Here She Comes....Miss America!

January 24th was a double party day. After Taylor's super fun birthday, we rushed to clean up the house and prepare for event #2! Nearly 25 woman attended our annual Miss America Pageant Party. However, this year there was twist. Each guest had to pick a specific state to represent. Then, everyone dressed up like their assigned state and prepared a food item from their state.
There were prizes for the best costume, best food and to girls whose states were named to the TOP 15 during the live pageant telecast. Overall, Miss Georgia (Jessica) and Miss New Mexico (Eleah) won the award for best costume and Miss Lousianna (Crystal) took home the award for the best food. Her gumbo and king cake were amazing!

When the live pageant came down to the top 3 contestants, Indiana (ME) and Tennesse (Leslie) stood hand-in-hand in front of the room awaiting the results. I don't think I've ever yelled so hard or jumped so high after winning a pageant. It was a hillarious concidence that the party host happened to pick the actual winnner. (HOORAY-suckers)!

It was a night of great laughs, embarassing moments and lots of comments about starting new diets. Leslie took him the official crown and banner for placing 2nd in the pageant predicitions competition (again, the host can't win her own prize!) and I think everyone had a great time. The best part of the evening was sharing it with my mother who flew in for a surprise visit to share the day with us.

Birthday Boy!

Last week Tayor celebrated his 4th birthday! According to him he is officially a "big boy!" He insisted on a "Hulk" theme. This pretty much consisted of our house being covered in green streamers, balloons, crate paper, and lots of hyper kids.


Having a January birthday usually means no outdoor parties. Thus, we had to think of a way to spice up the indoor party. This led us to looking into clowns and balloon artists. Clowns seemed kind of creepy, so we went with the balloons.


We were pleasantly suprised with what we got. For the most part we expected pretty basic balloon animals: giraffes, dogs, cats, etc. As you can see, it was a little more elaborate. Each of the 15 kids got a balloon hat made up of about 5-10 different balloons. Taylor got a pretty scary dragon hat, while others got Nemo, Superman, aliens, rugrats, and any other shape you could imagine.

After the balloons, Taylor got down to business with cake and presents. He insisted on wearing his Texas Tech jersey and football helmet (Brandon's when he was a kid) to blow out the candles!

Overall the party was in Taylor's words "The best party ever!" The icing on the cake was the suprise visit from Grandmama Utah. We had a great time, and now have a full year to recover and plan the next birthday!

what's a boy to do without his bike?

Over the New Year holiday, me and my mom and dad went to our awesome friends home in Dallas. I brought some of my new things from Christmas including my new bike. I was showing Susie (the little girl in the picture) how to ride a big boy bike. She was jealous I am sure of that. We had a lot of fun playing the Wii, going to the park, swinging on swings, and riding our bikes...except when we packed up we forgot to pack my bike. Don't worry, I know it is tragic, but we were able to find somebody that was coming back to our house a couple of days later and so they brought my bike back. Crisis averted. Now me and my bike go riding everyday!