A Day in the Life of the Browns

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Happy 5th Birthday Violet!

Wow! We had a little princess turn FIVE this weekend! Violet is such a little lady and loves all things girl while at the same time she can scale a tree and is a wrestling champ with her daddy:) I love how adventurous this little girl is and can't wait to see where it takes her in her life.

I made blue and pink cupcakes with white chocolate crown/tiaras as the headpiece...

These are wands and crowns that Violet and I decorated for her party

We had tons of games for our "16" guests, but the hit of the party was the pinata!

Owen was right behind his big sister smacking that down!

After everyone had a turn my dad knighted Sir Chase and he finished it off...

During present time I had set up 2 royal thrones, one for the birthday princess and the other for her gift-giver. It was a great way to get a picture with her and each of her friends.

Ethan is Violet's buddy from preschool and they love playing together! Also, his mom Ellen is a long-time friend of the family.

Ellie is Vi's friend from preschool

Lucy is a neighborhood friend

Maisie is another neighborhood friend. It's great that we have 2 sweet girls within a few houses of each other to play with!

Caed is a friend from church and Vi went to Little Learners with him.

McKay, a preschool friend.

And his twin, Caleb. They give Violet a run for her money! She loves them though and often tells me how funny those twin boys are:)

Morgan is a friend from preschool.

Mallory is another friend from preschool.

Joshua is Vi's buddy from DC and they also went to Little Learners together.

Chayse and Violet carpool together to Preschool.

Ella, Giovanni, and Violet are like cousins:) And they LOVE to be together so she has really missed seeing them on a regular basis since we moved out of the city.

Aliyah is a sweet girl from our church and they also went to Little Learners together.

And of course, Queen Mom Mom had to sit on the throne as she watched her royal granddaughter open her gifts:)

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Videos from skiing

Violet's first trip down the bunny slope!

I had to add this one...me trying to video Violet skiing and then wiping out myself:)

Violet's First Ski Trip

We took a 2 day trip up to Deep Creek (the place we go every summer to the lake) to give Violet an early Birthday present of skiing! It was SO MUCH FUN!!!! We did not want to come home, but ahhh, somebody has to work around here so we can do these fun things:) And what made it even more fun was to go with Violet's best buds, Giovanni and Ella!

Getting fitted for skis

riding up the magic carpet to get to the top of the bunny slope

Tia took Violet down for her first run with a training harness.(poor Tia was quite busy with the kids since she is the best skier of all of us!)

Mommy and Violet

Grace, Violet, Nina, & Ella

Giovanni

Nina taking a load off at the top of the bunny hill:)

Our first trip to the top of the mountain on the ski lift! Violet never fell when getting of the lifts either!!

DAY 2! Check out these gigantic icicles on the house we stayed at!

Brandon and Grace (the grown-ups got a few runs down some of the intermediate and even a few black diamond slopes while the kids were in ski school in the morning)

Grace & Christina-what a great view! That is the lake at the bottom of the mountain all covered in ice and snow.

Dairo & Christina

Daddy & Violet

Violet didn't need the training harness on the second day and just held onto Brandon's pole.

She has mastered the "pizza" to stop!

She started falling on the last run of the day, that's how we knew it was time to go home:(

What a beautiful fun day of memories!

updates...

Check out this "rocket" cake I made for Violet's preschool class. They are studying space, planets, rockets... And yes, I won mother-of-the-year with this one:) No really, Vi and I had a blast making this for her friends! (note the candles on the bottom to light for blast-off)