Cadence's 12th Birthday Party - Minecraft

When Cadence told me she wanted a Minecraft birthday party I got a little excited. . . 

until I realized there's absolutely NO Minecraft birthday supplies anywhere.  I panicked.  I was going to have to get creative for this one.

Etsy is my new best friend.  Between Etsy & Pintrest I had a thousand great ideas for this party & it ended up being REALLY fun.

I bought a template on Etsy for these cute birthday invites & just printed them out.

Here is the company I purchased from.  They have great stuff!

On the back had all the information for the party.  I just threw them on some cheap lanyards I had & it made a super cool birthday invitation.  So go check out Etsy for some fabulous invite ideas.

For Cadence's birthday cake I thought of several different fun ways we could incorporate her Minecraft theme.  She looked at me & said, "I just want a Minecraft cake!"  "Yeah, I'm giving you ideas on how to do a Minecraft cake!"  "NO MOM!  I want my cake to look like the cake you make in Minecraft."  Oh.  I'm dumb.  I guess there's a cake in the game that you make out of sugar cane & wheat.  It's basically a square box with brown on the bottom & white on the top with red boxes as sprinkles.  Easy peasy!

  For the party itself I decorated in Minecraft greens & browns & Enderman purples & blacks.  Cadence loved it.

I decorated square tissue boxes like Creepers.

And I decorated green paper bags like Creepers as well.

My friend had a Minecraft party for her son a few years back so she let me borrow some of her creations like this Crafting Table & and Ender Dragon.

The kids LOVED the Ender Dragon

Cadence was very excited for her friends to arrive so we could play Minecraft style. 

She even built her new Minecraft lego set & used it as a decoration.

The kids kept putting on the Steve & Creeper box hats & would run around the house like bobble heads.  It was HILARIOUS.

Once Cadence's friends started to arrive, we let them start the party out by creating a Minecraft server so they could all play together on the same world.  The internet is best in my girls' room so we set the servers up in there.  They had an absolute blast just playing the game for 30 minutes.

Even Canyon got in on the Minecraft fun.

Once we played for a bit, we brought them back into the living room where everyone created their own minecraft character mask.  The kids got SO creative.  We had unicorns, animals, zombies, & people.  I love to see creativity at work.

Next we played a couple minute to win it games.  The square Creeper tissue boxes became our first game.  We gave them one minute to pull out as many tissues as they could using one hand only.  JT totally beat them.  Our living room looked like a big fluffy blanket after that game.

Then we strapped a tissue box around their waists with a belt & put 10 ping pong balls inside.  They had to wiggle & jiggle & do everything they could to wiggle those ping pong balls out.

They had a blast.  Finally it was time for cake & ice cream.

and then presents of course.

After presents we had about 30 minutes left before parents came so the kids made paper pixel crafts & played Minecraft together for the rest of the time.

It was a very simple, but fun party.  I'm glad Cadence enjoyed it.  I enjoyed doing it with her.  She's got the best friends in the world.  Such a great group of kiddos.  

Happy Birthday Cadence!

Cadence's 12th Birthday Breakfast & Dinner

I absolutely cannot believe I have a 12 year old.  How does that even happen?  Where does the time go?  I remember when she was a teeny tiny little curly blonde cutie that would talk & talk & talk & talk & talk.  When did she become such a lovely young lady?  Sometimes I wish we could somehow stop our kids from growing up, but I must admit that I'm loving every new year & new phase of life that my kids explore.  I think I just wish it would happen a little more slowly.

For her Birthday Breakfast, Cadence wanted homemade blueberry & apple cinnamon muffins, orange slices, & bacon. . . oh & of course a ding dong!  We can't forget the ding dong. 

She was so sweet that morning.  Cadence is such a beautiful happy girl.  She was SO excited it was her special day.

She even let all of her siblings hold up 12 fingers instead of doing it herself.  She loves her family SO much.  12 years old.  (Wow, I'm way too young to have a 12 year old right?)

She looked beautiful when she got ready for school.

The day didn't go exactly as planned.  I picked her up from school for a 12 year old physical with her doctor & wound up stuck in the hospital for 6 1/2 hours because Canyon wound up with pneumonia, but Cadence was such a good sport & helped me take care of her two brothers.

Even after a very eventful day filled with doctors, medicine, & puke, she had a wonderful birthday.  After daddy got home from work & the kids got home from school we let her open her presents.

Nancy sent some clothes, an overnight bag,
socks, some stationary, & a raw cut amethyst. 

Lorien bought Cadence an Enderman stuffed
toy & some combs.

Mamoo sent her $10

Grandma Kinsfather also sent $10

Opa & Oma know how much Cadence loves
Legos so they sent her the new Lego Friends
lighthouse set.

And Auntie Cari & Uncle Justin sent her a
new book series that she's been wanting to read
for ages!

The rest of the kiddos got her the third book in the book series
so she gets to read the entire set.

And Trek & I got her the new Frozen Lego
set.  She was so excited that she made it
right after dinner.

Mimi & Baba gave her the new Minecraft
Lego set.  She's all about Minecraft right now
so she loved it.

For her birthday dinner, I made one of her favorites:

Chicken Cordon Bleu, Kiwis, & Caesar Salad.

She was a very happy young lady.

Happy Birthday Cadence.  Thank you for being so wonderful.  We love you so much.

and Another one bites the Dust...

I swear, my kids have been off & on sick for 2+ months now.  In December it was pink eye & fevers. January it was ear infections & throat problems.  I guess February is going to be flu month at the Potter house.

