Eli's 13th Birthday!

As of last week our youngest boy is now a teenager.  

I've got just a few pictures of the birthday party we threw for him.  Our poor little guy had been sick with a nasty throat virus right up to the day of his birthday.  I thought we might have to postpone our celebrating for a few days but he started to feel better on his special day and made a request for a favorite meal.  It was good to see him laughing and smiling and enjoying the festivities.  

The Rest of the Rainbow Party

Hello, everyone!

I hope you had a wonderful Mothers' Day weekend.  I certainly did.  My family went out of their way to make it special and I felt very loved.

Here are a couple of pictures from Sunday.

My daughters wanted their own "just us girls" picture.  

Here are my six "babies".  

I showed you how we made the Rainbow Cake last week and today I have the rest of the pictures from our Rainbow Party.  We had such a fun time with this.

Yes, the little birthday girl to be is wearing a bathing suit.  She's been wearing that a lot lately.  She is Ariel crazy all of the sudden and this is the only article of clothing she owns with the Little Mermaid on it.  On the day before the party I was still feeling pretty poorly but we were trying to get a few things prepared.  I was giving these girls jobs to keep them busy.  I gave the girls a pot of skittles and had them separate by color to layer in jars.  We did the same thing again a little later with M and M's.  As you can see, the one wearing the bathing suit had some rejects in her pile that had to be eaten.  She was all about quality control.

Anywho, our jars made cute, inexpensive, edible, table decor so all's well that ends well.  The girls really enjoyed this project and I loved how it fit our rainbow party theme.  Plus, it kept them busy for a long time.

Because of my battle with shingles I wasn't able to shop for this party at all.  Two of my sons took it upon themselves to do the party shopping and they did a super job.  I was so impressed with all the goodies they found.  I was blessed tremendously by how sweet they were to think of lots of little extras and knowing that their little sister's birthday was such a big deal to them almost made me cry.  They found lots of brightly colored partyware that they knew their sister would like, and she did!

We made a fruit rainbow with dip, ordered some subs, and picked up chips and drinks.  Everything was kept very simple (and colorful!).

I've decided now that simple parties are best.  :)

Our birthday girl was VERY happy with her day!

The Rainbow Cake

I was just about at the end of my rope with shingles when things finally started to improve.  Hands down the most difficult thing I have ever been through in my life.  I've never known pain like that and the number of days it drug on just about did me in!  I'm happy to say I am better, and although the pain has not left me completely, I'm in a whole lot less pain than I was.  I do believe I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  

Our youngest child turned three over the weekend.  It's hard for us to believe she is already three years old.  Time goes by so quickly, and seems to be picking up speed for our family. 

We celebrated with a "Rainbow Party" at her sweet request.  Because I was suffering so badly with shingles this little birthday party was a learning experience for me - learning to let go of perfectionism, learning to let others do things I prefer to do myself, learning to focus on what's really important.  All of us worked together to make it a special party for our gal and she was thrilled.  Today I thought I would share with you our Rainbow Cake.

I mixed up some white cake batter (two cake mixes) and divided the batter into four equal parts.    

I used food coloring to make each layer of the cake a different color of the rainbow.  (Here's my favorite kind to use.  I like this gel because it doesn't affect the taste of the cake at all.)  

I baked the cakes according to the directions for the cake mix.

After the cakes cooled I froze them.  This is a little trick I do to help with the decorating.  When you freeze your cake you greatly reduce, or even eliminate, fighting with those little pesky crumbs.  I found out a couple of years ago how much easier it is to decorate a cake after it has been frozen.  For my rainbow cake I used non-stick aluminum foil on a cookie sheet - placing a piece of foil between each layer of the cake and finishing it off with a piece of foil on top.  

I baked on Saturday, froze overnight, and frosted on Sunday.  Easy-peasy.  :)

Here's another little tip for icing cakes - slide some non-stick aluminum foil or wax paper under the edges of your cake when you decorate.  When you finish, carefully slide the foil or wax paper out from under your cake.  Your cake plate/cake stand will be perfectly clean!

Here's the first slice...

It was super yummy, and fun, and the best part was our birthday girl LOVED it!

This post is linked up with Chef in Training and A Wise Woman Builds Her Home!

Eli's NASCAR Birthday

I'm still planning to finish up the Avoiding Burnout series, tell you why my No Yelling Challenge was a fail, and show you my Spring mantle, but for today, I have pictures of Eli's 12th birthday to share.  (How can my baby boy be 12?  It doesn't even seem possible!)

Eli is NASCAR crazy right now so we took him to the NASCAR Speedpark to celebrate turning 12.  We stayed there for 10 hours.  Yes we did.  At least I left there knowing we got our money's worth (we also left there sunburned, sore, and tired - that too).

We did a little more celebrating the next day at our house on his actual birth date.  Keeping with the NASCAR theme, here's what we did.

The girls and I decorated the dining room.

Our NASCAR themed menu, as chosen by Eli, consisted of chili dogs, chips, carrot sticks, and pickles.

And of course, cake and ice-cream!

Happy Birthday, Eli!  We love you so much!!

FROZEN Birthday Party

Whew!  What a weekend!  Tons o'fun was had the past few days.  I hope your weekend was fabulous and your week is off to a great start too.

Here are a few pictures of our Frozen party...

A local indoor pool was chosen for our party venue and the kiddos enjoyed swimming in the (non-frozen) water.

Hawaiian Punch - Polar Blast

Olaf noses!

Cheese Sticks

Snowballs (bubble gum)

I snapped this picture at home but here's what we did for party favors...

Our birthday girl and her siblings and friends had a super fun time.

This post is linked to homemakinghearts.com and raisinghomemakers.com.