Give me a one, Give me a two, What is that???? TWELVE

Yes, MadN has long awaited this day. She is now 12. Being 12 means soooo many things. It means almost out of elementary school and into Jr. High. It means no more Primary Sharing time or Singing time. It means weekday activies for Mutual and going to Young Womens on Sunday and going to the Temple. It means babysitting, makeup, higheels and not being called a kid anymore. Maddie is definately ready for all of those things. Now, to just let her go. I'm sooooo not ready for my baby girl to grow up, be 12, be in Young Womens or go to Jr. High. I'm not ready!!!! What happens when mom is not ready? Nothing. Because whether or not we as moms are ready for our wee ones to grow up or not does'nt matter, they will grow up anyways. So what do we do? We stand aside with our breaking hearts and watch with pride and joy as our babies take step after step into adulthood.

 Because turning 12 is such a special age we have always tried to make it a special celebration so MadN's day began with her birthday crown, a tradition that we started many many years ago.

The little boys and I also worked on making her favorite treat to share with her class and we decorated them super special with purple white chocolate since that is MadN's favorite color.

We added a few birthday balloons to the mix and left it in her classroom as a surprise.

Then for lunch we picked MadN up with a couple of her friends and we ran off to the Hunan Buffet for a scrupmtious meal. The girls had a blast being loud and silly!

After school I picked MadN up for a trip to the beauty parlour. One of her presents this year was colored hair extensions.

There were so many colors to choose from, it was a difficult choice to make.

But in the end Blue won.

MadN and Debbie showing of their cool hair!

Picture perfect!

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St. Patty's Day 2011

St. Patricks day this year was great! The day began with me getting up a bit earlier than normal so that I could make a really nice breakfast. I started out with chocolate chip muffins which I dyed green and baked in my shamrock muffin pan.

I also served green eggs and ham plus green fruit and my specialty for the year, a green smoothie. This took a bit of research and most everything I found online had spinach in it! I can't imagine those peoples claims that their children love their green smoothies are actually true, but hey, you never know do you! I ended up using vanilla yogurt, kiwi's, green grapes and pineapple juice. The next batch I used lime juice instead and added a banana, It was even better!!!!! My kids loved the smoothie! Which made me very happy.

A sneaky little Leprchaun also left us little pots of chocolate gold coins and chocolate shamrocks! The table settings were all green and it was all a very overwhelmingly green breakfast of which everyone sat and enjoyed each others company. I did end up driving everyone to school because we missed the bus, but sometimes it's just worth it!

For dressing up this year I found some hats at the dollar store, got some shamrock tatoos, green beaded necklaces and the hit of the year, green shamrock sunglasses! It was awesome! I also made a few green carnation hair bows for the girls hair. Everyone looked GREAT! We called Grandpa and sang Happy Birthday to him before leaving for school and then headed out. We were not able to do our St. Patrick's Day dinner until Sunday because our RS Birthday dinner celebration was that night and it was important that the girls and I attend. Then we had to work around Minnie's schedule so Sunday night we had our corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and Grandpa's Fave, Green Velvet cake!!!!!

 We really enjoyed our St. Patty's day this year. I know people think that we're nuts for getting so into this holiday, but the kids and I enjoy our celebration in honor of Grandpa!

Clayton's lookin all St. Patricks day gangster!

He likes to pose for the camera. Interesting!

Showing off his tats.

I got a bit carried away with Allen's tats.

Cutie Patootie!

One on the cheek,

one on his foot,

and on both arms,

He won't leave his clothes on so I had to make sure he was
wearing green somehow!

Me in my green.

Me, lookin cool in my shamrock glasses.

What a stud! He got into the food dye and you can still see
the green in his ears!

No green for Myles, you can see one of the hair flowers I
made for the girls.

Che Che and me.

One last pic of Kylee with her tat. The girls removed all of their
tatoos before going to our Mother Daughter
RS dinner.

Blue and Gold Banquet

We attended the Blue and Gold Banquet where the boys are to bring their own decorated cakes. The options were blue and gold theme or fiesta. Britten wanted to do a scout wolf cake. He also reminded us of this minor detail at 8:30 the night before the banquet! We got up early and he and his sisters baked the cake so that it would be cool after school for the decorating part.

Britten frosted the cake with help from mom because you know how moist and delicate these cakes can be. If you're not careful the cake will be all tore up from the frosting. I showed him how to be careful and spread the frosting all around. I made the square and then showed him how to squeeze the blue from the bag onto the square. Britten did the rest of the blue and then all of the yellow. He did portions of the wolf while I did touch ups and made it look more like a wolf.

He was pretty excited, or as kids today would say "He was stoked!"

When we got to the church he was showing and telling everyone who would listen about all of the parts of the cake that he did and what parts I did. It was pretty cool to see him so excited!

Britten also earned his Bobcat badge. Brandon Bird, our Scout Master had the boys tell of one thing that they learned while earning their badge and Britten recited what Webolos means, We'll Be Loyal Scouts.

After they get their awards the boys get to pick a cheer from the cheer box that we the crowd does to cheer our scout on.

For Britten we had to do a djfka;fj  cheer.

Then when it was time to eat we all had to win the contest for most buttons or most coins ect. in order to go get in line. We won most pictures in our wallet. We stopped counting at 25 because we had already won. It's a good thing that I keep the old pictures of the kids in with the new ones!!!!!! We had a great evening. Even though we were quadruple booked for the night. We had the Blue and Gold, dance practice, Chelsea's piano lesson and a pig club meeting. Natash and Lindy skipped the pig meeting to come with me to the Banquet but it took soooooo long for us to get to the eating part that Myles and the rest of the crew joined us for the end of dinner and cake. They got to help clean up as part of their reward! We're new to all of this scouting stuff because I didn't even realize that it was the Blue and Gold Banquet until we were sitting at the tables and I noticed that all of the decorations were blue and yellow, so I asked someone. Pathetic! We are however learning how to become a scouting family!