A really fun birthday present

We are not big believers that kids need phones, but at the end of the school year when Lora couldn't get ahold of Amanda on several occasions, she called Kevin and said, "I know what we are getting Amanda for her birthday!"

We spent some time researching phones, as we wanted her to have a decent phone, but we don't have texting on our phones, so no texting, no internet, etc. We finally found the one that we wanted to get her, only to have another one start to look interesting. We finally decided on that one, as it had a slider, etc., and it would be a "cool" phone for a teenager to have.

When we called to order it, of course, they were out of the phone, so we did some quick deciding again via a three-way call with the service representative and finally came to rest on the Pantech Link. We also decided that it wouldn't be reasonable to have a teenager's phone with no texting capabilities, so we changed our data plans and added unlimited texting for all three phones, which worked out to the same price that we are paying now.

We ordered the phone.....and then came the fun part.

We bought an 8G memory card, as Amanda has been saving her money to buy an iPod, and we loaded it with several of her favorite songs. (So, now she can spend her money on earphones, as the audio connection on this phone is an oddball one.)

Lora created two ringtones, on Harry Potter and one Star Wars. A few days before Amanda's birthday we activated the phone and then tested them out to make sure you would be able to hear them from inside the box. It took a few tweaks, but we got it to work!

A few days before, Lora texted a ton of people and asked them to send Amanda a text at 8:30pm wishing her a Happy Birthday. We were afraid that if we took Amanda's presents to the restaurant (we always let them pick a restaurant to have their birthday dinner) she would not be able to hear the phone ringing, so we figured we would be able to be back from the restaurant by 8:30pm. We also figured her reaction would be too exuberant for a restaurant and there would be a mess of plates on the table.


Amanda chose Sizzler for her birthday dinner, as she wanted to get the shrimp plate. Gramma Carol joined us. We ended up leaving the restaurant much later than we expected.

Both Kevin and Lora had been very careful to erase or hide everything off their phones and off Lora's computer so that there would be no trace for Amanda to find. On the way home from the restaurant, Amanda asked if she could play on Lora's phone. We were five minutes from home and Lora knew there was nothing on the phone that might give them away, so she said yes. The FIRST THING Amanda said when she got Lora's phone in her hand was, "Why does it say that your phone called me?" Lora just about had a heartattack!! What?! She played it cool and pretended she had no idea what it could be (and in reality she didn't) as Amanda kept going on about how could Lora call her "future" phone if she didn't have one.

SOMEHOW Lora's purse had called Amanda's phone while we were all at the restaurant!! Talk about freakish timing! Arg!!

We got home at about 8:40pm, and we were getting Amanda's presents together and there was a soft chirping chime one of the boxes. The girls kept asking what the noise was and Kevin told them it was probably one of our cameras. Then Kevin called the phone and Harry Potter music started playing. You should have seen the looks on their faces!!



Amanda opened her gifts, and periodically the box would chime, or Harry Potter music would play. Each time the girls would stop and say, "there is the Harry Potter music again! I DID hear it!"

She opened the box from us last. As she unwrapped it, Lora called her phone and Star Wars music started playing. THAT really got her wondering.

She opened the box and was absolutely stunned. Like she just sat there with her mouth open, staring at the box! She said "I'm happy!"




There were already 12 messages on her phone and she began to read each birthday wish. As she did, the phone kept chiming as more and more messages came in. It was WONDERFUL!! Perfect!!



She sat and texted thank yous to everyone and texted back and forth with her cousins, and tried to figure out things on her new phone.

There are a big list of rules that go with the phone, but she was so happy to actually have one, and Kevin and Lora are very grateful that they will be able to get a hold of her when they need to!

Here is the video of her opening the box. It's several minutes long.



Thank you so much to everyone for texting her and making this an amazingly fun birthday gift for her!!

Double Digits!!

This summer is a fun one for birthdays in our family. Amanda will be turing 13, so she will be a TEENAGER!!! Katrina will be turning 5 and starting Kindergarten, and today.................................Rebecca turned 10! Double digits!!!

We actually had a day full of birthday parties. Miriam Flood turned 3, Anna Molloy turned 5, and then we celebrated Rebecca's birthday. We always let the kids decide what they want to do for dinner on their birthdays, and this year Rebecca decided that she wanted to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory.

