Lindsey Turns Three

Happy 3rd Birthday Lindsey!!!

She turned 3 on Sunday Aug 4th while we were at my parents house for the reunion weekend. My Mom did a yummy family dinner and I made her a Dora cake. 

I'm glad my Mom has a fancy camera because she takes lots of pictures now. She took this one of Lindsey before Church. Cute. She's a sweet girl, but definitely likes to tease (she gets that from me so I can't get too mad, right?!). She is growing up fast and follows Kate and Preston around so she is learning things fast. She still likes to cuddle so she's still my little girl. 

Super excited for her Dora fruit snacks and Dora movie from Kevin & Jeni and kids.

I LOVE her expression when she saw the Dora dress my Mom made for her. She loves it. 

My Mom and Dad also gave her Dora and Boots dolls.

The Dora cake I made her. Kate also had a Dora party when she turned 4 so it was easy to make the same cake for Lindsey. :)

Dee Ann came out for the family dinner and gave Lindsey adorable owl pajamas and a Tangled bag.

All the kiddos around the island eating the yummy dinner of pasta with alfredo or meat sauce, homemade french bread and caesar salad. Cari and her family came out for the day too since they were still in Tri-Cities so it was fun to have them there too. Too bad we all don't live closer!

Singing Happy Birthday to Lindsey and Chelsea was trying hard to get to the cake. ha!

I did a friend party for Lindsey on Tuesday when we got back home. I had to plan and shop for everything on Monday so I was exhausted come Tuesday afternoon! Of course, we did a Dora adventure like we did for Kate. I made the gift bags to look like Dora's backpack (love pinterest and the internet!) then printed off the map and drew on it. Swiper stole the prizes for the goody bags and put them under the chocolate tree. We looked at the map to see how to get to the chocolate tree. We had to go through the bubble forest, down the slippery slide then to the Chocolate tree to get the prizes.

The kids saying, "Swiper, No Swiping!" 

And I have to say that Preston was hilarious and a big help. A couple of the girls have never watched Dora so they didn't know really what we were doing or who Swiper was. But Preston was good about repeating the directions on the map like they do on Dora and saying other phrases from the show. It helped make it more authentic. 

The slippery slide was blocked so we looked in the backpack and found scissors to help us cute the crepe paper. 

They made it to the Chocolate tree (a tree off a Dora show)! I hung chocolate candy bars from the tree. The big box had their prizes for their goody bags which were their backpack bags. They got a ribbon wand, Dora fruit snacks, Dora stickers, Dora washcloth that grows and chocolate candy bars. 

I went low key and made cupcakes with Dora cupcake toppers that I printed then put on the scalloped punch cut out. 

The girls also got a Dora bracelet (yellow with a blue flower, but I didn't have blue flowers so they are butterflies).

Rylee, Ashlynn, Lindsey and Ellie

We gave Lindsey some paint and a giant paper pad for painting. We wanted to take her to Build a Bear to pick out a stuffed animal. When we went there one night we found it was closed! They are moving locations inside the mall and closed their store down until the fall. I couldn't believe it! We never go there and the one time we need to go there it's closed. We ended up getting her a Sofia the First dress-up dress a couple weeks later. Good thing she's 3 and doesn't realize she didn't get a gift from us for a couple weeks!

Christensen Reunion

On Saturday afternoon, we headed up to Royal City for the Christensen Family Reunion. Jay & Erma's family was in charge this year. There are a little over 300 family members now! All started with LeRoy and Lucy Christensen. Most of the family is still active in the Church which is pretty awesome. We have this big reunion every 3 years. I'm glad they still have them and put forth the effort to plan it. Debra (Erma's daughter) and everyone did a good job planning it and putting it on. 

I was impressed with all the pictures and genealogy information displayed. Whoever did the chalk work is amazing. I'm in awe. 

Paige showing off her cool butterfly face painting. They had little games for the kids to play to win candy or prizes along with face painting and a dunk tank. 

My Uncle John trying to dunk his son Brady. I went after John and got Brady on my first throw! I impressed and surprised myself! ha!

Kate was SOOO excited to be the one to get dunked. She was begging us to let her do it so we did. She did it a few times and I finally had to tell her that was enough. There was a line of other kids too. Who would think getting dunked would be so fun?!

They had water balloon volleyball going as well. Most of the adults visited with one another and tried to stay cool in the shade. 

Here are the living adults from LeRoy and Lucy Christensen with their spouses, they are underlined.

L-R: Bob and Jo, Bill and Joyce, Ted and Jean and Erma

Jay passed away a few years ago and was married to Erma. Dee passed away quite awhile ago.

