A Scottie Dog Birthday Party

How to throw a Scottie dog birthday party??  Well,  looking on Pinterest and the web made that easy!  :)  First, I made up these cute little scottie invites.

After two months of planning and trying to make sure everything is made before my surgery and only minor details after.  This is how it turned out!  

On the front door we hung this little welcome sign.  

I made a bunch of these little party hats which are cute, but wasn't anything like I wanted them to be, but they were still cute so I was happy.  :)

I learned how to do "minor" stuff in adobe indesign and made this sign.  Sorry for the bad picture it was from my phone.  

My cake also didn't turn out what I "originally" had planned but it turned out cute anyways!  It was suppose to be wrapped in fondant with a scottie themed bow around the base but with my recovery being harder than I thought, I had to change plans.  I ended up doing cream cheese frosting, and ended up just making scottie dog chocolates to put around it.  Turned out cuter than I think the original idea.  :)  OH...and the scottie dogs on top...are candles!!!  Super cute!  I found them online.  :) The inners was red velvet cake. 

Once people started to arrive we blew up red and black balloons for them to play with.  

 

Once everybody arrived it was Scottie dog craft time.  :)  The kids got to put on a cute little colar and then a string on the back to hang on their door to their room.  

 

The kids had a blast making them.  Below is a picture of what they made.

After crafts we had the kids put on their hats for a picture.  

Next came cake!   

Joshua had to help Charlene blow from the back. 

Even Shelby got some cake.

Miley helped give Charlene presents to open.

Here is what all the party favors were.  Each child got a little stuffed scottie, a small box of hand made scottie chocolates, a scottie dog lollipops, a bouncie scottie dog, and girls got handmade scottie hair clips, and handmade scottie dog bracelet. 

   

I handmade all the bracelets and also the box they came in!

I also handmade the little hair clips along with the box they came with AND the box of scottie dog chocolates!  

There was one party favor missing which had to be made at the last second.  But there is a story behind it.  If you haven't noticed on facebook, I coupon.  Well this week huggies wipes were on sale for $1.49 and I had a coupons worth $1 so it made them .49 each.  I ordered 80 coupons for wipes off ebay on top of my 13 newspapers I get per week.  It is a AMAZING deal for wipes.  So I had to special order all the wipes since there was a lot of them and I knew I didn't want to clear the shelf. I also added in another 20 for my friend.  Well our order came in that Friday but I had to go to a emergency dr. visit for myself due to surgery complications.  Being at the hospital for 3.5 hours, my Friday ended early and I didn't get my wipes nor did I get a batch of scottie dog surgar cookies made for the party.  Saturday morning I call up my friend to come and get me and we head over to our grocery store.  Well what do you know...the person we ordered from isn't there and nobody there knows where the wipes are in the back.  GRRR.  I am thinking I really don't have time to run to another Fry's but if I have to, I will since my coupons expire that day also!  So we called up the other Fry's which is 10 minutes from that Fry's and they had enough for us.  So we drove up there and during the check out process the lady wouldn't let us double more than 3 of our coupons!!!  So frustrating, we decided to pay FULL PRICE for the items at that location, then drive BACK DOWN to the other Fry's to return them and re-check out with all our coupons.  With how much time this is taking (usually I am in and out within a store in less than 10 minutes) and starting to get stressed cause I still had the cake to decorate and cookies to make, cool then decorate also, I called up Joshua, had him drop the kids off at our friends house, told him the LIST of to-do's and when I mean list....I meant LIST and at the end of the conversation I added "if you get all that done, will you made me a double batch of sugar cookies and cut them out like scottie dogs and bake them for me"  At that point my friend looked at me and started to laugh.  After I hung up she laughed and told me I must have a great husband if he didn't complain to do all that.  LOL  Even today at church we were laughing at the comment "once your done with all that, make me a batch of cookies"  LOL  Anyways - all in all...between going to the 3 stores, and returning and re-checking out in middle of a Saturday when the stores are crowded it ended up taking 2 hours!!!  Talk about stress!  Luckily when I got home Scottie dog cookies were in the oven (GREAT HUSBAND) and I got the cake made, but then people were showing up and I didn't get the frosting made for the cookies.  So as they showed up, I poped in a oxy. and took a second to relax for a minute and ate a cookie by myself.  LOL  Talk about a stressful morning.  Luckily all the kids had fun and by the time they were gone, Theodore was pooped and down for a nap and I knocked out on the couch.  LOL  What a great day.  :)

Recovery & a little girl turning 4!

