Yee Haw Maddy is 5

We had a very busy weekend. Nana and Grandaddy came for a visit to celebrate three special birthdays; mine, Maddy's, and Uncle Thomas'. All of our birthday's are within 2 weeks of each other so while they were in town Maddy had her 5th birthday party. She won't officially turn 5 until this Wednesday, February 1st.

Several months ago Maddy said she wanted to be a cowgirl for Halloween and have a cowgirl birthday party when she turned 5. Having a cowgirl party can be kind of tricky for several reasons. One reason is that a true cowgirl party should probably include some sort of pony ride. I researched renting a pony for the day, petting zoos, and even considered having Uncle Charlie dress up as a horse and "give" pony rides on his back. And the other tricky part of a cowgirl party is the weather. In middle Georgia it's either going to be 65 and sunny or 38 and raining in January/February....

In my research I found Overlook Farm in Gray, Georgia and for a very reasonable cost they host children's birthday parties. Up to 10 children can come for 2 hours and ride horses, feed horses, and have a birthday party in the barn. So we took  a gamble that the weather would hold up and booked the farm for Maddy's 5th birthday party.

Of course I went crazy and had to have decorations, treats, food, and goody bags that all coordinated but that's just what I do. I like throwing birthday parties and I know that eventually (sooner than later) the girls won't want a big party. They'll just want a car and the ability to take their friends out to dinner without Mom and Dad...

But until that day comes we'll continue to throw "themed parties" and share them here on the blog. Here are bunch of pictures from Maddy's cowgirl party. She had a blast. Thanks to all of our friends and family that came to celebrate with us. And thanks to those that helped set up and clean up the barn, I couldn't throw a party without you. :-)

And by the way, the weather was beautiful...65 and sunny!

Cowgirl Maddy in her official cowgirl outfit. The boots, shirt, and jeans
were birthday presents from Mommy and Daddy.

Party snacks

Cowgirl Cupcakes

Nana and Mimi with Maddy's posse...

Maddy and Braxton listening to Ms. Blaine explain the rules for feeding and riding horses.
From the look on their faces I think they missed everything she said except for the part
about the horses potentially "nipping" fingers when being fed.

Here come the horses.

Maddy's reaction to the horses coming down the hill.

Our little cowgirl riding.

Kate's 2nd Birthday

Happy New Year! It's ten days into the New Year and I haven't blogged until today. So you might think one of my resolutions would be to blog more but it's not. In fact one of my resolutions is not to stress about blogging or my lack of blogging.

So let's kick off Bury Cute 2012 with a recap of Kate's 2nd birthday. For those of you that don't know, Kate's birthday is December 28th. I won't bore you with all the details of her birth story and how for years to come I can guilt Kate by reminding her I spent Christmas 2009 in the hospital waiting for her. Instead, I'll just jump into this years celebration. This year we celebrated on Kate's actual birthday with a small dinner party.

Maddy and I prepared Kate's favorite dinner of spaghetti and salad. We decorated the dining room, got her some ba"oons", a cake, and put all of the presents under the "birthday tree". "Birthday tree" is one of the advantages of having your birthday around Christmas, it's the one time you know all of the presents under the tree are for you. That's what Maddy told Kate that night....


Birthday Tree

Kate had a great time at her party. She loved all the attention she received in addition to the cake and presents. Here are a couple of pictures that capture the highlights from her special evening.

"Yea Me!"



Woo hoo, it's my birthday!



I love hanging out in my tree tent.

 

 I love this hot pink chair from Mimi and Poppi.
Notice how I sit like a big girl with my legs crossed.



"Do you think Mommy and Daddy are trying to tell me they are tired of changing diapers"

There are more pictures of Kate's birthday. Just click on this link to see the rest:  https://picasaweb.google.com/109867542586578056397/KateS2ndBirthday?authkey=Gv1sRgCOXLoJT8pZPZNg

Christmas 2011

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas filled with lots of fun and family. I could sit down and write a long post with all the details but now I have to switch gears for Kate's birthday coming up on Wednesday so here are some of the highlights....

1. Christmas Eve morning - the girls and I baked cookies for Santa. Don't worry, no one else but Santa and the girls ate these cookies after I caught them licking the batter spoons and bowls...

2. Christmas Eve night - with everyones different work schedules it's a rare occurrence that the Bury - Johnson crew is all together, so of course we had to take a picture.

 3. Mimi and Poppi got Maddy a "big girl" bike. She was so excited and is already zooming around our house on it.

 4. Christmas morning - an impromptu family photo after all the chaos. Can you tell that Santa and his helper were up until 2am building a dollhouse?

5. Zack and David relaxing after all the chaos.  

6. My latest baking experiment, Vegan Red Velvet cupcakes! I am willing to bet no one could even taste the difference between these and non-vegan red velvet. Keep in mind that just because it's vegan doesn't mean it's sugar free.... Ha!

There you have it, a quick rundown on our family Christmas. Check out the web album below for more pictures.

Christmas Web Album

Character Breakfast 2011

Kate, Maddy, and Braxton with Santa Claus

Last Saturday the girls and I went to the Junior League character breakfast. Character breakfast is a super fun event were all the Disney princesses, superheroes, Santa, etc all come in costume and eat breakfast with the children. 

