids jumped right in and had a good time. All in all, a wonderful fun filled birthday for our crazy 3 year old!

The Princess Party!

This Tuesday, May 19th, Boopy will officially turn 3 years old. I seriously can't believe that our little girl is three! We celebrated this past Saturday with a Princess themed party at our house, per Boopy's request. Before I go into party details, I want to brag about my wonderful husband. He designed and made Boopy's requested princess castle cake. He was up until 2 pm the night before working on it, but at least Sam (who watches the kids for us) and I helped bake a bunch of the cakes the couple days beforehand since Papa Vaughn was out of town from Tuesday until Friday. (Thanks Sam!) Didn't the cake turned out awesome! He's really set a standard now after this and Big Boy's pirate cake.

Our princess posing after coming down all ready for her party. Aunt "Guya" helped get her dolled up. I found her dress at Sams Club for a mere $12!! I loved how pretty it was AND if you look closely in the black and white pattern right above each flower is an actual sketch of Cinderella, Belle & Sleeping Beauty.

Shortly after the guests arrived, we encouraged everyone to have a bite to eat. We served hamburgers, hot dogs, my dad's recipe potato salad, southwestern chicken salad, watermelon, princess punch, iced tea, basically the usual BBQ food. While the kids were eating, the gal playing Cinderella showed up. I smuggled her inside to the bathroom where I had the Cinderella costume waiting for her. Once she was ready, I smuggled her back outside via the garage where she then waited and rang the doorbell. At that point we told Boopy to answer the door as she had been greeting all her guests. It was so funny when she peered out the front door window. She was so stunned and surprised, she just froze with her hand on the doorknob. Papa had to go over and "help" Boopy to open the door. It was so cute!

I think it took Boopy a minute to realize that, yes, Cinderella REALLY was at HER party! The real fun and reason we set this up was that Cinderella is one of Boopy's favorite princesses. Of all the characters we saw at Disneyland in April, we never managed to see Cinderella. Boopy had commented on this fact more than once, so the idea of having "Cinderella" at her birthday party was just too good to not have happen. One of my friends managed to find "Cinderella" for us through her cousin's drama class - gotta love Facebook and great friends!

"Cinderella" was wonderful! She sat with all the girls, helped Boopy hand out goodie bags and helped her to open her presents.

Boopy and friend, Gaby, had to point out the Cinderella figure to Cinderella. Every Cinderella thing Boopy got as a gift, she pointed out as well saying, "look it's you!" to Cinderella.

Singing Happy Birthday and blowing out her candles.

After Cinderella and all Boopy's guests left, the kids sat back and enjoyed all the new presents Boopy got. Big Boy managed to sit in one place long enough that I finally got a picture of him. He spent most of the party outside on the playset and trampoline even though it was 100 degrees outside. I swear he would live outside if we let him!

Boopy got some fun "Princess" make-up from cousin Kennedy. She promptly put some on in the evening and insisted she do it all herself. Didn't she do a lovely job! (wink, wink!)

We finished out the birthday celebration on Saturday watching the boys take a nap, playing with toys, me messing around with pictures and overall relaxing. Sunday was wonderful as well as we simply went to Target to spend Boopy's gift card money from Grandma & Grandpa in Washington and then did some more relaxing at home. All in all a very nice birthday weekend. One I hope Boopy has very fond memories of in the years to come!

She's such a HAM

What can I say, Boopy loves the camera. Big Boy obliges me on occasion but Boopy, she hams it up frequently. A couple of weeks ago they tagged along for a photo shoot with some good friends of ours. Boopy decided to ham it up and I couldn't resist her cute little face. I stumbled back upon this pic while working on the picture set, which I'm still not quite done with. I'm not sure which photo effect is my favorite, so here's all three for you to see.

Bouncing, Somersaults, & Balance Beams!

Boopy is forever scaring people with her adept ability at being a daredevil. She jumps from our bed, frequently, and it's not a low to the ground bed. She often falls, nearly on her face, yet gets up laughing and does it again. We have an simple exercise "ab roller" which is just her size apparently for using as a hanging bar or laying on top of and flipping over. yes, she is a daredevil. Based on this and the fact that Big Boy also loves to hang from jungle gyms, we decided we should seriously consider looking into gymnastics for the kids. So, this morning Big Boy & Boopy got to go to a trial gymnastics class at Gymnastics Beat. Not surprising, they LOVED it! They can both go at the same time in their own individual class and yet they are in one large area so we can watch them both. This gymnastics school goes from "Mommy & Me" classes to adults so there is room for them to grow if they continue liking it in the future. We definitely plan on looking into signing them up.

