A Star Wars New Year's Eve Party!

This year for New Year's we decided to have a party full of cousins. 5 of them came to stay with us for 5 days (without their parents). The boys are really into Star Wars and Harry Potter, but we decided to go with a Star Wars theme. Any good party starts out with FOOD! We all know that. Thank goodness for Little Caesar's and their professional chefs.

The group before the real fun began

What is a party without some homemade decorations. I had planned to do more decorations, but I was tired before the party even started. I consider it a huge success that we even had any party.

What kind of party would it be without some "bubbly". My niece wet the glasses, popped them in the freezer, and then dipped them in some sugar before adding the bubbly. So fancy!

What's a party without some nose picking, and how could we have a Star Wars party without Chewi in attendance. (what a cute Chewi she made:)) The boys are putting their light sabers to good use.

Here they all are dressed up and ready to go! Let the games begin!!
Some fighting to get the body limber.


The first of our games was an intense Slinky race. We had two winners - S and Rox. All the kids wanted to win because who wouldn't want a Slinky as a prize.

Then a little game of Twister. I imagined it would be a short game, but in the end we had to award 2 winners. The two in the middle must be made out of licorice because they just kept on twisting.

The last and craziest activity was a HUGE Nerf gun war. Thank goodness I was on K's team. He is such a strategist - even when it comes to Nerf capture the noodle. (we didn't have flags, but we had pool noodles) We won of course - well at least once. Some people asked me how I survived those 5 days. It all came down to 11 Nerf guns and 300 bullets. Every night and sporadically throughout everyday we had Nerf wars going on.

Most of the kiddos didn't make it till midnight. This little lady rarely made it past 8 pm any night. I think she made it to 10pm on the party night.

This, not so little lady wanted to give all those who slept early a surprise. A big red surprise!

Yep, she went around kissing all the boys on the cheek. Even K got one. The best part was some of the boys got all the way to church without realizing there was lipstick on their cheek! :) (poor guys)

All in all we had a blast!! Tomorrow the 23rd we celebrate another New Year - The Chinese New Year. I am sure it won't be as fun, but who's going to complain about red envelopes with money in them!

What do you do all day?

One of my favorite questions that people love to ask me is - "what do you do all day?".... Well who knows! Sushi on the other hand does A LOT everyday. Here are just a few of the cute ones.:)

CLIMBING and her recently aquired, MICROWAVING! Yep she has learned how to push over the stool, climb up, and start the microwave.


SUNNING!! Here she is preparing for her sun adventure - she is watching out for those wrinkles .

SMILING and LAUGHING!! She loves to do both - but not necessarily when you want her too.

RUNNING!

CRYING and TANTRUMING!

EATING - she picked those strawberries off my friends strawberry plant. She ate all of the ones she could see.

She likes to throw in some COOKING if there is time. (She got this awesome PINK kitchen hand-me-down from her cousins)

I almost forgot one of my favorites - RESTING!!

SLEEPING with her bum in the air.

First Day of School

They couldn't wait!!

They are so so handsome!

What a not so excited face. J is definitely not my photogenic boy. He hates to smile, and likes to make weird faces he then calls smiles. He just had picture day at school and he came home to tell me - "they had to take tons of pictures of me". I asked if it was because he was so cute. To which he responded -"no, they couldn't get me to smile" he then showed me his smile. Oh I can't wait to see those pics. :)
S gets home 1 hour before J does. It was in this hour the other day that I was looking at him and we had this conversation:

Mom - S you are so cute.

S - I know.

Mom - What! How do you know?

S - Everyone tells me that.

Mom - Like who?

S- Like my primary teacher, and lots of other people.

I visit teach his primary teacher - so I had to text her this conversation. Maybe he's not my most humble kid. What a face!

Here is S sitting at his desk. Does he look ready to learn or what? The thing about S is he doesn't like me to be around him at school. It embarrasses him - therefore he puts on a super grumpy face when I am around. In Kindergarten I used to ask him to give me a kiss goodbye in the car. We would be parked right in front of the school, so he would tell me to pull the car forward if I wanted a kiss. That way no one would see him do it. :)
Here J is meeting his teacher, Mr. Munsee for the first time. I have heard so many excellent things about Mr. Munsee. I know it is going to be an amazing year for J! (I am probably more excited than him) J on the other hand is fine seeing me at school. He even used to give me hugs when I would work in his class in 1st grade. This year when I work in his class he doesn't hug me, but he will stay in from recess to be with me. Got to love that kid!

