Meanwhile, Back At the Ranch...

Everyone was so happy to see Jingles after a few weeks away. She was beyond ecstatic to see us too. She wanted a LOT of attention, and followed us all around for days. She even let Kiersten try her shark outfit on her. It was fun. I'm about dead just seeing the photos again. 

We had a very jubilant kitchen that afternoon. 

Because we were travelling on Evie's birthday, we set her party for after we got back. She wanted to update the cupcake tower. I guess yellow and black batman paper wasn't doing it for her. Since her party was going to be at the movie theater, we decorated it to match the movie, Christopher Robin. I cut out some beehives, bumble bees, and flowers on the cricut on sparkly paper. I wanted to do red, bright blue, and bright yellow, but Evie wanted pink and pastel blue/yellow. I thought she was wrong, but went with what she wanted anyway. It turned out super cute, and the colors worked, even if they came off a little "baby" to me. 

She had fun sticking all the decorations on. She had a pattern, and therefore didn't want any assistance. There were too many decorations, so we kept them in a baggie so we could scatter them around the table at the party. 

Since we were in crafting mode, Evie decorated her letter "E" we had gotten a while ago. She ended up using washi tape and markers, and maybe a few stickers. She was quite proud. 

Kiersten also decorated her "K". She wanted more of a clean look. 

Here's a picture I took of a hummingbird. So cute!

Kara helped me bake the cupcakes for Evie's party, so Kiersten and Evie got to help decorate them. We decided to do Tigger, Piglet, and Pooh themed cupcakes. I have to give credit to Ben for them, though. I was so disappointed that Evie switched her movie from Hotel Transylvania 3 to Christopher Robin, because I had a fun idea for donuts wearing vampire teeth. So when Evie insisted on switching movies, I couldn't think of anything fun we could do. I thought it would be too hard to make cupcakes that looked like the characters, and that it would take forever. So Ben pointed out that they didn't have to look like the characters to convery the idea of the characters, and suggested we use the melting chocolates to create piglet tails and tigger stripes. He had a different idea for the Pooh cupcakes, but when I saw the perfectly sized yellow melting chocolates, I called an audible on that one. The best part is that I just had to create the pieces, and once they were set up, the girls were able to do all of the work without needing help. 

Evie had the idea to use mini chocolate chips for eyes and noses. I thought they were cute. 

Almost all of the piglet tails broke in half. I guess I made them too long. But none of the kids found anything suspicious about shorter tails than I'd planned. 

The Tigger ones were my least favorite, but surprisingly popular at the party, so go figure. 

It was time to get back to soccer practice almost as soon as we got back from Idaho. They've gotta kick all the rust off, I guess.