Well as you know I had another minor surgery on the 28th.  Thought I was gonna be in and out that day but turned out I got internal bleeding and ended up staying over night.  I was so drugged up that when I woke in the morning I had no clue where I was!  Very confusing when you thought you would wake up in your own bed.  LOL  Anyways - I finally got to go home the following evening with now more testing a head of me to make sure nothing is seriously wrong internal.  : / So its going to be a fun filled month.

The kids came to see me at the hospital which was a good surprise until little Man tries to pull out your IV or kept calling the nurse button and also standing in the drawers that are meant for clothing.  Charlene had fun watching cartoons and cuddling with me.  I put in the oxygen mask on her and she said it tickled her nose.  The visit lasted a whole hour until I was exhausted and couldn't handle all the noise and wanted to go back to sleep.  With Joshua's work being flexible He just worked from home (aka watched movies with the kids) all week.  I honestly thought recovery this time around would be the same as last...but I was wrong.  between the strong meds that made my drowsy and almost having to go to ER for back pain making me sick and a sharp knife like pain in the stomach, its been one of those that I hope I don't have to go through again.

NOW...there is a little girl who is turning 4.  Can you guess who it is???  

Charlene: "Me Is!"

She requested a Scottie dog birthday party!  So...I decided to get pictures of her and Shelby for her 4th birthday photos. 

Its amazing how a little kid could love a dog so much to want to have a party after her!

  

Birthday party pictures to follow after the 14th!  

Happy 4th of July!

Well of course there isn't a 4th of July without the Weikel kids pictures.  :)  Here is this years pictures.  It was a little difficult to get since two kids is always harder than 1...but they turned out somewhat cute.  :)

This next picture of Charlene makes her look so mature!  So sad my baby girl is growing up.  :( 

And look at this little toe head.  His pictures were the hardest to get since He didn't want to sit on the chair nor did he want to hold a flag.    

AND of course Shelby got hers done too.  :)  Mainly for my relatives that are Scottie lovers too.  :)

I can't believe how much the kids have grown!  Here is last years pictures of the kids.  Bald babies are cute and all...but Theodore little toe head is much better than this bald baby picture!  LOL  

oh...and if you think Charlene is wearing the same exact dress...the answer is no.  :)  I bought this years dress but it was MASSIVE, luckily I found the exact dress from last year on clearance just a size bigger.  :)

KOOZA!!

I LOVE Cirque Du Soleil shows.  Just one of my favorites is the Kooza.  When I heard it was coming to Phoenix, I was excited.  Date night!!  

Joshua and I dropped off the kids with our friends and drove the hour in a half to where the show was.  After dropping off the kids we had to get some oil for the wave runner and by the time we were done with that, we didn't have much time to eat so ended up picking up sandwiches on the way. We got there and forgot that it gets hotter up in Phoenix so we were a tad bit warmer than usual.  LOL  ok...so I was dying and because of the sandwiches I was extremely thirsty!  We ended up paying $6.50 for a cup of water.  You can bet my bottom at that price that we enjoyed every bit of that water.  LOL  Thats more than what we had to pay in Holland for water at a restaurant (3.50 euro)  

Anyways - the show was awesome like always and we noticed they added a part which was awesome.  It was a lady in the audience that was "supposedly" a mother of one of the actors and kept going up on stage to take pictures and take cookies and so forth to her son.  It was pretty funny.  

Arizona Science Center

A couple months ago on Groupon they had a deal for a 1 year membership for 4 to the Arizona science center for 50% off.  We snatched that up RIGHT away considering just going once would make it worth the price!  So this past Wednesday my friend and I took the kids.  We got there right when they opened so it wouldn't be too crowded.  As entering we found this area of Nano technology area.  So I took a couple pictures for Joshua since He deals with that kind of stuff at work. :)

Theodore was having a good time which lasted a whole whopping 5 minutes.  See this skelaton?  yeah...its eyes glow and the bones move which then scared Theodore!  and not only that...we forgot it was summer break so the kids started pouring in!  That place was crowded and Theodore being one of the smallest kids there...was being shoved around and stepped on...and there was a lot of screaming going on.  :(  After about a hour in a half of that and my back hurting from carrying him...I was ready to go home.  