We took all of Rebecca's presents, and she opened them while we waited for our food. She got a pink Zhu-Zhu Pet hamster, a Build-a-Bear gift certificateand a shirtfrom Mom and Dad, a craft bookfrom Amanda, sidewalk chalkfrom Katrina, a GAP Kids gift certificatefrom Gma Kathryn and Gpa Herb, and here is the reaction when I told everyone about the gift that Gramma and Papa are giving all of us this year:


We all had a delicious dinner (ironically, Rebecca picked a grilled cheese sandwich) and then they brought Rebecca an ice cream and sang a not-exactly-enthusiastic version of Happy Birthday to her. I think they need to work on that! Take some lessons from the staff at Applebees or something like that.

This morning Rebecca wrote herself a few notes with sidewalk chalk in the street. One said 9 + B-day = 10, and the other said Happy Happy Birthday to ME!!

Happy Happy Birthday Rebecca!!

Lily and Zachary's 2nd Birthday Party!

This morning we left early and drove down to Castaic for Lily and Zachary’s 2nd birthday party. They had the party at Scooter’s Jungle which is like a big, huge bounce house! (We all laughed at the irony that last year when the party was outside it was 107°, but this year, when it is indoors, it is only 85° outside. Go figure!)

There were slides and bouncy houses, games (like ping-pong and air hockey) and a zip line. All the kids were having a great time! When Amanda and Rebecca first climbed to the top of the slide, Amanda stood there nervous for a moment, and then Rebecca went flying by her and down the slide. She must have figured that it couldn’t be that bad, and then after that we could barely keep them off the slide! Katrina went down a few times with Kevin and Lora, but she mainly stayed in a little toy area that she was comfortable in.

There was a lot of food and the kids got pizza for lunch and then there was a yummy cake! We all song Happy Birthday to them (one half of the room sang Zach and Lily and the other half sang Lily and Zach so it would be even!) It was a fun birthday party!

After the party we did a few geocaches (15 of them today!) while Jeremy and Renee got the kids to sleep and then we went over and visited for a while. The twins opened their present from us (we love these books by Leslie Patricelli - Yummy Yucky, Quiet Loud, Big Little, and No no Yes yes) and then our girls opened their gifts from their aunt and uncle. The kids had a great time playing!

We finally had to go and we got a few more caches on the way home. We stopped in Gorman, on the Grapevine, on the way home for dinner. Traffic was pretty light, mostly because we were traveling the opposite direction of the holiday traffic, and believe it or not, we made it home before 10:30pm!

See all the birthday party/road trip pics HERE.

May the Force be with You

Today was Amanda's 11th birthday party. She wanted a Star Wars theme last year, but since there was so many Harry Potter things going on last summer, we did Harry Potter last year and saved Star Wars for this year. As a huge fan of Star Wars (my brothers and I can probaby recite the entire original Star Wars movie by heart!) I was excited to do this party for her and had some great ideas for fun stuff to do at the party!

The invitations we sent out looked like a light saber handle and then when you pulled out the "blade" it had this printed on it: "In a galaxy far, far away, on the morning of 28 July, a baby girl was born. The Jedi Council named her Amanda and they knew she was the chosen one. In the 11 years that followed her birth, young Amanda has been learning the powers of the Force. Meanwhile, the Republic discovered a new enemy. The Jedi Knights felt a strong disturbance in the Force. Fear, pain and suffering have opened the path to the Dark side. Many Jedi Knights have been lost. The very future of the Jedi Order is in jeopardy. Young Padawan Amanda has been called by the Council to seek out future Jedi. Master Yoda is urging the younglings to complete their training and take part in the upcoming trials.

Each Padawan’s presence is requested to complete their Jedi training and prepare for the trials on 26 July 2008. Transport to the Jedi Temple, on Coruscant, will be departing promptly at 10:00am from the Nehring docking bay. Please advise the Jedi Council as soon as possible as to whether each Padawan will accept the challenge of the trials.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!

Please note that due to new security protocols in the Republic, no weapons will be allowed on all transport vessels. Rest assured that the Jedi Council has secured enough equipment for the Padawans to complete their training."

The guests arrived at 10:00am. We had a sign on the front door that said Welcome to the Jedi Training Academy. We had Padawan tunics for each of the trainees to wear. The house was decorated with black and silver foil stars, Star Wars figurines and the dining room table had a black tablecloth, napkins, forks and cups and a large black plate with a smaller red, green or blue plate on top of it. There was also some Star Wars confetti sprinkled all over the middle of the table.

