State Fair

I have always loved the Arizona State Fair....my dad use to take me every October when I was kid and I cherish those fair memories.  I have forced that fair love on Brady and Madi, however Madi seems to really be excited year after year.  She is completely unfazed by most of the rides.  She'll go on all of them.  Last year she was just a few inches too short for lots of them and all year long she kept asking if she was tall enough...so sure enough she was!! She can go on pretty much all the rides...she even wanted to go on the death drop ride...thankfully she wasn't tall enough for that one this year.

Since the State Fair usually comes around my birthday, that's what we did for it...birthday at the State Fair, my cake....Funnel Cake. I know it's super bad for me but I only have it once a year so I think it's fine :)  Thanks for a fun day and Happy Birthday to me!!

Alexa's Party

Party party party....that's what we like to do!  Now it was Alexa's birthday party we were able to attend.  There was a castle bounce house, cute finger foods, jewelery decorating for the girls, and monster coloring for the boys, a pinata, and of course a cute and yummy castle cake.

There were lots and lots of friends there so it really was so much fun. Happy Birthday Alexa and thank you for such a great day!

Skate land Party

One of Madi's cute friends Addie had her birthday party at Skate land!! I was so excited to go to this party myself....seeing as how I use to go there every weekend when I was in elementary school and now Madi could go. (I forgot it was there since I don't drive that way much)

All the kids were giving a little coaching before they could get out on the actual rink. They were taught how to stand up from the floor and hold their balance and even how to fall the correct way, I guess they want to try and minimize broken wrists and rolled over fingers. Here is Miss Madi practicing on the carpet....she did really good once I got her the right skate size.
She proved to the coach that she could hold her own and was able to get out on the rink. By the way, it is really slippery out there. But Madi did great and had so much fun on the skating rink.

Here's Madi and Addie (I know cute right) taking a little break from all the skating!

This was a few of the kids there having a blast! And you have to check out the cake!!

Addie's mom, Monica, is the best as making cakes...after all she is a professional!! It was absolutely delicious too...and she make really cute skate shaped cookies as party favors!! Oh if I could bake like her.

Happy Birthday Addie!! Thank you for inviting Madi!! We all had a super fun time!

Happy Birthday Maggie!

It was also Madi sweet friend Maggie's 5th birthday on the first day of school so we decided to surprise her and bring the kids ice cream cones and have a cool treat with her. They have been good friends for about 3 years now and they are so cute together and have loads and loads of fun!
When Maggie opened the door we started singing happy birthday to her. She had the cutest expression the whole time. It was so much fun!!




Jesse was watching some other kids that day too so they all sat around the table and ate the yummy ice cream together. The weekend before Maggie had her first birthday sleepover and Madi was invited. I thought for sure all the girls would be up all night but Jesse said they were out by 9pm I believe. And ever since then Madi has been asking for Maggie to come have a sleepover at our house. Is this too young to be starting a normal routine of weekend sleepovers? They are building such wonderful memories!

Celebrations Dinner

Since Madi and I didn't get to go to Canada to see Brady get his Eagle award we decided to take him out to dinner and what a better place than his favorite-Famous Dave's!! We invited both our families and thought it would be fun to celebrate Darrin's birthday at the same time!

the two honorees

For Darrin's birthday our waitress brought out this big ice cream, chocolate and whip cream concoction-we all sang and Madi and Darrin dug in....now that I think about it Madi did place herself right next to this yummy desert, I noticed that Darrin had a few bites and then Madi just took it over. What a stinker....but the girl loves whip cream and ice cream.

I Can't Believe our baby is 5!!

I bet if you ask any mother what one of the best moments of her life was, I believe without hesitation she would tell you the birth of her child. I will be the first to tell you that when my precious little Madi was born-it topped the charts for me on my best moments. Today she turned 5 and I cried....yes it's true, just the day made me cry...and she wasn't even out of bed yet! I can still remember my water breaking, riding in the car to the hospital, pushing for 4 1/2 hours, then ending up with her being born via c-section (not what i had planned but that's how life goes), coming home and finding out my incision was infected, having a colicy baby for days and days that turned into 6 months, awww then she finally slept. And now she's 5!! I wouldn't trade the past 5 years of her life for anything!!

She went from this wide-eyed little bundle of heaven..........

.....to this magnificant, loving 5 year old piece of heaven (still wide-eyed)

Here are 5 reasons why we love you so much Madilyn Nikole....

1. You still love to snuggle

2. You have a thirst for knowlegde and love to share your thoughts

3. You have such a tender heart and are so loving to your family and friends

4. You light up the room with your big blue eyes and sweet smile

5. Your sense of humor gets everyone laughing...even your silly knock knock jokes

But above all else we love you because you are you and we thank the Lord every single day that we have you to love forever and always!! Happy 5th Birthday Madi!

Madi's 5th Birthday Party

Madi is really into gymnastics right now. She takes classes at Desert Devils and just loves it. We found out that they do birthday parties there and Madi was all over it. She was so excited for her party and for her friends to come and see where she has so much fun. We had her party on a Sunday so there wasn't anybody else around except for our group. The coach that was helping with the party's name was Maddie too...which put a huge grin on Madi's face when she found out.

