Kate's Baptism

 Kate got baptized on June 1st 2013. It was a special day and filled with lots of family and friends. My Mom and Sara came over early to help prepare food for the dinner after the baptism. It was nice to have their help. 

My Mom made Kate an American Girl Doll dress to match the baptism dress my Mom made for her. Amazing!

My Mom has kept a journal since she was 8 years old so she gives a journal to the grandkids once they are baptized. 

Sara's baby boy, Zane, loved all our kid toys and had fun exploring. He liked this table top toy and this picture is awesome because it shows his amazing jowls and eyelashes. 

Before her baptism...She was nervous, but excited.

After her baptism. So happy and not nervous anymore.

Getting dressed in her baptism dress. It had layers of tulle which made it poofy and she loved it. I had picked some pictures of white dresses online and asked Kate which dress she liked the best. Then we asked my Mom to recreate it, which she did. Such a talent!

I thought these pictures of her surrounded by friends and family were cute.

With Grandma Dee Ann

With Grandpa and Grandma Sabin

With us ;)

With Aunt Marci

We had family and some friends join us after the baptism for a dinner. We had it at our ward building since our house is too small for everyone. I made tacos and fruit kabobs. My mom made some white cupcakes with green frosting and I made mini mud pies in cupcake liners. It turned out good. Since Kate's favorite color is green I went with green and white. I lucked out and found the green and white polka dot napkins at the Dollar Store. I kept the decorations simple. 

{Picture thanks to Marci}

These were the mud pies. They were delicious. This is Kate's favorite dessert. You take 1 pkg Oreos and crush them. Then add 6T of melted butter and stir until all coated with butter. Put some of these Oreo crumbles into the bottom of a cupcake liner. I used a glass to pat it down. Then put a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and push it down so it's smooth. Spoon hot fudge sauce over the ice cream. Sprinkle some more Oreo crumbles on top and freeze for several hours. Yum!

I made a collage of Kate through the years. It made me laugh to see all her different faces and things she would do. She has such a fun personality. She's very social, outgoing and likes to have fun.

In her beautiful baptism dress. Aunt Melanie did her hair and the braid was beautiful. 

With the Bushman cousins (Melanie's kids). L-R: Dane, Reed, Kate, Kathryn, Nathan and Owen.

Sara and Zane

We are grateful for all the family and friends that came to her baptism! For family we had: my Mom and Dad, Marci, Jeni & Kevin and their kids, Sara and Zane, Dee Ann, Melanie and her kids, Lynn (Kyle's Dad), Craig & Jill and Maddie.

Kate got new fancy scriptures, a green highlighter and a Book of Mormon puzzle pad for her baptism day.

Kate dressed her doll in the dress and it's so adorable they match. We are so proud of Kate for choosing to be baptized. We hope she always remembers this special day and how happy she felt after her baptism.  

Kate Turns Eight

Happy 8th Birthday Kate!!!

A couple months ago, I found a groupon for rollerskating at a local rink and asked Kate if she wanted a rollerskating party and she was super excited about it. Her favorite color right now is green so she wanted a green rollerblade cake since she rollerblades. This party was easy to plan because the cake was easy and I didn't have to plan any games since we were just rollerskating. It was great. I did have the kids come over for dinner and then cake and ice cream before leaving for the skating rink. I wouldn't do a dinner again because no one (well except Kate) ate their dinner and it was spaghetti! I thought everyone would like that. Kate came up to me saying she felt bad for me because I had spent all this money and time on making her dinner and no one was eating it. I thought it was nice of Kate to be concerned about that since she's never really noticed or said anything about that before. So next time it's only cake and ice cream!

Crepes with strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast.

Growing up, I got to choose all the food for my birthday so I do that with my family too. It makes the day more special and fun. 

Kate wanted beads to make bracelets or necklaces and she got the Lego cafe set. She was happy with her presents.

The kids at dinnertime. (Can I just say how I hate the lighting in my kitchen! The pictures are ugly!) The kids that came to her party were L-R: Alyssa Owens, Kate, Elsa Tessandori (neighbor), Lanae Chambers, McKay Burtenshaw and Jocelyn Digos (neighbor).  