Debra's daughter, Tara, put together The Price is Right, and all of Jay's family were involved and it was awesome! The contestants were called out of the crowd and gave such enthusiasm for being chosen and were pretty funny. They had all the sound effects to go along with spinning the wheel and stuff. They did a good job. 

Some of the contestants were Gary, Tom, Michael and Kelly

Gary playing one of the games, trying to win some toy truck. haha! Good times.

For dinner, they were genius and had a line for adult food and a line for kid food. The kids got popcorn chicken, jello cups, chips and rolls. For adults we got tri tip or bbq chicken, fancy salads, jello salad, rolls, baked beans, homemade rootbeer and probably more that I can't remember. It was tasty. They ended the night with a huge firework show good enough for a big city. It was impressive! What a fun reunion!

Wright Reunion

Last weekend we had double reunions to attend. Kyle took a day off from work so we could go to both of them. The kids do pretty well in the car and they should since we make the trip almost monthly. I liked Kate in this picture because she had the best seat in the car. She was comfy. Preston has a patch on because he's supposed to wear it every other day for 4 hours to strengthen his weak eye that he was born with. So nothing happened recently if you were wondering. ;)

My Dad is always good about taking the kids for rides on motorcycles, four wheeler, tractors or whatever. 

On Friday, we went into Richland for the Wright family reunion. It's for my Mom's side. All her brothers came from Utah with their families so it was good to see everyone that came. My Grandpa's relative manages a hotel there so we were able to meet in one of the banquet rooms and use the indoor pool. Good thing because it was chilly that day so after a while of swimming in this outdoor pool at the nearby park the kids were freezing and ready for the hotels hot tub! 

My cousin Austin and his wife Giselle with their twins, Hudson and Sydney. They were so nice to come all the way from Utah with young twins!

Aubree and Emily played with Chelsea the whole day. It was so nice to have "babysitters" willing to play with her and watch her.

L-R: Brady, Marci holding Zane, Sara, Jeni, Aunt Liz (married to Tom) and Uncle John

Kids waiting for their turn on the zip line. I love the random kid in the black shirt in the pic. haha!

My Mom with her family

L-R: Tom, Jim, John, Gpa, Vicki and Gma Joyce in front

It was fun to visit with Cari. She is my closest cousin in age. She's married to Ryan and they have 4 kids too. 

L-R: Aubree, Jeni, Cari and me

My Aunt Dana (married to John) was amazing and pushed Thys and Chelsea in Cari's stroller until they fell asleep. It was so nice of her to do that. I was glad Chelsea got some sort of nap.

Stephanie, Gabby and Marci being silly. We took some fun and silly pictures outside in front of the river.

John had planned some activities for the kids like bubbles, toy airplanes, kites, releasing balloons into the sky and this little parade for Gma Joyce. 

Almost all the great grandkids with Gma Joyce (Preston isn't in there because he was having a major meltdown and would not go in the picture. fun times. he was having a hard time there.)

Everyone that was there!

L-R Back Row: Kyle holding Preston, Me holding Chelsea, Ryan holding Thys, Giselle holding Sydney, Austin holding Hudson, Dana, John, Marci, Jeni, Kevin, Liz, Tom, Vicki, Craig, Shellie, Jim

L-R Middle Row: Gabby, Gracie, Natalie, Cari with Piper, Jaac, Brady, Gpa Bill, Gma Joyce, Sara, Derek holding Zane, Aubree

L-R Front Row: Ellie, Carter, Kate, Paige, Emily holding Hailey and Stephanie holding Lindsey

John doing bubbles with the kids

 Visiting and then we ate dinner, baked potatoes with chili, broccoli cheese sauce, rolls, caesar salad, fruit and cupcakes.

On Saturday morning, everyone came out to my parents house to swim and eat lunch. Here's some of my cousins. L-R: Kyle, Lindsey, Brady, Gabby, Natalie and Stephanie. It was a lot of fun hanging out with them and laughing with them. 

 My Grandma Joyce (my Mom's Mom) has Parkinson's and it's hard for her to leave the house, but amazingly my Grandpa was able to borrow a wheelchair van so she could go to my Mom's house and to Royal City for the Christensen reunion (which was later on Saturday). Anyway, she was sitting next to Chelsea and it was hilarious and cute to watch them interact. Chelsea would just stare at her. Then my Grandma would move her hand to Chelsea and Chelsea would push it away. It made my Grandma laugh. Then Chelsea reached for her hand and pulled it toward her which was so sweet. 

Here Chelsea is pushing her hand away. Too funny.

Here's my Grandpa Bill and Grandma Joyce Wright. They are very supportive grandparents. They would come to our birthday celebrations and sporting events growing up. It was fun to have them live so close. It's hard to see my Grandma suffer with Parkinson's because it's been slowly getting worse. My Grandpa is so good to her and so attentive to her needs. 

My Mom with her parents