Happy SIXTH Birthday Tyler!

I cannot believe Tyler is six years old. It is CRAZY! And it makes him very proud. :-) We give the kids the choice of having a birthday party with friends or doing something special as a family. Tyler chose a family day! He had pretty clear expectations of how he wanted to celebrate. He has been dreaming of going to Benihana for his birthday ever since I chose it for my birthday last July. And for our family day he chose to go the Crayola Experience at the Mall of America. He also wanted a Super hero theme and tested my cake decorating abilities with a pretty elaborate cake.

Since Tyler's birthday was on a Sunday, we didn't really have time to do everything in one day. So we went to Benihana the night before.

Getting ready to watch the onion volcanoes. :-)

Birthday dessert!

Birthday streamers!

Waffles for breakfast, as requested!

We headed for the Mall of America straight from church. And we surprised Tyler on the way with Super Hero shirts for everyone. You can't have a super hero party without being dressed for the occasion, right?

We'd never been to the Crayola Experience before. It was really fun!

Handsome little birthday boy. :-)

His super hero cake!

We just love this boy.

It's hard to blow out six candles at once!

Happy Birthday Tyler! We love your sweet and compassionate little heart. You are so loving, thoughtful and kind. You have big dreams and we know you will do great things. We love you sweet boy!

March Fun

I was going to go straight to Tyler's birthday, but I found too many other pictures on the way. :-)

March started off with our eleventh anniversary! We celebrated by going to the Orpheum theater. It also marked the first time in six years as parents that we actually hired a babysitter. Yikes! We should probably do that more. :-) 

The boys were very excited for their first Awana Grand Prix! Daddy and his sidekick are working on drawing out the boys' design ideas.

Carsten wanted his car to look like a block of cheese. Carl did a great job with drilling holes to make it look like one! It's just a little hard to tell with all the blue paint. :-)

Tyler wanted a Spider man car.

Aria painted an extra piece of wood from a different project so she didn't feel left out.

They had lots of fun racing their cars! They were already talking about next year when we left.

I promised we could eat at Noodles after Awana one night. And then remembered we would all be wearing our pajamas for Pajama night. So dinner out in our pajamas it was. :-)

We went to a new indoor park. They had so much fun acting on this little stage!

Fun at the mall with great friends!

It's really fun to have a reader in the house! 

A girl and her babies.

I said, "We need to cut your fingernails today." And two minutes later, I found this. "Cut fingernails" is generally translated to "watch a show" at our house. :-) It never fails to bring squeals of excitement.

My little baker at work.

Notice how she's carefully using a Tablespoon to measure her potato.

Brotherly love. :-)

Birthday Girl and Birthday Daddy!

Aria turned two in February! And Carl turned some numbers too. :-) Aria got to start her day with birthday streamers. She really loved them. She ran through them over and over and over again. Which was actually helpful for me because the first time the picture was really blurry. :-)

Yes, she does have pink hair. It was from crazy hair night at Awana the night before. :-)

There's a rule at our house. It's that Carl always gets Buffalo Wild Wings on his birthday. We'll see how long that lasts now that Aria shares his day. But so far it's still working out for him.

Birthday dinner!

Since their birthday was on a Thursday, we didn't do a whole lot. After dinner we had cupcakes, because I just couldn't skip the birthday cake part. Especially since the one coming on Saturday was very pink and just for Aria. So really, this was Carl's cake.

On Saturday Aria started her birthday morning by helping me make her birthday cake.

Happy Birthday sweet girl!

It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to...

She is a very loved little girl. Her brothers had SO much fun helping her celebrate!

Well... she's not looking at the camera, but I think we can at least call it a smile. :-)

Trying on her new accessories.

Such a little girly girl.

We had so much fun celebrating this sweet little girl. She loved her birthday. And ever since, if she's hears the word birthday she starts asking to eat cake. Aria loves being two. Two is her answer to almost anything. What is your name? Two. Who are you? Two. What's your baby's name? Two. She does know her name. If you ask a second time she'll say Aria. But two is her go to answer for everything. She loves being two so much that a couple weeks ago she renamed her forehead. She calls it her twohead now. It's our favorite thing ever. We might let her call it that until she's 18. It's so cute.

Aria, we love you so much! You are the sweetest little princess and you bring so much joy and laughter into our world. It is definitely a brighter world with you in it. Happy Birthday baby girl!