Please forgive the quality of the pictures. I didn't want to turn on my flash and distract any kids or instructors, but how could I not take pictures of their first day at gymnastics!

Boopy will be in the Little Pre-K class which only had 4 kids, including her today. She had no problem figuring out what to do and just jumped right in. Although I did have to walk over to the other side of the gym from the parent area at the start until she warmed up to the teacher and what gymnastics was all about.

They have a "tumble track" where the kids get to jump along on a trampoline then go through a series of obstacles to get back tot he trampoline. She loved it!

Big Boy will be in the Beginning Gym Jr. They worked on backward somersaults, the rings, hanging upside down from the uneven bars with their feet on the bars. He also got to go on the tumble track which he LOVED!

Here Big Boy is learning how to do a backwards somersault.

They had each kid in his class work a station. Here he was instructed to use both feet and jump over the mat as a precursor to learning a cartwheel.

Here are the two of them immediately after their one hour session. They received star stamps on their hands and stickers. What do you think - you think they liked it?

It just so happened this afternoon that there was also an Open House going on at a brand new Little Gym today, not far from our house. Papa Vaughn had to go to work at noon so after we dropped him off at work, the kids and I met up with my friend, Natalie and her kids Rocky & Gabby for some free afternoon play. What was great, was getting the chance to let the kids try out some of the Little Gym stuff in comparison to Gymnastics Beat. While Little Gym is great and has a lot to offer, the growth factor at Gymnastics Beat as well as the trampolines (which the kids LOVED) makes me feel better about our decision to attend there. Overall the kids had a great happy and bouncy day!

They both LOVED the balance beam and actually did very well.

At the Open House they had other activities like a bounce house and crafts which we took full advantage of. Both kids made a Thanksgiving turkey.

Meow! (A Boopy Funny)

The other night the kids were finishing up their dinner and I was in the kitchen cleaning up. While my back was turned to them I heard a bunch of giggling, eating, and more giggling. I turned around to see Boopy standing on the chair, holding on to the table and eating her dinner like a dog, face first. My immediate reaction was to laugh, but since we are trying to set boundaries and proper dinner etiquette, I instead had the following conversation with her:

Me (sternly): "Boopy, that is not okay! You are NOT a dog."

Boopy (with no hesitation, looks up at me and says): "I'm not a dog. I'm a kitty-cat. MEOW!"

And she promptly went back to eating like a dog.

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If anyone needs some cheap entertainment, I'm willing to rent her out!

She Did It!!!!

She did it! She walked down the aisle like a big girl! Boopy was an adorable little flower girl. Not that I'm biased at all. Seriously though, she made us so proud. After the rehearsal on Friday, I was a bit skeptical that she'd actually go down the aisle. She had played shy and didn't really want to leave my side. At the rehearsal dinner she warmed back up and showed to true crazy super good eater self. Big boy was super as usual.

As for the wedding on Saturday, I took Boopy to get her hair done by the lady that does mine. I had picked up cute bobby pins with rhinestones and made ribbons out of extra flowers from the parts of her dress that head to be trimmed off due to it being too long. She looked adorable! We did all pictures before the ceremony which I think helped Boopy warm up to everyone even more. She did so good, doing everything I asked of her. I think she's a little used to me and a camera, don't you think!

She adores her "Auntie" Jen!

A beautiful wedding party!

As for the ceremony, she walked down the aisle after a small confusion where she tried to go around the chairs along the outside. The wedding coordinator helped guide her back to the center where she walked down until she saw Papa in the second row and she ran too him. At least she made it down!! At the reception both she and Big Boy did beautifully. They played and danced with everyone! They really did so good especially considering that both Papa and I were up taking pictures and busy with wedding stuff. They were such troopers. Big Boy even fell asleep around 10 pm in the dance area after dancing and dancing and dancing! Boopy, our little night owl, well, she didn't want to stop dancing! She would have been content to stay dancing all night had we not pulled her away to go home. As it was we left at 10:45 and they only had the wedding site booked until 11! Needless to say our little party animals sleep wonderfully! Big Boy our early riser woke somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00. Boopy actually sleep until 10am!! She has never slept that late! Overall, we are so proud of them both and so happy and honored that our family could be a part of Jenn & Chris's wedding!