Quincy Lu turns 5!

Our baby girl is five!!!  Stop it!  Stop growing!
As much as I can't stand the growing up too fast part, it is fun to see the little lady she has become.  Not only is she as cute as can be - she is a really, really good kid.  I don't know if it is because she is the youngest, or her personality, or that we are just better parents, but she is and has been the easiest child from the beginning.
Our perfect little caboose.
She deserved to have one heck of a party...and man did she get it!

Because she such an animal lover, it was easy to choose where her party would be:

We went to Build-A-Bear at the University Mall in Orem.  There were twelve 4-5 yr olds, plus our older 3 kids and 2 older cousins for a total of 17.  Wow!   It was great having Grandpa Judy and the Aunts/Uncles and cousins from Provo meet us there.

It went like this:
-Name tags and introductions with Mary, our party leader
-Picking out which animal they wanted
-Circle games and stuffing the animals
-Adding little hearts inside and stitching up.  Quincy got 17 hearts, 1 from each child
-Fluffing the animals
-Adding bows to the animals (hair for girls, neck for boys)
-Parading around with their new animals
-Singing to Quincy
-Group Photos
-Very happy kids

So happy with her finished product.  She named her "Bow"

Silly kids showing off their animals

Mills, Claire, Sadie, Megan, Quin, Sienna, Hope, Kars, Rys, Audree, Spencer, Sam, Will, Kade, Tizer, Keegan, Connor

Then we walked down the hall to Cold Stone for Ice Cream Cupcakes!

And then presents... this is my favorite pic from the party:

There were soooo many present pics and she is so happy opening all of them :)

Then to the Treehouse playground for a little bit until it was time to go.  

This party was a hit!

This picture is from her real birthday which was on Sunday.  She requested heart brownies with her favorite Farr's Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream.

Happy Birthday Quinny,
we love you so much!

Sambo the Rambo

Our friends and neighbors, the Banks, gave Sam this nickname almost 6 years ago.  It was soon after we moved into our new house up here.  He was only 4 years old at the time, but they knew right off that he was a tough, strong kid!

Junior Jazz:

I love watching this kid play basketball!  He is aggressive at defending the ball and makes some great passes and shots.  Their team didn't have a winning season this year, about 4-4, but we were impressed with their growth as a team and individually.  They are grasping the fundamentals.  

 

Grandpa Tom came to watch him play and brought cousin Bode.  After the game he took them to the Train Expo!  

School Play:

Last week was his school play on Utah history.  Sadly, I had to miss it because I was in Las Vegas at a nurse training for my job.   But BS took the kids and got some great shots of him in action.  He did great at his part and the dancing and singing.  He played a mountain man.  So cute.

 

 

Valentines Day Wrap Up

I love Valentine's Day.  But it came too fast.  This holiday is right smack in the middle of the kid's birthdays so we have been busy.  We were really scrambling to get our valentines put together in time!  I was moaning and groaning to some friends about how inconvenient it was to make home-made valentines and "why can't I just go to the store and buy some?"  Absolutely nothing is wrong with that.  The thing is...as much as I was not wanting to do them, I really do love making them with the kids.  I love finding and coming up with different ideas and letting them choose.  I love letting them assemble them and write their classmates' names.  

We celebrated with the kids the night before because BS had planned a date night for just the 2 of us.  We had heart pizza, heart donuts, and pink love potion.  Healthy I know.  

Valentine's Day Dinner:

After dinner we went to work assembling their valentines.  Quincy celebrated V-day earlier that day with her preschool class because she doesn't go on Tues/Thurs.  So she was very helpful counting the candies and putting them into the bags.  Here she is showing off her Valentines:

She hand wrote all of the names

 I'm not allowed to say who...but 2 of the kids gave and were given valentines from a "special" someone:

Given

Given

Received - wow!

 

 

After the Valentines Day exchange and class parties were through, I was really looking forward to my date with BS.  I had no idea what he had planned but I was hoping it involved food and relaxing.  To my surprise he came home at 3:00 and told me to get my ski clothes on!  Yep, we were going skiing!  I love skiing so I was happy to hear it...but I wasn't sure if I had the gusto.  

Turns out I did.  We had so much fun!  We haven't skied without the kiddos in a long time.  We went night skiing at Brighton for a few hours and then to dinner at Porcupine Grill.  YUM.