First we made lightsabers (foam pipe insulation wrapped with electrical tape) and they got to choose which color of light saber they wanted - red, green, blue or purple. Then the Jedi trainees went outside into the desert wasteland of Tatooine (our unfinished backyard) and had light saber agility training. They each got a red balloon and tried to keep it up in the air with their lightsabers.

Then it was time to break the Death Star pinata. Amanda helped me to make the pinata and I painted it and drew all the details on it. Then we took a wooden dowel and wrapped it in electrical tape so that it looked like a lightsaber and the trainees used that to break the pinata.

When they came back inside, we took photos of them with lightsabers. The photos turned out really cool! It really looks like they are holding lightsabers! We told them to make their best Jedi faces, and we got some good ones!

The trainees then took a break for lunch, and they had Saber Dogs, Tatooine Tortillas, Millenium Melon and Jedi Juice. (That's hot dogs, blue tortilla chips, watermelon chunks and green kool-aid with purple kool-aid ice cubes.) For dessert they had Force Floats (blue kool-aid and Sprite mixed together with vanilla ice cream).


After lunch they made pretzel lightsabers. They dipped pretzel sticks into red, green, blue or purple candy melts. Then they watched the movie, Star Wars, Episode I. (As her parents, we kept trying to convince her to watch the REAL first episode, but it was her party after all, so we let her choose.)

While the trainees were watching the movie, I put together a certificate that congratulated them on completing their Jedi Training that had their photo on it. After the movie ended and they were ready to head home, they each got a goodie bag that had coloring pages, some scratch magic stars, a package of pop rocks and a light stick in it.

The trainees had a great time and were ready to go out into the galaxy and fight the forces of evil!

-Lora

See all the Star Wars party pics HERE.

Katrina is 3!!

Tonight was Katrina's birthday party! Katie is three!! She has been telling that to everyone who will listen!

We had a zoo theme for her party and it was a lot of fun. We had family (Gramma, Papa, Uncle Weston, Aunt Laura and cousin Stone) and lots of friends (the Foxes, the Molloys, the Jorgensens and the Bouds) to help Katrina celebrate. We had hot dogs and chips and lots of yummy fruit and then we all sang "Happy Birthday" and Katrina blew out the candles on her cake. We put in the movie, Madagascar, which is the zooiest movie we have, and the kids all had fun goodie bags to take home.

Katrina is a wonderful three year old and we are sure glad she has been a part of our family for the last three years! We have been very blessed to have her here.

-Lora

See more Zoo-Party pics HERE.

Gpa Marshall's 90th Birthday Party

My Gpa Marshall, Richard Allen Marshall, has been around for 90 years. He has seen a lot! He knows a lot and he likes to talk about the things that he knows. He is very opinionated, but not the type of person to make you feel that your opinion is not important if he doesn't agree with you. He has lost most of his sight, but not any of his heart. He was so thrilled with his party today and the fact that everyone who came had a good time and got along so well.

We left Kerman early in the morning and headed toward the coast. It was a beautiful day, and the traffic was pretty mild. Although we did take a lot of the back roads and smaller highways, so that may have been part of it. We, of course, also stopped here and there along the way to do some geocaching.

The party was at my Aunt Lindi and Uncle Rich's house in Arroyo Grande. Lindi and Rich have a gorgeous home and it was so nice of them to welcome us all there.

My mom and Herb flew down from Alaska. It was really great to see them, if only for one day! My mom just recently retired from over 30 years of teaching, and she is really enjoying the ideas and opportunities that lie ahead of her. Herb is looking really good. I have never seen his beard so short, but it hasn't finished growing back in yet. Nothing else has changed though. Same sense of humor.

My brother Jeremy and his wife Renee came from Castaic with their twins, Zachary and Lily. The kids have grown so much and they are so cute! Lily is quite the charmer and Zachary is checking everything out. Jeremy has quite the upper body muscle mass going from constantly holding two kids, one in each arm!

Lindi's daughter Kerri was there from Stockton, with her husband, Michael, and their daughter Hayli. Hayli is adorable with big, huge brown eyes! Kerri and I have seen each other a few times over the year as we have passed each other going in and out from visiting Gma in Fresno.

Lindi's son, Jason, couldn't be there because of work commitments, but his wife, Cheryl, and their sons Justin and Jared came.

Jordan really wanted to come, but just recently started a new job, so he gave Gpa a call while we were all there celebrating. It was clear that Gpa really enjoyed that call.

We had nibblies and talked, we took lots of group pictures, and then we sang to Gpa and some of the great-grandkids helped him to blow out his candles. We all signed a mat that will go in a frame with a photo of all of us for Gpa.

