More birthday and projects!

Since Baba and Caitlin share a birthday, we had one more little family celebration at our house the day before their birthdays.  

Birthday girls blowing out their candles

Happy 3rd and 31st Birthdays

Also, we were lucky enough to get Bryce's dad and his friend Jim (Pepa/the new papa) to drive down to Austin from Michigan to help with a big project.  Ever since we bought the house, I've wanted to put some type of locker/storage thing in our laundry/mud room. We wanted to maximize the space and our use of it which kind of meant we needed a custom solution.  Papa said he could do it and he convinced his friend to join him.  So, they came down for the Holidays/Caitlin's birthday and built us these fabulous lockers in our laundry room.  Thanks to both of them and Dave Greenberg for lending us some tools.

View from the house into the laundry room (the other door connects to the garage). We have 3 lockers, each with their own drawer underneath (with slow close drawers) and own shelf/cabinet on top. I love that I have a shelf for each kid to put water bottles/papers, etc. and a cabinet for anything I want out of the way or whatever else I might want to put in there. Each drawer is also divided so we can put say shoes on one side and hats, etc on the other or however we want to divide things.

View from the other direction.  There is bead board in the back. The bench is nice and big so you can sit and put on shoes; plus I can still put my laundry basket over there when doing laundry. Now the kids backpacks are off the floor and coats are with them.Shoes aren't thrown all over the house and I'm not constantly taking them upstairs. We love it! Thanks again for all their hard work.  Now we need to convince them to come back and do some more projects for us :)

Caitlin's Rapunzel Party

When it came time for Caitlin's birthday, there was no question what the theme would be... Rapunzel! She has been Rapunzel obsessed for quite awhile.  Of course, I immediately went to Pinterest for party ideas where I found quite a few cute ones.  If you haven't seen the movie, then 1) you should because it is pretty good and 2) you probably won't get most of the things below but just trust me that they are part of the movie Tangled.

The birthday girl!

Favors: Rapunzel's Paints!

Below are some of the food items.  We served them all in cooking pans (which if you've seen the movie, you understand the frying pan reference).

These were "Lantern boat" jello cups

Tower kabobs of fruit

This was some homemade bread put into Rapnuzel's braid

We also had "Hazelnut soup" which was just a yummy tomato soup from Costco along with Maximus' apples and Snugly Duckling sweet potato fries.  Yummy!

We decorated the house with some sun banners I made and also covered the table in parcel paper so the kids could draw all over it.

More decorations

Food setup

This was my poor attempt at "Tower" cupcakes. The icing just would not work with me and I couldn't get it to shape into a tower. But, the kids didn't care... they ate it up regardless!

The cake

Because Caitlin's birthday is in January, I was nervous about the weather. We were going to be having all these kids over and if they couldn't play outside, I just didn't know what they were going to do... it would be too much chaos in the house!  Caitlin does a weekly music class called Music with Mar. My friend Ange is a teacher so we got her to do a short class with all the kids. It was perfect! Caitlin loved it and so did most of the kids. And Ms. Ange did such a great job too.

Here the kids doing an instrument parade. I took some videos which I'll try to upload later.

Fortunately, the weather turned out okay so the kids were able to play outside as well.  

Happy 3rd Birthday Caitlin!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

Finally getting to Christmas! So, we awoke on Christmas Eve morning to find out that my sister's water had broken and they were headed to the hospital. That definitely changed some of our plans. I spent the morning running errands but made it home early enough to continue our tradition of making sugar cookies for Santa!

The kids helped me roll out the dough and cut them.

It probably took 5x as long to do but I know they enjoy it.

After they were done baking, we started icing them.

By then, it was time to get ready for church. My sister wasn't very far along so we figured we'd head to church then go to the hospital and check on her.

Quick picture of the kids before church. The weather was really nice that day (although a little windy).

After church, we swung by the hospital. Not much progress so we headed home for dinner and to put the kids to bed.  My mom and I returned to the hospital after that and stayed a few hours before heading home for some sleep.

I took a few pictures of the kids in their Christmas PJs before they headed upstairs.

Christmas morning! The kids slept well and were SO excited that Santa had come.

Ready for gifts!

First the stockings...

Then onto presents from Santa.



I think both of them were pretty happy with what they got. We only did the Santa presents that morning so that my mom and I could eat breakfast and then head to the hospital.

Chelsea Matz was finally born around 12:30pm via c-section.  Both momma and baby are doing well. I actually don't have any pictures on my camera of them so I will have to do another post on it. But, what a wonderful Christmas present!  It was a great day for our entire family. Hope everyone else had just as lovely a Christmas.

Trail of Lights 2012

This year, they brought back the Trail of Lights to Zilker Park. I loved going to this thing in the past so one Friday, we decided to be brave and go with the Greenbergs. You may be thinking, brave, why do you need to be brave? Well, let's just say that getting to, through, and from with 2 little kids could have been a complete nightmare. Especially considering we chose a weekend night of an event that ran for one week only  (Sun-Sun).  It also was pretty cold that night although I kind of liked it... made it feel more like Christmas!

Shot of the trail and downtown in the background

Fortunately, we teamed up with the Greenbergs who are very wise - we used the Kreig field shuttle and that was a HUGE choice.  We easily parked, got on a shuttle, and down to the trail. Riding the bus was the kids favorite part of the whole experience I'm pretty sure!

First stop... the Zilker tree to spin under the lights!

Evan spinning

Caitlin and Evan spinning

After that, we headed towards the trail. We got there right around the time it opened and there was a huge line of people waiting to get in. We foolishly walked all the way back to pretty much the exit of the trail before jumping in line as we could see no end.  The kids enjoyed running around a little at least as we walked towards the entrance.

Quick photo of the kids with the trail

Finally! We made it to the entrance.

Once we got inside, it was super crowded. You couldn't see both sides of the trail at once. It was a little chaotic keeping track of the kids although they did a pretty good job of staying close and riding on Daddy's shoulders. We grabbed a quick bite and then kept going.

Some of the displays

Once we made it about half way around, it did thin out which was nice.

Family photo with some of the trail behind us

Evan and a fire truck

Daddy and Caitlin with the fire truck

At this point, we were at the end. We made it back up to our shuttle and very luckily, got on one pretty quickly.  The lines for shuttles to other places were VERY LONG and after our shuttle left, we heard on the radio they were stopping other shuttles until they could bus some of those people! We again had made the right choice in choosing Kreig field.  We pretty easily got back to our car and back on the road. 

Overall, it was a fun evening and I think the kids enjoyed it even though it was rather long and crowded.  I'm glad we made the journey although next year.... I'm not sure we'll make it when we are outnumbered! If they made it a little longer (i.e. 2 weeks instead of just one), that might help with the crowds and I'd consider it. Otherwise, Trail of Lights, we'll see you in a few years!