Once Taya got all better, Craiger had a fever for several days, but his got better on it's own.  Of course on Cadence's birthday Canyon woke up with a super high fever.  Cadence had a physical on her birthday so I figured I'd have the doctor look at Canyon while we were there just to make sure it wasn't anything I needed to be worried about.

Well, when we went to the school to pick Cadence up for the appointment, Canyon let me know he really was sick.  Poor baby puked all over the van. . . & then it didn't stop.  He was throwing up every 30 minutes on the dot!

We ended up spending 6.5 hours in the hospital on Cadence's birthday.  Canyon had pneumonia in both lungs as well as two ear infections & nausea.  They did a flu test & that came back negative, but he had something going on with his stomach because he couldn't hold anything down.

We were there SO long that Craiger wound up taking a nap in the waiting room chairs.  Sometimes I hate base hospitals.  Turns out they actually FORGOT about us & even though I went to the front desk TWICE to complain & figure out what was going on, they still forgot we were there waiting for the test results & the medications.  The doctor did feel really bad once he realized his mistake though.

They got him some antibiotics for his pneumonia & ears & we finally made it home barely in time to get the other kids off the bus.  Poor Cadence.  What a birthday.  We were still able to give her a wonderful birthday dinner & presents.  She was just happy her baby brother was going to be okay.

Now Canyon is happy as a jaybird & NOBODY in the house is sick.  Let's pray it stays that way.

All Better & Happy as Pinkie Pie

Taya is feeling MUCH better after her horrible experience with the dreaded flu.

It's so nice to see her happy & bubbly again just like her favorite pony: Pinkie Pie.

Speaking of Pinkie Pie. . . my friend Christina who is a wizard of crochet made this for Taya to make her feel better.  How cute is that?

Taya LOVES it.  She wears it every day now.  What a cutie pie . . . . I mean PINKIE PIE!

Trek's 36th Birthday!

Happy Birthday to the bestest husband in the whole wide world!!!

Trek's birthday is the beginning of the crazy birthday month for the Potter family.  January 25th is the start of the madness & we love it.  

We celebrated with an official Potter birthday breakfast bright & early Sunday morning.  Trek's favorite breakfast of all time is biscuits & gravy, so I woke up early so I could make it hot & fresh for him.  He was thrilled.  Biscuits & gravy, bacon, & then we added a Hostess cupcake for tradition.  (Trek likes the cupcakes & the rest of us like ding dongs so this is the one time a year you will see a hostess cupcake instead of a birthday breakfast ding dong!)

36 years young.

Canyon decided he really liked the biscuits without the gravy on them. . . he especially enjoyed making a large ring out of them.

 We went to church, then came home & opened a few of Trek's presents.  Nancy sent him some fun things this year.  He got a candle, a chocolate fish, 2 shirts, & a Darth Vader watch.  SO FUN.

Mamoo sent him a cute card with $ inside to spend on whatever he wants.  I got Trek some floor mats for his new car & the kids got him some stuff for his favorite video game.

At this point in the birthday celebration, Taya started acting like she might be a little sick.  She had a small fever & she just looked sick so I started to worry.  I quickly made Trek's birthday dinner a little early just in case something happened with Taya, & boy was I glad I did. . . 

I made one of Trek's favorite dinners: Mock Chicken, caesar salad, & strawberries.  Yum.

By the end of dinner we knew something was really wrong with Taya.  She wasn't smiling, her eyes were glazed over & she wasn't talking.  I took her temperature only to find it was 104.6.  WHAT?  It went from 100.5 to 104.6 in less than 2 hours!  So, I looked at Trek & apologized for having to leave him on his special day, but our baby girl was in trouble & we needed to go to the hospital.  He smiled & said:

"ALWAYS AN ADVENTURE!"

Yup.  Our lives are always an adventure.  We decided to make a birthday date out of it.  Cadence stayed home & watched the other kiddos while Trek & I took our little angel to the hospital.  Poor little girl.  She was SO sick.

It took several hours, TONS of tylenol & ibuprofen, a priesthood blessing, & lots of tears from me, but Taya's fever finally started to go down.  We were SO scared for a while there.  She wasn't responding to us, she was just lying there burning up on a hospital bed.  When they finally got her fever down to 102.7, they let us leave the hospital.  The poor thing had that awful flu that is killing so many people this year.  We were VERY LUCKY.  I count my blessings every day.  I almost lost my little girl, but Heavenly Father has more plans for her.  THANK HEAVENS.

We got back home super late that night.  The kids didn't have school the next day so we got them up & finished celebrating Trek's special day.  They thought it was SO cool that they got to stay up so late.  We opened up the last few gifts of the night & called my family to let them know Taya was okay & so that Trek could open his gifts from them.

Justin & Cari totally surprised Trek with a Space Monkey (some sort of techie cloud storage thing).  Trek's been wanting one FOREVER, but they're not even out on the market yet.  Justin is just THAT awesome.  He was thrilled.

And my parents surprised him with a blue tooth speaker & phone holder for his car.  He was so excited.

After many phone calls & present excitement, we went into the kitchen & finished the celebration with cake & ice cream all in one.  Hooray for Cold Stone cakes.  I had this one special made for Trek.  It had chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, Butterfingers, Reese's PB Cups, & peanut butter swirls inside.  It was SO DELICIOUS!!!!

So it was a very eventful day for Trek, but he loved every minute of it. . . the good & the bad.  We're so grateful for our blessings, for each other, & for the adventure known as life.

Happy Birthday Trek.  We love you!