Happy Birthday Avery! {7}

Avery just celebrated her 7th birthday! We spent the day in London and went to a couple of shows. The first was I Believe in Unicorns. Derek and I found it rather boring, but we think the kids sort of enjoyed it.

The second show was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. We all enjoy watching the musical so we figured we'd all enjoy the performance. The first 20 minutes were FANTASTIC! Then it started raining and they postponed the show. Only it kept raining and after 40 minutes or so they decided to just cancel it. Bummer!! Really, the first 20 minutes were so good we're thinking it may be our new favorite!! We were able to get a rain check...for the rain, and we can go back whenever we want. We are looking forward to it! Derek and the girls haven't stopped singing "Bless Your Beautiful Hide" since then. Kind of funny. On our way home from the performance Derek was whistling the tune in the tube station. He stopped and someone finished the rest of the melody for him!! We all had a good laugh.

(My mind was so preoccupied with party details that we forgot to bring jackets. Soooo -- new hoodies for all of the kids!! We joked that they were 3 different shades of gray to represent the weather in England.)

Now on to the birthday party. Avery ended up choosing to have an Art Party theme this year. Allie had one similar for her 5th birthday except hers was at a studio and Avery's was at home. It was in the planning stages for several weeks. The only problem was we were down to a week left and we only had a few RSVPs. We wanted to make sure there were enough canvases for everyone so I sent out a reminder to parents in hopes that we'd get a few more yes's. Let me tell you, if you ever want a lot of people to come to your parties tell them that the whole family is welcome! That will get nearly everyone to come!! That is just what happened with us. It was a bit overwhelming but it was so fun to have a house full and really made it feel like a true party!! It was wonderful.

The birthday girl wasn't in the mood for pictures, but I had to get some!!

This is the only "setup" picture I took and it doesn't even have everything on the table yet.

Everyone started arriving and once we had a good amount here we started on the canvases.

Then we went and popped paint filled balloons with darts. This was a huge hit with the kids!!

Then all of the kids went and played on the bounce house and rope swing while we set up the rest of the art stations. Derek set up the squirt gun painting -- which ended up being a huge fail, but the kids still enjoyed squirting.....each other. The other stations were: tissue paper canvases, shaving cream marbling, ocean theme stamp painting, watercolor painting, tire track painting. Those last two I don't think actually got set up. Things were just so crazy and the tables were so messy from the canvas painting it was taking forever to get things cleaned up. I was so busy during this time I didn't take a single picture! I know that the older kids enjoyed the tissue paper canvases and the younger ones enjoyed the shaving cream -- mostly just covering themselves in it! HUGE shout out to my friend, Jess, who was such a big help during the party. She helped me set things up, she helped the kids with the painting, she helped wash out all of the paint brushes, helped clean up, helped set up new stations, helped all of the kids get their food and I could go on and on!!!! Thank you, thank you!!!

Meanwhile, Derek started grilling the hamburgers and hot dogs and then everyone ate!

We made the perfect amount of food. We also had homemade mac n cheese, fruit, veggies, chips, rainbow jello, rainbow goldfish, loads of different rainbow sweets and we even had rainbow ice cubes (flavored and non-flavored) to go in water or 7up.

Then it was time for the cake!

Then people were starting to leave. We are missing a few people but I had to get a group pic! Ideally, I would have loved for them to be holding their canvases but that was just asking too much with this group!

Avery was so done with pictures! haha

A few of Avery opening presents.

 

It was such a fun party! Avery had the best time! There was a moment where she had to throw an "It's my party and I can cry if I want to moment" when she realized that her best friend, her 1st grade teacher, wasn't coming. I don't blame her at all for not coming. It was hard for Avery to understand though. So funny and cute that she considers her to be her best friend!

 

Scotland

We just had a great whirlwind of a trip to Scotland. Scotland is beautiful though it was overcast the majority of the time we were there. It didn't rain too much. Thankfully it rained mostly while we were driving. Speaking of driving....we did A LOT of driving. We always try to squeeze way to much into our trips. You would think we would have learned our lesson by now. To top it off, Scotland is a 5 and a half to 6 hour drive -- 10 hours when we get to the Highlands.

Our first stop was Edinburgh.

Craigmillar castle is right on the edge of the city. This castle is the perfect castle for hide and go seek. So many nooks and crannies. No rhyme or reason to the layout. It was seriously like a maze because of all of the additions and changes that were made throughout the years.

view of the city from the castle

Then we went into the city. We headed straight for the Royal Mile and walked to Edinburgh Castle.

 

Another view of the city.....from Edinburgh Castle

We actually went to the castle both days we were in Edinburgh. I love this picture. The kids got along SO well this trip!!

 

We ended our first day by going on a hike that has a spectacular view of the city. You have to imagine, it had already been a long day for us. We started our day at 4am. We had walked around the city all afternoon and now, dinner time (and we are all quite hungry mind you) we start this hike. We had to bribe the kids with ice cream to do it because they were less than thrilled. It was a brutal hike! It was all uphill with no leveling out. My calves were killing me not even half way in. I was getting super exhausted --paired with the tight calves and being hungry it wasn't a fun hike. It's always worth it when we get to the top though and quite rewarding. The girls actually did very good on this hike. After their ice cream they didn't complain once and they were racing us to the top.....and beat us! The girls did some serious bonding on this trip. It was so cute to watch them.

 

 

Close up of the castle from the hill

View of Carlton Hill

The next day we visited the National Museum of Scotland, St. Giles Cathedral, Camera Obscura (an optical illusion museum), Museum of Childhood and hiked to Carlton Hill.

The next day we saw some AMAZING castles. The first one was like from a fairy tale. Just a gorgeous setting. Dunnottar Castle in Stonehaven -- Aberdeenshire

She thought she heard a dolphin so she set out to look for it.

We found a cool playground on our way to the next castle so we had to stop to play.

The next castle was Slains Castle. It is an abandoned castle and was a bit tricky to find, but so glad we did! It's another one right on the edge of a cliff with fantastic views. This castle is in Crowden Bay -- Aberdeenshire. It is said to be the inspiration behind Dracula's castle because Bram Stoker visited it frequently.

 

 

 

Then we made our way to our lodge in the Highlands. It wasn't quite what we expected and it seemed to be kind of dirty. Luckily we weren't in it much. It was late when we arrived but we squeezed in a quick hike.

It was a steep and slipper one!

The next day we went on a hike to Steall's Waterfall. It was a fun hike through the gorge and then as soon as you step out of the gorge the waterfall is right there in the distance!

Allie was the smartest of us all and wore her wellies.

 

 

If you wanted to get closer to the waterfall you had to walk across this.

The kids weren't big enough to go across the wire bridge to the waterfall so they tried their best to make a way to get across the river.

 

The next.....and last stop of the day was Urquhart Castle, which is right on Loch Ness.

This girl knew nothing of the Loch Ness monster before this trip and now she is obsessed with Nessie! She kept saying she saw her and wanted us to pull over so she could take a closer look. She also wanted us to take a lot of pictures of her with the loch in the background in hopes that Nessie would pop up and she could make lots of money! haha

The next morning we checked out of our lodge and we saw this on our drive.

First stop was Stirling Castle.

Next stop: Caeverlock Castle

Last stop of the day before continuing home was Hadrian's Wall in England.

Final Verdict: Scotland is beautiful but we probably won't go back unless we have family or friends visit that REALLY want to go there. It's just such a long drive and we actually still like Wales better and it's much closer.

This was the story of our trip: !!!!!!