What a week!

Last week we celebrated AJ's birthday. In the morning she opened family presents. That night we had a Sonic X themed party. Above she is realizing that she got Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for gamecube; can you tell how much she wanted it?

And here she is pulling out her much anticipated doll, who she planned to name Ashley long before she got it. More on that below under "A Doll Story". . .

At the party we played pin the tails on Miles. I drew the poster and AJ colored it. Once it was up AP exclaimed "mom how could you? He is naked." Since when did Tails start wearing clothes? We finally figured out that the reason he looked so wrong was because he was missing his tails. Once they were plastered all over him he didn't look so bare anymore.

We had an obstacle course where they got glow in the dark rings at the end. They liked the course so much they all wanted to go through it several times before we could move on to the next thing.

We also had a treasure hunt where they had to gather glow-in-the dark rings with parts of a secret message attached to each one. Once they had found all the message rings we had to unscramble them to find where the Chaos Emeralds (rings pops) were hidden.
And of course birthday cake. I wasn't going to do Sonics head. . .seemed like too much work, but I finally broke down and did it anyway. The frosting wasn't quite the right color, but after half a tube of food coloring I had to call it good enough.
And now for. . . A Doll Story (did you hear the drum roll? hee hee)

A couple of weeks before AJ's birthday we got an American Girl catalog in the mail. AJ has never been that into dolls, much preferring baby animals or pokemon or sonic. . . Well I handed her the catalog and sure enough she barely gave it a glance. A few days later we got a My Twinn catalog in the mail. I handed that one to Aubrey expecting the same thing. Oh no. She poured over that catalog. It was her bedtime story every night after. She even said she wanted a my twinn instead of a kitten. That is HUGE. And a little part of my heart leapt. I had a similar doll when I was about her age and my mom made us matching outfits. It was so fun. And now my sweet little girl wanted a doll, but not just any doll, a twin, a sister. And then I discovered how much said dolls cost. Well perhaps it was worth it. Except that often these kinds of things are fleeting for AJ. She is VERY interested for about a week and then, no more. So I debated. Maybe I could just get her a Target doll and she wouldn' t notice. Nope. None of the target dolls had quite the right hair/eye combinations. Then I came upon a GOTZ doll in Tuesday Morning. The eyes were dark blue, but they were closer than any other doll I had seen and the hair was right. But the best part was the face shape. She looked like AJ. A My Twinn couldn't have been a closer match! So I got it and hoped it would work. The doll was a hit.

My parents came out Friday night to bring AJ her present and stayed to watch the kids Saturday so J and I could finally celebrate our anniversary. My mom not only brought my doll, but her special dolls that she had from when she was little. She had also made AP a blue jubjub (neopet) to be his yellow jubjub's friend. AP is holding them, but they didn't make it into the picture.

AJ and grandma had a great time playing dolls while J and I were on our date and then on Sunday morning before conference started we had a little breakfast Tea Party with all of them. AP joined with D as his doll, and also brought along some lego friends. Oh the tea set was AJ's birthday present from Grandpa and Grandma last year. This year they gave her clothes for her doll.


And now about mine and J's date. We had such a great time! My parents have always been so good to watch the kids so that we could go and celebrate. Thanks Mom and Dad! Usually we stay at a bed and breakfast and do a session at the temple, but with D's nursing schedule (he will not do the bottle thing) that wasn't going to work this year. So instead we broke the day up into mini dates. In the morning we headed off to a day spa where we had a nice rejuvenating body soak in their big jacuzzi tub with mineral salts and other fun stuff and then had side by side massages. I learned I am one big ball of tension. My masseuse had to keep telling me to relax and it kinda hurt. J quite enjoyed his though. He only had a few little knots. I do have to say I do feel less tight now that it is over. After our spa treatment we came back to check on the kids and then in the afternoon went to a movie. It was nice to spend some time just the two of us. AJ was a little upset that we were leaving them and declared to AP, "Did you know mom and dad still date?" So yeah, we need to start doing it more often so that it is not such a surprise to them. And I would post some pictures of us, but I forgot my camera.