I know, I know

I'm no good at blogging! I would be good at keeping up with it if it didn't have so many pictures involved but then who would really like it as much right. Or it needs to have a faster, easier way to load the pictures so my kids can't completely destroy my house in the time it takes to keep up with this.

So we have been busy as always with regular old life. We have done a lot of fun things but I'm not going to go into detail, I'll just throw in a lot pics to update. I will give a little bit more detail about Emmie's birthday though.

It was her first friend party so we decided to have a theme. She's kind of a tomboy and chose to have a pirate themed party. I made message in a bottle invitations. I dyed the paper with coffee and burnt the edges, rolled them up and put them in glass bottles that had sand and shells inside. We started out the party with everyone getting into their pirate gear, bandanna, eye patch, tattoo, necklace and red sash. Then we decorated treasure chests with glitter paint. We played games like musical islands, pin the X on the treasure and my favorite, sink the ship. We made cannon balls out of crinkled up newspaper wrapped with electrical tape, we split the kids into two groups and had them throw the cannon balls back and forth (dodge ball style) until we said stop, then we counted the balls and which ever side had more balls, their ship was sunk. We had gold pirate coins that we gave the kids when they won the different games and I had a friend make Emmie's cake and loved it.

I actually really enjoyed having the party which I didn't think I would. That sounds bad but the idea of 12 kids going crazy in my house just didn't sound too appealing but it was actually pretty fun to play with them all. I'm so glad I waited until she was 5 to let her have a friend party and will keep that up with the other kids as well. I liked that they were all old enough to actually play games and listen.

I haven't taken many pictures since November since our camera went kaput and now I only have our old one that takes really crappy pictures but I will be remedying that soon with some Christmas $$$. I included a couple Halloween pics, Emmie was a monster bride, Allison was a bee and Eliza... I guess we can say she was a ballerina or something. I made her a tutu and called it good since I didn't want to waste money on a costume when she couldn't even go trick or treating anyhow.