Peek-a-boo

PEEK-

A-BOO

Randomness

This picture was emailed to me by my friend who just happened to have a camera at church when this was going on. Here is S putting on the Armor of God - I think its so cute that part of the armor is shin guards.

This picture is here just because. Sometimes I am amazed at how cute she is, and how much I love her. We all love her so much!!

We went a frog hunting...and didn't find a single frog. Well the kids looked cute doing it! :) We heard there were frogs in the field behind the houses - tons of frogs to be exact. I think our problem was we went in the summer. We will go again in the spring - when it's all wet and soggy... a frogs dream home. This picture is on one of my credit cards - I let the boys pick a picture each. This was S's pick.
We love this wagon!! We have had if for years- it has travel across the country with us. It is actually K's favorite moving tool. He piles all our boxes on it and moves them to their destination. Then the sides go back on and doubles as a kid hauler!
It even goes 4 wheelin.

This is what our backyard looked like until a couple of months ago. Yep a weed garden - interestingly enough the boys didn't mind it. They dug holes, built ponds, castles, and here created a man made mud pit. The creativity didn't stop there - they got their water guns.... Glad I stayed clear of them.

Here we celebrated S's 1/2 birthday! If you look close I forgot to put on a candle - yep that's what kind of awesome mom I am! He's really 7 1/2 years old.

Here is the little lady lookin a little fierce. She wants some ice cream, can you tell?!

Camping in Sequoia!

Yep we went camping. You know the kind with a tent - thank goodness for blow up mattresses! It was actually fun. We did a little hike everyday. Here we did the 100 year giant trail full of redwood trees. I will admit they were beautiful. Most were hundreds of years old if not a thousand. If there were two trees close together they actually would grow into one massive trunk. It is hard to explain, but if you were looking up at the trees you would see 2 separate trees. If you looked at the base it was just one tree. Sometimes there were cave like holes in the middle of the trees that would make a pretty cool house. :) Well if you were inclined to have to live outdoors. In the pictures you will see that S was very into this pose the whole trip. Why ask why. *notice the hole in Sushi's shoe - I thought girls were easier on stuff than boys. Wrong -that is like her 3rd pair she has ruined.
I have to mention it - no matter how obvious it is. When you camp there is so much DIRT!! This was a pretty normal look for the Sushinator.

Ready to pick rice you may think, but this was K outfitted for our hike. It was kind of comical and very cute.

Oh and the bugs. It must be nice being a kid and camping, because everything you love is outside (and sometimes inside) your tent. There is a little caterpillar climbing on S's sleeve - he is definitely a bug man.

Then there was the night of the dirt fight. Yep - they even thought it would be funny to pour dirt on their heads, and down their shirts. You can only imagine our tubs when we got home after 4 days of camping.

This part was my boys favorite part. The smoke, I mean FIRE! Every night they were chomping at the bit to help get it started. We of course had smores every night until we ran out of supplies.

The hardest part about camping was the sleeping! Sushi had a really hard time sleeping because of the cold. That is why we ended up leaving a night early. We needed our beds! :)

Off topic - a couple of days ago my mom was up visiting. J was giving her a list of his favorite people. My mom made the top of course. His list is as follows:

1- Grandma (my mom)

2- Dad

3- Sushi

4- S (little brother)

5- Mom .. Yep here I am - at the bottom of the list. It kind of made me wonder where I would be if we had a dog. :)

And she shakin that thang like who's da ish

You know that line comes from the "Thong Song" - who could forget a song like that! Anyways - this little lady has some natural booty shaking going on when she walks. You may think I am exaggerating, but check out these tell all photos!

See what I'm talking about. In this picture she is wondering if her booty is that big of a deal. Lady it is!!

On a not so scandalous note. For Mother's Day K-man made up some beautiful grub for my mom and I. This is one of his creations - he really just goes in the kitchen and creates. My brother has tried to copy some of K's creation with disastrous results. I know everyone agrees that it makes it taste even better when you don't have to cook it. :)