Celebrating Audrey and Forest's birthdays!

While Audrey and Forest where with us for their Christmas break we celebrated their birthdays. Audrey turned 14 on January 1st and Forest turns 12 on February 17th. They are both growing up so quickly! We love them both so much and are so excited for them to come to Connecticut in August!

For their birthday Celebration, they picked chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for their birthday cake. You can't go wrong with chocolate, right? Here are some pictures of our celebration:

Forest and Audrey with their cake.

Close up of the cake.

The cake is lit. 26 candles in all can make quite the flame!

And they blew them all out!

Audrey's birthday gift...a volleyball! She loves to play!

Forest and his new chess set! He is so good!

Forest teaching Jake how to play chess.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO TWO TOTALLY AWESOME KIDS!

Did you know the Pez Factory was in Connecticut?

For any of you who know my husband well, you will know that he loves Pez. He's a huge collector and has accumulated quite a large collection of Pez dispensers. Well, when we learned that the Pez factory was in Orange, Connecticut (less than an hour away from us) we had to find out if we could go inside. When I first contacted them (March of 2011), they said they weren't open for the public but that they were working on getting a visitor center up and running for Pez fans. We were a little disappointed, to say the least. Well, about a month or so ago I got an email from the Pez factory saying they now had a visitors center that we could go to. We were so excited and decided we would for sure have to go! During the kids' Christmas break we were able to go visit. We were all excited about it but no one was more excited than Robb. Watching him exploring all the different Pez displays was like watching a kid in a candy store. Seriously. It was so fun to watch him. And the rest of the kids, too! As you can imagine, we snapped a lot of pictures. Here are some of them.

The front of the Pez Factory

Above the entrance to the visitors center was this really cool Pez sign.

Hanging from the ceiling of the entryway is this Pez motorcycle made by the Orange County choppers.

A giant size dispenser of the limited edition baseball pez dispenser. Of course Robb had to get one of these since it's only found at the Pez factory. Luckily, the one he got is not the giant size!

This is a view of the visitors center from the 2nd floor of the factory.

Throughout the center there were spots like this. Pez in the floor! The kids had fun with that.

One of the many vintage Pez pieces...

Oh. And look what Robb found. A BYU Pez dispenser! So cool!

BYU and U of U! Sadly, these weren't available to buy BUT we will definitely be looking for them to add to the collection!

Robb with his basketful of goodies.

The kids each got Pez buckets full of Pez candy. They could dispense whatever flavors they wanted. I didn't know there were so many different kinds!

Getting ready to leave after seeing so many cool things.

Outside the factory there is a bush that spells Pez. Another photo op!

And finally, when we got home, we took a picture of all that Robb bought. 17 new Pez dispensers! Oh. And notice his certificate. He took a Pez trivia quiz and didn't do too shabby!

We has a great time at the Pez factory. And now we can say we've been to Orange, Connecticut.

Christmas with Family

Christmas is such a fun holiday. One of my favorites. But what makes it the most fun and meaningful is having family around to share in the season. This year we had family come visit us. We were very excited to have Robb's mom, Caroline, come visit as well as my sister, Marcey, and her husband, Bill. Along with all five of our kids, Robb, and I we had a house full of family. It was awesome and I thought it make the holiday weekend perfect! Here are some pictures...

Our Christmas tree

Christmas morning...all the kids just woke up!

Audrey

Kate and Josh

Jake and Forest

Ready to open presents!

Josh in his new moon chair

Bill and Marcey

For Christmas breakfast, Robb's mom made her traditional Christmas tree biscuits. It was so yummy!

Josh, Audrey, and Jake enjoying their breakfast and a big stretch.

Josh

Audrey making faces for the camera.

Kate eating her breakfast.

Aunt Marcey, Uncle Bill, and all the kids

Marcey and Me

Bill and Marcey

My five FAVORITE kids. How I love them all!

We had a great holiday and hope you enjoyed yours as well! (Not sure how I missed getting pictures of Robb and his mom! I will have to make that up on the next visit!!!)

Celebrating Birthdays and the Lego Kids Fest!

The beginning of December is a busy time for our family. Josh, Jake, and Kate all have their birthdays from December 3rd-December 5th. Well, this year, the Lego Kids Fest came to Hartford over that same weekend! So, we got to go celebrate all three birthdays by going and having all sorts of building fun. It was a great way to spend over 4 hours!

On our way to the Lego Fest we stopped and had lunch. Since it was the boys' birthday they got to pick where we went. They picked Arbys.
Here are Josh and Jake about to get their birthday lunch.

One of the many activities at the Lego Fest was building something to contribute to a map of the United States. Here is a big picture of the map and what some people had already built.

Josh built a house he was very proud of.

Jake built a park that he said was his best thing he's built so far.

Kate was excited to be at the Lego Fest, too. She found a statue of Santa built all out of legos!

And then she got to see Santa! She was so excited!

As you can imagine, there was A LOT of building going on! The kids were in heaven!
Josh and Jake building their race cars.

Kate and Robb showing off Kate's car.

More building

Daddy/daughter building

Kate

Jake

Josh

A display of a lego scene

Who is that?

Another activity was a mural build. Each person was given a small square to build with certain colors. Then the square was put on a wall that built a mural. It was pretty cool. Here is Jake putting together his piece.

Josh with his completed piece.

And the mural...

One of my favorite parts of the Lego Fest was seeing all the AMAZING statues built completely out of legos. It was awesome to see and there were so many! Here are quite a few (not all, believe it or not) of the statues we liked:

Kate with a builder lego man.

A baby dinosaur

Look at how big this one is? I wonder how many pieces of legos they used to make all of these!

Egyptian Kate

Jake the lion

Ninjago

Jack Sparrow

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

Kate seems to like the dinosaurs.

The Toy Story crew

Spongebob

Harry Potter

Lightning McQueen

Some Star Wars friends

The big lego pile. The kids got to play in all these legos. They even made "lego angels!"

Resting after a long day of fun filled play...

Josh

Jake

Kate

After we got home from the Lego Fest, we had "birthday" cake. Every year I ask each of the kids what they want for their birthday dessert. This year, Josh and Jake picked cheesecake. So, here they are with their treat.

Blowing out the candles...

Birthday presents before....

And after...

Kate's birthday was on the Monday after our big weekend celebration. During the day she had a few friends over to play and have cupcakes. Here they...

Eliza, Lizzie, and Kate

Kate and her cupcake

That night we had another family celebration where Kate got her Buzz Light year cake and presents. As you can see from the look on her face, she was VERY excited!

Opening her presents...

Eating cake and ice cream...

Everyone had a great birthday weekend. It was fun doing something new that everyone enjoyed.