Philadelphia zoo

We finally made it to the Philly zoo this summer. We loved the Lorax movie so we were excited that it was the theme this year.

It was wonderful to have two children able to walk around and be somewhat independent.

We spent a very long time watching Batu the three year old orangutan play around. Orangs have always been my favorite so I loved watching this so much. In fact almost all of the animals were very active.

Love the zoooooo!

Crafty summer-- octopuses

We were given a cool set of books of a million things to make from paper bags, paper plates, towel holders and milk jugs. I let the kids pick something and they picked octopuses made from bags, newspapers and paint.

Potato stamps

On the summer fun list is making potato stamps. The kids drew simple images and traced them on to potatoes. I cut them out and we used paint to stamp. We had fun making pictures from our stamps!

Precious

Maeve loves playing with the jewelry box Noah picked put for her last Christmas. It's really sweet.

Happy 3rd Birthday! Alice in Wonderland Party

Maeve loves to play tea party so for her third birthday we decided to throw her a mad hatter tea party.  The quote from Alice in Wonderland "We're all mad here" by the Cheshire Cat pretty much sums up our family so we thought it was rather fitting!

The invitations were rolled scrolls with keys.

 The inside was a antique Alice picture which we thought reminded us of Maeve!

A major part of the party was hats.  We grabbed all of our hats from the dress up bin and ordered lots of different kinds of hats from Oriental Trading.  

I searched high and low for inexpensive glass bottles to put the tags on, however, it would be just too much money for what I needed.  So I settled for these Kool Aid Coolers which worked perfectly and were $1 for 6 bottles.  However, I warned my kids to enjoy them that day because they would never see them in our house again!!!

Adults had drink me drinks too!!

Tiara Yaz brought these party themed flowers with play cards and the bunny cookie holder!  

Cupcakes and cookies and playing cards were everywhere!!!

Goodie bags were filled with wild and wacky items.  Whoopie cushions, disappearing ink, walking chattering teeth, and fortune silver fish.

The table was set up for a tea party but the wind was so strong that it all blew away.  We had to hold everything down with rocks!!!

Playing card garland and Alice quotes hanging all over the yard.

Everyone was invited to wear a hat!!!! Great job dad!!!

Maeve was asleep when the party began and a pretty big grump when she woke up!!!!

The big kids played croquet.

 And Uncle Matt did play dough with Maeve.

We made a big mad hatter cake but it fell apart completey! So Uncle Eric stopped and got us a great DQ ice cream cake!

We had a great time and enjoyed our mad day!!!

Happy 3rd Birthday sweetheart!!!

Crafty

One of our neighbors hurt his ankle at camp and needed a place to hang.  We turned it into a craft day and made marionettes from a cool book we have about using paper plates.  Fun times!