Birthday Boys

I can't believe how fast 4 years have gone!! Dallin and Alex turned 4 years old this Wednesday and we had a very fun time. We have decided to make it a family tradition to go and get the Christmas Tree on the boys birthday. We usually go to Ikea to get our tree but this year my friend told me that Home Depot had really nice Christmas trees and they cut off the end and wrapped it up for you to take home. They were a couple of dollars more but nothing too traumatic. The trees were really nice and they were all open so we could just browse and pick the one we wanted without having to get them to open the trees for us. I always love picking a tree... the smell as you walk down the aisle of trees is amazing. The kids really enjoyed running through the forest of trees trying to pick them up to see if they liked them!! We were constantly catching the trees before they fell on them, but that is the fun of children and Christmas!!



Decorating was a lot of fun. This is actually the first year that the kids stayed for the whole decorating! I don't know if you can see but they loved the tinsel!! I had to cringe but couldn't say anything out loud of the amount of Tinsel they put on at a time. I tried to explain about doing one at a time, but they were having so much fun that I had to decide which was more important. It reminds me of that commercial... I don't even know what store it is for but it has a close up of the kids decorating the tree and as it pulls back to get a full view of the tree only the bottom half of the tree has any decorations on it. Then it shows a picture of the parents trying to smile and tell them how beautiful the tree looks. Ha ha. That is our tree... but I did put some ornaments up high... mostly the glass ones. It is funny how as my children get into decorating how my opinion on how things should look changes to enjoying how things do look instead.



On Tuesday the boys had preschool and it seems to be customary to bring cupcakes to celebrate the children's birthdays. So I made these super duper cute froggy cupcakes. They were so easy but I got tons of compliments on them from the other mom's, and let's face it that is why we make cute cupcakes... ha ha!! Just kidding!!
Then on Saturday we went swimming with my sister and her family and 2 other families that we love. We had a blast. We went to a swimming pool in Richmond that we had never been to before. It had a play area in the water with a little slide the kids could go down. It also had 2 water slides but the rules have changed and only kids 7 and over can go down the slides. We are not aloud to double with the smaller children anymore so that was a little disappointing for them. But they delt with it just fine and we had a good old time. Dallin said that it was "the Best birthday party ever". So it was perfect. I didn't have the cake decorated before we left for the swimming pool so when we got home I explained to my sister (who teaches cake decorating) what I was planning and she thought it would be fun to make the grass look like grass!! So off to Micheal's we went to buy piping bags and tips. It really did turn out great and I learned how to make grass!! It was a lot of fun. But I still need to get the icing recipe from my sister (hint hint).


So this is what the race track cake looked like! Those are little chocolate race cars... the one on the grass is a wipe out! ha ha


Here is the up close look at the lovely grass I made!

The Birthday boys Dallin (in red) and Alex (in green and blue)
Alia, Deneile, Ava, Tarin, Aunt Lori, Alex, Dallin and Jacob ready for some cake!

On Sunday at church Alex was walking down the hall singing , "Happy birthday to ONLY me! happy birthday to ONLY me, happy birthday to Alex, happy birthday to ONLY me!" I thought it was kind of funny... Only a twin would have to make up those words to the song happy birthday! Again I can't believe that 4 years have gone by already since these guys were born!