Last year I didn't know that children could go in costume so Maddy went dressed in "street" clothes. Boy was she upset with me that day and she didn't forget about it either.  This year she laid out her Tinkerbell costume the night before and informed me that she was going dressed up this year. In her words "mommy it's okay that you didn't know to dress me up last year, but this year I am dressing myself."

So both girls went in "costume"... And wouldn't you know that this year most kids wore their cute Christmas clothes. Go figure. Ha. Despite the wardrobe drama the breakfast was a smash hit with both girls. Kate wasn't too sure about the "characters" but she didn't throw a fit and cry. She stuck close to me and just waved. And of course Maddy was in heaven, she had to meet every princess. And for the grand finale the kids met Santa. The picture above might be my favorite Santa picture of all time. :-)

Tinkerbell Twins

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving 2011

Everyone has a "Thanksgiving" story about how something goes terribly wrong leading up to dinner time. Whether it's a dog that ate the turkey before dinner or a Dad setting fire to the deck while frying the turkey, our own Thanksgiving is no exception. We now have our own "remember that Thanksgiving when...." story.

It all started the Monday before Thanksgiving. I went to the basement refrigerator at Dad's house and noticed a very odd rotten egg smell. The refrigerator contained only bottled water and a turkey so there was nothing that appeared to be rotten. So I closed the refrigerator door and went back upstairs. I casually mentioned to Allison "hey, I noticed a funny smell in the refrigerator downstairs. Do you think it could be the turkey going bad?" 

About that time Dad and David chime in and say "yeah, we smelled the same thing earlier, is it the turkey?" Allison tried to assure us that "no the turkey is fine, it's a pre brined turkey and you must be smelling the brining solution." None of us were convinced it was the "brining solution" so Allison called the store and spoke to someone that confirmed our fear "turkeys should not smell." So the next day Allison exchanged the turkey and brought home a different turkey.

Well the story doesn't end here. Flash forward to Thanksgiving morning. Everyone is enjoying the parade on TV, there's a nice fire going in the fireplace, and the house is filled with the smell of Thanksgiving. It's a perfect morning until about two hours into Turkey roasting time when Dad frantically, yells asks, "who turned off the oven?" Everyone in the house denies touching the oven. Dad starts the oven again and announces that dinner will be a few minutes late. But the story doesn't end here either....

Another hour goes by, Dad checks the turkey and decides it's time to turn the oven down. After some more "frantic discussion" it is realized that the oven has turned off again and won't come back on. Yikes! Allison calls "the Thanksgiving emergency" hot line while David "Googles" oven repair techniques. Thanksgiving dinner was not looking good at this point. The turkey was almost done but all of the casseroles still needed to be baked.

In the back of my mind I was thinking we might have to order Chinese food for dinner and Allison will never ever cook Thanksgiving dinner again. But thanks to the kindness of a neighbor with a working oven our turkey finished roasting and our casseroles baked. Thanksgiving dinner was saved and served only two hours late!

The next morning Dad tried to start the oven just to see if it would work and you won't believe me....but the oven came on with no problem and successfully warmed up leftovers for lunch!  Go figure....

We returned home to Macon late Friday night from a wonderful week long Thanksgiving break. I've got hundreds of pictures from our adventures during the week, including Maddy's first time ice skating but they'll be posted later in the week. Right now I've got a backlog of pictures to process for Bury Cute Photography but I couldn't resist sharing our turkey story and a few of my favorite pictures from our trip.

On the "Mall" with Maddy. It was a rainy, foggy day.

David and Maddy on the "Mall" with the Capitol and carousel in the background.

Kate was asleep in her stroller for the first two pictures but she woke up in time to ride the carousel.



Today's snack is brought to you by the letter "V"

It was our turn to provide snack for Maddy's class this week. Because I am the "crazy" mom who likes to come up with a snack that starts with "letter of the week", I decided that we would make chocolate covered "V's." Chocolate cover "V's" sounded better to Maddy than bringing "vegetables."

So we took 2 mini pretzel sticks glued together with chocolate frosting and then dipped them in melted chocolate. Maddy said "they were delicious and everyone enjoyed their snack....except for one kid that didn't like chocolate and he threw it in the trash can, isn't that crazy?"

Our pretzel V's

Kate, our taste tester. Notice how she is starting to pose
for my camera. Wonder where she learned how
to do that?

A not so good picture of our final product.

Trick or Treat

Kate telling Maddy "no, mine!"
Translation: that's my candy and you better leave me alone. 

Halloween is finally over! Between a costume photo session, preschool party, Trick my Trunk at church, and then trick or treating on Monday night we've been "doing" Halloween for almost a week now. I am exhausted and really tired of candy but it was worth it because the girls had so much fun. Especially trick or treating last night.

Kate trotted around the neighborhood holding her candy filled pumpkin and she would not let go of that pumpkin. At barely 22 months old she knew it was candy and that she better protect it from Daddy and Big Sister...

And in case you didn't know, both girls dressed up as cowgirls. Below is my new favorite picture.

                            

Some of you might be thinking "look at how sweet they are and look at Kate holding Maddy's hand" but trust me, two seconds earlier the picture looked like this....

Kate really did not like Maddy being on the horse with her. In fact it took two excellent photography assistants to help put a smile on Kate's face....

Check out the web album below for pictures from all of our Halloween events....

Halloween_2011