Charlene on the other hand had a BLAST!  She was all over the place.  Loved touching everything.  I like this stage where they are more curious and aren't afraid of everything.  :)

Dirt??  yeah..she found it!   

All in all...the hour drive to Phoenix was a drive...but I think we will wait another month when school starts to go again to help prevent some of the screaming from Theodore.  

A little hiking adventure to The Wave

Ever since we moved to Arizona we have wanted to go hike The Wave.  Its on the border between Utah & Arizona.  Since it is so delicate land, they only allow 20 people in a DAY!  and the only way to get tickets to it is pretty much luck of the draw.  So the full year every month when they come available we kept trying and trying to get them.  Well we finally got lucky and got a hold of some tickets.  It was for June which I was kind of skeptical about with the heat, but since we haven't been lucky the rest of the months, we had to take advantage of the opportunity.  :)  It was a 6 mile hike total.  So 3 there and 3 back.  We KNEW Charlene couldn't hike that far, we the day we left we stopped at Babies R Us and picked up a spare backpack in to put her in.  

We stayed at Lake Powell Resort which was just OK.  Its been so long since we have had to stay in a hotel room, so we felt cramped.  We do get spoiled with our condos.  :) It was right on the lake which was beautiful, but the resort def. needed some updating.  LOL  

Anyways - We headed out around 9am leaving to get breakfast then the hour drive to the turn off then another half hour down a dirt road to finally find the starting point.  We got all loaded up, and it was also Theodore's first time in a backpack He had a little "fit" wanting out and tossing and turning trying to get out for about 2 minutes until He realized there was no way out. Charlene was a trooper.  She wanted to Hike, and hike She did!  She did the whole way there (3 miles) and 1.5 miles back before complaining her leggies hurt.  :)

Now, another tricky part to hiking into the wave was...there was no official trail!  Get this...when we got the tickets, they sent us a piece of paper with pictures on it and you had to find those landmarks!  So the picture to the right below is how it looked pretty much the whole way!  

One of the landmarks was this next picture.  We are to climb up over this little ridge.  From afar it looked steep, but it wasn't too bad.

Charlene even climbed it!  We told her She is our little Rock Climber now.  :)

 

At the top were some flowers which she stopped and smelled.  She was excited since they matched her shirt.  

Once we got to the top, we had to find something called "two mounds" and climb to the right of them.  Sorry about the funny picture, I thought Joshua took a picture of just them!  LOL  

After we got around the mounds, in near distance we saw a man alone.  We hiked down towards him since we figured that is the right way.  Turned out the 66 year old man was lost and had been out since 6am!!!  He is originally from Israel and moved to NYC and this is his second "attempt" to find the wave.  The first time He got lost and eventually at 1am found cell phone service and called for help.  The man said he was so happy to see us he wanted to kiss us.  LOL  He asked if it was alright if he could just follow us.  The nice part is...since we accidently left the tripod in the car, we got a couple family photos.  :)

                             

  

The next land mark we had to find was a big black crack. So we found it and hiked towards it.

At the bottom of that black crack we found THE WAVE!!!  Now prepare for a lot of photos.  :)

 

  

Found a little shady spot for our lunch.  :)

 

The kids had fun exploring around a little...until Theodore realized I was more than 5 ft away.  Silly mommies boy!  

 

 

And see this little man?  Yeah...we had a first.  A couple asked us to get out of the way so they could get a picture of him.  LOL  usually people take with us in them...but asked us to move??  that surprised us.  But what can I say...we produce cute kids.  ;)

 

 

 

 

This next picture of me was kind of funny.  I climbed up this steep area no prob.  But then once I turned around and realized how high I was up I freaked!  I seriously was afraid to fall!  It was about 50ft down and I had less than a ft wide ledge to get down on!  Its been a while since I felt that scared. LOL

 

On the way back Theodore fell a sleep after fighting the backpack again.  :)

Here is the only picture that has our new friend in it.  This was halfway back and Charlene and us were tired so we sad down in the ONLY shade there was.  :)  

After a 6 mile hike...we were so excited to see our cars.  LOL  Seriously need to get back into shape...it was a killer.  But another nice part is..though this was only a weekend getaway, we found about 5 other hikes we want to do, AND want to bring our wave runner up also.  :)  

Talk about beauty right??