They all had a good time. Some had a hard time at first because they didn't know how to skate so it took some coaching and encouraging from me to keep them going and trying. It was frustrating for them, but it was fun to see their determination to learn. I was impressed how much better some of them got by the end. This was a fun group of kids and Kate had a great birthday. She kept telling me, "This is the best birthday ever! Thanks!" We love our Kate!

Family Reunion Fun

Sabin Family Reunion 2013

My Mom did a great job planning our family reunion this year. She based it off a comment that my Grandpa Bill had made a couple months before when he said, "Treasure these moments." My Grandma Joyce's health isn't too well (neither is my Grandpa Paul's health) so he was meaning to enjoy these days and times we are living now. So that's what we did this weekend. We reminisced, played, ate, laughed and had a good time with each other. Oh and we took lots of pictures and it was hard to decide which pictures to include so I just included lots. 

Getting the yard ready for when everyone shows up later that day. 

My Mom made new princess dresses for the girls to wear. Lindsey wore this Tinkerbell dress all weekend. Next time we come, I'm not packing her any clothes! She wore this and a swimsuit most of the time.

Hailey got these glasses and told Jeni that she wanted to give them to Preston. Since Preston has memorized all 50 states all the cousins are pretty impressed (well us adults are too) and so they think of Preston whenever they see stuff related to the states. Pretty funny and so cute of Hailey to think of him. He LOVED these glasses too. 

After the little fire where we roasted marshmallows for s'mores, we went out by the hay field and my Dad made a big bonfire. Marci, the great aunt she is, had music playing on her phone so the kids could sing and dance. They loved it.

My awesome parents. :)

Kevin whipping the kids around on the "magic carpet ride". I like the look of Carter and Kate's faces because it looks like they were hanging on pretty tight so they wouldn't fall off!

All the grandkids in their matching Treasure These Moments t-shirts my parents had made.

L-R: Aubree holding Zane, Paige, Preston, Kate holding Chelsea, Lindsey, Carter holding Baylor, Hailey and Reagan.

Since the theme was "Treasure These Moments" we had to go on a Treasure Hunt (or hike). 

Here's our map and off we went.

Some of us hiking up the trail. I thought the hunt or hike was going to be more kid friendly like a previous hike my Dad took the kids on. This one was longer than I expected so I didn't bring our backpack carrier. I was complaining a bit about it. And really it wasn't that steep or hard, but it would have been nice to have a backpack carrier or something had I known it was a couple miles. But it worked out fine because between a few of us we took turns holding Chelsea and Zane. 

It made it better that I had a cute face to look at. It looks like she's waving. ha!

The steepest hill on the hike to get to the very top of the hill. This is a cool picture probably taken by Sara so most of us our in it. 

Gorgeous views of the Columbia River and the farmland at the top of the hike. Breathtaking!

The kids are following the map's directions to the cave in the side of the rock where they found the treasure!

They each got a disposable camera to capture their favorite moments from the reunion. My Mom gave them each a frame to put a picture in from their camera.

Preston found a good place to put his camera. haha! He was walking back down the trail with my Mom and they were looking at rocks for Aubree. My Mom found one that was bent and asked Preston if it looked like California and he said, "no that looks more like Delaware." haha! Then he found one later that looked like Jupiter because it had rings on it. 

Marking my territory and leaving memories. ;)

Taking business calls on the treasure hike

We came back after the hike and ate yummy Frito banditos.

My Mom got the kids a treasure box that they could paint. She cut out vinyl lettering to put on top of the box that said "Treasure these Moments". 

Treasure Box Pinata time! We were all lovin' the candy.

Saturday night we had a restaurant because growing up we pretended to have a restaurant or movie theater and it was so fun! Good memories! We served Hamburgers, Hot dogs, Chicken nuggets, fries (all sorts of fries) and milk shakes (all sorts of milk shakes, even fresh strawberry one's). 

On Sunday, we went to Church in the morning, had a yummy pork roast dinner then some took naps. In the afternoon, we played a jeopardy game with trivia questions from our family's memories. We also had a fashion show with old costumes that we wore as kids and we had to guess who wore what. It's fun reminiscing and making jokes about stuff we did. It's fun laughing about it all. 

Sunday night my Mom made her famous spud-nut donuts. Mmmmm! They were delish! Thanks Mom, Dad and all my siblings for a great family reunion! We definitely "Treasured These Moments" at our reunion.