We all had such a great time talking and sharing stories and experiences. Even though we don't always see each other all that often, I love the fact that we all just pick up where we left off.

After Gpa went back to his home, we all went to a pizza place called the Klondike Cafe that has an Alaska theme. It was fun. We got home MUCH later than we wanted to, but that's okay. It was worth it to be able to spend such a lovely day with family!

-Lora

See all the pics HERE.

Rebecca's flower birthday party!

We had Rebecca's birthday party today. We know it's a month early, but we have had very bad luck having her parties on her actual birthday, as it is right after school gets out and very few people can come due to vacations, invitations that don't make it out of backpacks until it's time to go back to school in August, etc.. In past years we have only had two or three people attend. So, we figured if we had the party before school got out we would hopefully have more girls attending. We did! There were ten girls here this Saturday! Yea!

Our theme for the party was flowers and we had a great time! There were flowers EVERYWHERE! The girls made flower pens, decorated notebooks with flower stickers, made flower candy lollipops, and we gave them flowers drawn on shrinky-dinks and then we shrunk them down and they strung them on a necklace with beads. They had a great time!

I made Rebecca a big, huge flower cake and she blew out all eight candles! My friend, Andrea, came to help me with all the activities for the girls and I really appreciated her help! It was a lovely afternoon and Rebecca had a great time!

See all the pics HERE.

34 Finds and even more Family!

Today was a fun day! This morning we drove from Kerman down to Castaic for our neice and nephew's first birthday party. We left really early so we stopped part of the way down to watch the sun rise. That was neat!

We got to Castaic, and just as I said to the girls, "There's Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Renee's house," we saw Jeremy was pull out, so we exited the freeway and then followed them to Heritage Park for the party. There were a LOT of people there to celebrate Lily and Zachary's first birthday! Renee's mom and three of her sisters and several neices and nephews were there, and on Jeremy's side, including us, my mom, Kathryn came down from Alaska and my dad, Don, brought great-gma Willie down from Fresno.

It was HOT! It was so very, very hot! It was 100 degrees and very humid! As Jeremy said, when they planned the party it was the coolest summer on record, and who knew it would be so incredibly hot! Yikes! (At 7:00pm we took a photo of our car's thermometer - it was STILL 107 degrees!)

The theme of the party was the Backyardagains, and the kids played pin the necktie on one of the characters, and my mom had made some cupcakes with the characters on them. They looked great and when it was time for the twins to have their cake, they had a wonderful time getting frosting all over the place! It was great!

After the party we went back to Jer and Renee's and spent a few hours visiting. When it was obvious that Katrina needed a nap and wasn't going to even try with all that was going on, we left and went to do some geocaching on the way home.

Before today we had a record of 27 finds in one day, but thanks to the plethora of caches in the LA area, we were able to find a record-breaking 34 caches in one day! And that includes a record 0 no finds as well! There were some that were simple park and grabs. In fact the way we approached one cache made it so we didn't even have to get out of the car! Then there were also some really new and different ones. We even found one that was hidden in a camoflauged metal film reel canister. We have never seen that kind of hide before. We also found several benchmarks and made several travel bug trades. We cached until we were having to use a flashlight to find, and then it was time to head home. It was a really long, but a very fun day!

See the Party pics here.

Amanda's Harry Potter birthday party!

Wow! This was an amazing party! (I love to throw parties!) We had so much fun!! I was dressed-up as Professor Trelawney, my friend Cory was dressed as Professor McGonagall and my friend Maria was Professor Flitwick. Before the party, I took pictures of the three girls together in their costumes (even Katrina had a little robe, although she was at the Fox's house during the party). They all waved their wands and said "Wingardium Leviosa", although Katrina says, "Adiosa!"

When the kids arrived they were sorted into their houses by the sorting hat and Professor McGonagall. (She held the sorting hat, and I drew badges out of a bag.) We had Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. (The Slytherins were in the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid.) Those three groups went off to their different classes.

We had a Transfiguration class where they made their own parchment books (I had stamped their names in gold on the front covers of the books) and picked out a colored feather that we had cut into a quill, and then they got to try writing with ink and a quill.

We had a Charms class where the kids got a Spell Quiz where they had to match the spell to a description of what it does.

We had Olivander's out in the garage where the kids got to make their own wands. They each got to pick out a "core" for their wand which also provided the "sparks" that come out of a wand when a spell is cast.

