F-O-U-R!!!!

July 31 was Will's 4th birthday!!!  I still cannot imagine how we've gotten this far and how he could possible be 4 already, but here we are!  This year we decided on a monster truck theme for our family party.....that meant lots of fun decorating for mom and dad.  Here is just a glimse into our lucky 4 year olds day:)

It was Kailyn's idea to get him Despicable Me....so proud of her for being original!

All his new cars...mostly corvettes and mustangs:)

Cousins eating dinner together=one crazy picture!

So HAPPY with his monster truck cake!

A two-wheel scooter.....the envy of his sister.

Ryan has been waiting years to buy our kids legos.....

We decided to try someting new this year....a pinata!  I got the pull-string type and Payton was actually the one (with Todd's help) to find the string that opened the trap door....the kids enjoyed picking up some candy and filling their party bags!  
Happy 4th Birthday William.....we love you so much!

More like it!

Our second attempt at using bleach to tie dye was much more successful....at least for Kailyn's shirt!

Just because....

Groovy:)

Knowing that this week was going to be extremely hot, we headed out to find some new crafts/projects to try!  We found some clearance crafts at Hobby Lobby and scored t-shirts at the $ store.....we weren't sure at the time what we were going to do with them, but this morning we tryed our hands at using bleach to tye die!

I gave each of the kids a squirt bottle (after taking off every piece of clothing except unders) with a solution of 50% water/ 50% bleach and they got to work soaking the shirts (which we had twisted for a spiral effect)!

We were a little unsure as to what our finished products would look like (and for some reason Will's blue shirt turned out better), but we are pretty happy with the resulting tye die:) 

You can't really see the spirals on Kailyn's red shirt as well, but I'm hoping as they dry the bleach lines will stand out more!  If not, we might try again with a different bottle of bleach:)

Sweet Sandals!

Another awesome Family Fun recipe....sweet sandals!!!  A perfect way to spend time with friends on a day that was way too hot to spend any extended time outdoors:)

All the ingredients you need....oblong cookies ( I used Keebler Vienna cookies), colored frosting, pull apart licorice, sour gummy worms and some gummy candies! Oh, and some great friends to help decorate:)

The finished product....too cute:)  I think I'm going to make these for the next pool party!

Sparkle!

A nice clean deck, campfire and sparklers were all we needed to have an incredible night on the 4th (oh, and grandpa and grandma!)!

Not sure how Will convinced grandpa to get on the tramp.....they had a blast!

Sparklers!!!!!

What a relaxing evening.....finished off with fireworks!

A Patriotic Parade on Wheels

This year on the 4th we were invited to participate in a bike parade by our friends, the Meyerings!  Being that we rarely have plans for the 4th we were really excited about the possibilities:)  So I headed to the Dollar Store to find some things we could decorate with and rumaged through some bins downstairs and came up with some stuff that would work!  That morning we headed out to the breezeway to decorate (or shall I say so that Ryan and I could decorate) the bikes. 

We rode down the Hienz boardwalk and around Kollen park handing out candy to everyone we saw and wishing them a "happy 4th!" 

All decked out and ready to get started:)

The crew....all friends of the Meyerings who dreamed up the whole thing!!!!  Thanks for the invite and for giving our 4th a little sparkle!!!!