Miller's Pizza Planet 4th Birthday Party

When I started planning the kids birthday parties, I gave Miller a bunch of options. Garbage truck, construction vehicles, firetrucks. What did he pick? Pizza Planet. Not Toy Story but Pizza Planet from Toy Story. I started to dismiss it but then I thought that it would be a fun challenge. It combined his love of Toy Story with space things and my need of an easy party to pull off.

Most of the crafts and prep work I did almost a month ahead of time so the week of, I was just busy cleaning  the house and setting up decorations. For most people that would take a day but for a gal lugging around a 35 week pregnant bump, it took all week and was exhausting. Thankfully for the day of, my mom and stepmom were here to help while Ben and my dad did some easy house projects.

The skirt, leggings and pigtails combo is my new favorite.

The kid got some seriously great presents and plays with all of them equally. A duplo train, a submarine, some Star Wars ships, an RC car. Scarlett plays with them all too.....when Miller lets her.

The kids started tearing down the alien balloons from the stairs and had a balloon party. All the parents were in the living room watching our football game so I think I was the only adult to catch this.

I remembered to get a family shot before the night was over.

We had a few tantrums and the house was so crowded that I had nowhere to sit but it was a great party. It was topped off by a miraculous comeback and our Vols beating Georgia.

New Years 2015/ My Birthday

Years ago, I set some high standards for my birthday and I drastically lowered them after having kids. It also really helped that we had taken my birthday trip a few days before.

New Years Eve, Ben and I went to see a movie then came home to spend it with mom, my cousin Ally and the kids.  Miller kept snuggling up to me and ended up passing out at 11:15. 

The next day we got bundled up and went to the reopened park downtown.

I love the views of my hometown from here.

Scarlett got her nap in while Miller played.

We took Miller to the Sunsphere (the big gold ball in the sky that was in the above pictures) so this view is of campus.

We grabbed pizza from Tomato Head and took it back to my grandparents house. The funny this is that it is my birthday and I do not like pizza but I like this pizza.

Since we have so many birthdays at the end of the year, Miller has become an expert at blowing out candles.

And she is an expert at being cute. 

Later we went to my dad and stepmoms house and did cake there as well. It was a low key birthday but a good one.

Birthday Trip to Biltmore

My birthday gets thrown to the wayside almost every year since it is on New Years but I have been telling Ben for years that he better plan something great for my 30th. All year I have been reminding him and he did a great job. I woke up on the 27th to him telling me to pack. He had my mom watch the kids while we drove to Asheville to go to Biltmore.

The first night we got dressed up for a nice dinner and went on the candelight tour. It was so weird to get back to our hotel at 9 and have nothing to do since we had no kids to get to bed.

  

As much as sleeping in would have been nice, we had to get back to Biltmore at 8:15 for a tour.

We went on a walk through the gardens and wanted to sit and rest. The bench was wet so Ben was so sweet and let me sit on his jacket.

Ben and I have always loved traveling together and I think that was good for our relationship. However having kids has thrown a kink in that. This reminded me how nice that was and how much fun we have together. Someday we will get back to traveling (yeah like a million years from now).

Scarlett's 1st Birthday Party

My baby is a year old!!! I am normally a very sentimental person but I think that I block out all sadness at this milestone and am just excited for how fun she is and see how far we have come. Things for her party were pretty hectic since we had to push it up to a weekday (well Friday night) so we could go to Memphis the next day. Thank goodness that I pretty much had everything planned out and bought months beforehand but the last minute stuff like food buying and prep almost gave me a nervous breakdown.

Of course she loved the paper more than the actual presents. 

We had a hot chocolate bar. I have been wanting to do this for years and it did not disappoint. In fact, we did it the next week at my sisters shower as well.

If you can not tell, the party was a woodland theme.

I am so glad we got  to use her Halloween costume again.

She actually was not too messy with the cake and just picked at the top layer.

I am so grateful that all of our friends were willing to be flexible with us and rush home on a Friday evening to come celebrate our girl. It ended up all going smoothly.