Then we tried butter beer. Yum! We melted butterscotch chips, stirred in cream and then added cream soda. It was really good! It was SWEET! But it was really good!

Then we all drove over to the cultural hall at the chapel and we played Quidditch. The kids chased after a softball that we called the quaffle and a little yellow bouncy ball that we called the snitch. We didn't end the game just because the snitch was caught, so the scores were pretty high. It was fun, but after a few bumps and bruises, we went back to the house.

We got the cake out that I had decorated just like the one in the first movie that Hagrid brings to Harry. It was fun! We also put the magic re-lighting candles on it, and that was funny! Amanda's eyes just about popped out when those candles re-lit. What!?? She kept trying to blow them out until she was laughing too hard to keep blowing.

We separated into classes again, and one group stayed in the kitchen to eat cake and ice cream at the table that was decorated with gold plates, cups and silverware, a caudron that was smoking with dry ice, and candles.

Another group went to Defense Against the Dark Arts, where they watched the part in the 3rd Harry Potter movie where Professor Lupin tells the students about boggarts. Boggarts take the shape of whatever you fear the most, and when you say "Riddikulus!" it becomes something funny and you are no longer afraid of it. After they watched the part in the movie, they were each given a paper that said "boggart" on it and they drew something they were most afraid of, and then they were given another paper that said "Riddikulus!" on it and they drew that thing funny so that they weren't afraid of it any more.

The last group was in Potions class in the dungeon (garage). Each person got a bottle and they put colored water in it and then they got to fill it with whatever glitter, sequins and beads they wanted and then we sealed it closed.

At the end of the party we had a wizard's duel, where the kids all answered trivia questions about the Harry Potter books.

When they went home they had goodie bags with them that said "Thanks for visiting Diagon Alley" and they were filled with coloring pages, bookmarks, stickers, a homemade chocolate frog pack with trading cards in it, and a small yelllow bouncy ball that was supposed to be like the snitch. We also put in all the stuff they had made. They all had a great time and we have been resting with our feet up ever since.

I wish there was a spell for cleaning everything up after a party.

See all the pics here.

Katrina's turning 2! Wow! It's time for a luau!

Today was Katrina's birthday party. We threw a luau in her honor, and it was a lot of fun!

We had hawaiian pizza and yummy maui zaui pizza from Round Table, and TONS of fruit! It was all really good! We had cupcakes with hibiscus flowers on them and they were set out in the shape of a lei. When we were decorating, we put up a sign that said "It's A Luau!" Katrina referred to the sign there after as "my letters". The kids had luau coloring pages and there were also foam visors for each of them and they each got to put foam letter stickers on for their names and there were also foam hawaiian flower and leaf stickers to decorate them as well. They all looked cute!

We gave Katrina her own bike helmet for her birthday, as she is always trying to wear her sisters' helmets. She pulled out the box and squeeled, "My helmet!" We put it on her and she didn't take it off for nearly the whole rest of the party.

Aloha!

See all the pics here.

The BIG Birthday Bash!

The rain has been falling steadily all day today. This is a good thing, as it will hopefully help put out the forest fires burning around the state.

Lora and the girls went to church this morning. Lora thought that the 9:00am sacrament meeting was supposed to be a Young Single Adult ward, but instead it was a Samoan ward. They had sacrament meeting all in Samoan which was pretty neat. Lora especially liked singing the hymns in Samoan.

In the afternoon everyone went over to Jordan and Sioux-z's house and had a big, huge birthday party for all the cousins, as there are two birthdays in June, one in July and two in August. There were twenty-five candles on the cake and each cousin got to blow out there own grouping. They had hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, and there was also grilled salmon that Jordan had caught last week, which was soooooo good! The kids got their faces painted, got to decorate horses and opened their presents. Everyone was VERY happy.

Since returning back to Gma and Gpa's house, Katrina has been going around singing, "Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you". Pretty impressive. I guess after you hear it five times in a row, it makes an impression.

Lora's back is doing much better, although now we are worried about Gma Kathryn's as she slipped on the tile in the entry way today and did the splits! Thankfully she stretches every day, so she is pretty limber, but that doesn't mean that it didn't smart!

See all the pics here.

Tomorrow it is on to "h2o Oasis", the local water park!

Happy Birthday!!!

Today is Rebecca's birthday. She had a few friends over on Saturday for a 'My Little Pony' party. There was pink everywhere. They got to get their faces painted, decorate their own cake, and watch a movie. Becca also got a few more ponies to add to her collection.

Tonight, she has requested a special birthday dinner: Denny's.