The kids were able to do everything in the gym....and really I mean everything. There was lots of jumping, stretching, tumbling, bar swinging, rock climbing, bouncing, sliding, balance beaming, ring spinning, obstacle course doing and pit jumping!! I'm sure I missed a few but sheesh it was a blast. I think the adults had as much fun watching all the kids doing their gymnastics and the kids had doing it.

After an hour 1/2 of doing all of the above we went upstairs for cupcakes and presents. I really think that the kiddos ate as fast as they could and helped Madi open her presents quickly so they could go back out on the floor for a few minutes before they left. We really had such a fun time with the friends and family that were there. Thank you everyone for coming and helping make this a very memorable birthday for our princess!

AMAZING JAKES

We have a tradition in our family to let the birthday person choose where they would like to go eat for their birthday. Madi chose Amazing Jakes for her birthday dinner...which shouldn't come as a surprise that she tries to make her birthday celebration last as long as possible (i think she gets it from me). We invited Madi's cousins that live in town since they weren't able to make it to her gymnastics party. They all had such a great time. If you've never been there I highly recommend it as a fun family activity!

They went on every ride they could and ate lots and lots of the self serve ice cream in the little cones that was just the right size. Madi was so excited for the bumper cars that she didn't even mind waiting in line for 45 minutes. It seemed to be worth the wait. She had a perma-smile on her face after. I tried to get a picture while they were going around the track but they were too fast for my camera. If you look at the blurry picture above, Madi and Brady are in the blue bumper car, just about to pass Nana and Bella in the black car.

After hours of fun it was time to go home and of course you couldn't leave without another kid size ice cream cone!!

Grammy & Amy's Engagement

Grammy also had a birthday this month-she is the Greifzu's "Irish Princess". Unfortunately she was in hospice for her birthday so we all decided to go visit her and celebrate so she knew we loved her and were praying for her health.

Madi, Bella, and Sophia had lots of fun playing with the shamrock confetti on the table.

The day before we went to visit Grammy there was some exciting news!! Geoff proposed to Amy...and she said YES!! I know I posted about her wedding dress shopping before they were engaged....when you know you know! :) We are all very excited for the both of them. Geoff is such a wonderful man and he fits in well with all these Greifzu's :) Congrats to the both of you!! There is so much excitement and precious moments ahead!

Amy was extremely happy to show off her beautiful ring! (you did good Geoff) It really is quite stunning. Since all of us were making such a fuss over Amy's new bling, Madi wanted to be apart of it so she tried it on herself.

I have to admit that it did bring a tear to my eye thinking that one day (long from now) my little girl will be getting married. They really grow up so quickly. I know that she's almost 5 and it blows me away to think about all the exciting things and accomplishments she's had thus far. So for this I hope she is always as close to me and her daddy as she is today.

Sophia's 3rd B-day Party

My cute niece turned 3 this month (on St. Patty's Day) and had a super fun bounce party.

There were lots of kids and adults there. I really think when the adults are playing...they are having more fun than the kids. Madi absolutely loves going to the different bounce places, she's very good at getting up all the slides and is always excited to slide down as fast as she can. She also likes to race up and down the slides.

As you can see in the above pictures she was racing Auntie Amy up and down and she beat her down the slide. She always has a great time.

Now this picture really shows "like father like son"!! I love it!! Brady and his dad Rich were having a blast going down the big bouncy slides!!

I have noticed that when somebody tells Madi a "rule" she will do her best to make sure that everyone knows the rule and shouldn't be getting away with it otherwise. She was told that the big chair was for the birthday girl when she opened her presents and they didn't want the kiddos sitting it in. So Madi was eating her pizza and saw Papa sitting in the big chair so she took it upon herself to go and tell him that he wasn't allowed to sit in the chair-it was for Sophia. I thought it was a cute picture.

We all has such a wonderful time celebrating Sophia's 3rd birthday!!

Valentine's Day Fun

My niece turned 6 today and had the cutest party. All of the girls dressed up and got their hair done, did their own make-up....they got all fancied out and did a little runway show!! It was so cute and fun for all of them. This is Madi checking her cute self out in the mirror and putting make-up on! She started making all these funny faces after a few minutes-it was pretty funny to see her doing it then laughing at herself.

I think she's a natural at putting make up on. She did pretty good for doing it ALL by herself. She really enjoyed it and took her time, making sure she put it all on just like the hostest was telling them too. And as you can see she was pretty proud of the end result. They all were able to keep the makeup and Madi has been putting in on almost everyday since (much to my dismay but at least it washes off easily).After the cute runway show they all did, they went back into the party room and had juice and cupcakes. The store made the cupcakes and they were so cute...the faces where the characters for the shop....lots of frosting which I think all the little girls really enjoyed! Happy Birthday Bella and thank you for inviting us to such a fun birthday party!!

After Bella's party, we headed over to a dear friends house for another fun party - a Valentine's Party for the kiddos. The kids decorated bags to collect all of the cute Valentine's in.

They also decorated heart shaped cookies, with frosting and sprinkles!! So much fun!

Then they got to eat them up!! I think this was Madi's favorite part....eating the cookies!
It was really so much fun to see all these kids playing and having such a great time!! Thank you Jesse for hosting such a great time!