Another Photo Shoot - 4th Of July

A few days late, but during Baby Fox's first year I did a themed photo shoot for each month, that way when I made the calendar at the end of the year, I had a picture all set to go for each month, genius I tell ya. Okay not really, I did the themed photo shoots (cause when you have 1 kid you have ample amount of time and he was always so patient with me) and then in December when I was trying to figure out what to get our parents, I thought, hey lets do a calendar. So those pictures I had been taking throughout the year really came in handy.

I have been doing the same for Mini Fox, and have been trying to do the same photos that I did for Baby Fox, see here, here and here

So without further adeu here are Mini Fox's Fourth of July photos.

These are the ones we sent out to family and friends:

These I just really liked:

Baby Fox wanted to get in too, but was only patient enough for a few photos, non of which turned out, of course :)

And here are the ones for Baby Fox when he was just 6 months old.

Lesson, need more than 15 minutes to do a photo shoot with Mini Fox. That's all the time I had before we had to leave for our 4th of July plans, super last minute, mostly I forgot until the morning of...haha. Oops! And Baby Fox wasn't crawling yet, so it was much easier to get him to stay put...hehe.

Our Fourth of July Weekend

I started the long Holiday weekend, by trying these things out. Have you heard of them? They are actually pretty cool, they are stickers, that you heat with a blow dryer. Pretty simple, after the first one the next 9 nails went pretty fast, and the best part is, you don't have to wait for dry time, so I was done in 20 minutes. Next time it will probably take me less time than that, since I'll know what I'm doing.

The finished product. I like them, but I don't think I would use this as my main source of doing my nails. Yesterday I did a TON of cooking/washing dishes and they stayed on, just the tips were starting to wear down, part of that I think is that I don't think I totally put them on correctly. Next time should be better. I bought some skull ones that I can't wait for Halloween to roll around. I personally would only use these for things like this, not for solid colors. And that's my review.

Friday my aunt and uncle were having a party at their house to kick off the festitivies. My uncle gets VIP passes to the fireworks. Love having family in high up places :)

They hired some taco guys to make the food, yummy!

Mini Fox LOVES the pool..

Ice cream social time...

Baby Fox's favorite cousin...and they happened to match too, totally not planned.

These two...

After swimming and eating we headed to the fireworks show.

He wasn't thrilled that I was taking a picture of him, lol. Yep we were VIP on "The Hill", lol.

Tailgating before the show

Cousin #4 would kill me if she knew I posted this...I really like it mostly cause her daughter (cutie #3) was posing exactly like her mama.

All of the cuties! We were only missing 1 of them.

My dad brought some headphones for Baby Fox, last year I had to cover his ears the whole time, he thought the headphones were so cool.

Firetruck stopped by

 Mr. somehow wrangled Baby Fox into his lap a good 30 minutes before the show started...

Best photo bomb ever :)

And then he somehow ended up with both kids

But eventually I got Mini Fox

She was super tired and spent most of the show like this

The fireworks were pretty awesome.

We spent the night with Cousin #5 and his family. His son wakes up at 6am...let me tell ya, that's early! The boys waited paitently for an appropriate time to go to Mini Fox up. Finally at 8:45 we told them they could go get her...they ran.

Then we had breakfast

And cousin #4 and her family came over

They brought over this race track that you use your iPhone with and it someone stays on the paper...I don't know how it works...but it's pretty cool.

Lunch time!

Cutie #1, Auntie Sarah you take too many pictures, haha

Baby Fox fell asleep almost immediately. He got woken up 2 hours early and went to bed 2 hours late...he was tired!

We went grocery shopping when we got home and had a pretty low key night.

Sunday was spent going to church and cooking a lot.

Baby Fox comes up to Mr. and says Daddy, swaddle me!

After naps, Mini got some water table time, and Baby Fox and Mr. went swimming.

Then I had MNO, or MNI (Mom's night in?) at my house. We had a rep from It Works come out and give us a presentation along with beauty night. Us sharing our favorite tips and tricks. We had so much fun, just hanging out and learning about the product. I hope that it works for everyone! Forgot to take a picture, when i thought of it someone was out of the room and I forgot to take one when they came back, darn.





It was a great weekend, although with MNI last night going late and still having to get ready for today, I'm on tired girl!



Tomorrow I'm going to have the pictures I took of the kids for our monthly photo shoot. Stay tuned!

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather for Mommy Moments

and with Bella & Lisa

Dinosaurs and Monster Truck Party

Not sure if you guys knew, but Baby Fox was born on Christmas

Yep that's a big stocking! And his hat said "Special Delivery"

Instead of throwing him a birthday party in December (cause let's face it, there are only so many shopping days in December and the last thing people want to do is go to a birthday party on a potential shopping day, you're welcome economy), we throw him a half birthday party. This was last years party, Construction Theme (My most repinned thing on Pinterest).

This year's theme was started out with Dinosaurs...and then suddenly after the invitations were sent out, he wanted monster trucks too. If that doesn't say boy, I don't know what does. If he wants monster trucks too, dinosaurs and monster trucks he'll get.

I relied very heavily on my trusty cricut. If you don't have one, you NEED one, yes you need, I feel that strongly about it. Wait for Joann's to put it on sale, or amazon, just get it, you'll thank me later. Okay, back to the party.

I got a bunch of stuff from Oriental Trading Company, like these dinosaur napkins and plates and these monster truck napkins and plates  and these blow up dinosaurs and then made the rest of the decorations.

I found this gem from a FB after party resale group, score! But you can buy it here.

We've had enough parties at the house to know what works for party flow. Having the food here, keeps people moving around the house.

Close up, if you can't tell those are t-rex foot prints

I lined up the dinosaurs and trucks just above the food, and then labeled those. They were super last minute, and I didn't print out a mac and cheese one, although I think people were too busy eating the yummy food to notice. We catered from Lucilles's BBQ, they have excellent food and if you order their mac and cheese for catering, tell them you want it extra creamy. When we got it, we though, oh gosh, we got too much, and then it was the thing people were scraping the bottom to get every little bit out.

I also had dinosaurs around the house, some of the trucks were chasing the dinosaurs, some dinosaurs were chasing the trucks and then Mr. made one of the trucks run over a dinosaur, poor guy he never had a chance.

Drinks, there were about 30 adults and 20 kids and we just bought a 12 can case of Coke Zero, Diet 7-up and Coke, and that was plenty of soda and we had lemonade and of course water. Love those little half bottles from Costco. I rounded out the drinks with some organic juice boxes for the kids.

It was actually a swim party but I didn't get one picture of people swimming. I always tell myself I'll be better at taking pictures, but then when the time comes, the party is always too fast and I miss the opportunity. Darn.

Like I said Monday, I made the most delicious cookies ever, and people couldn't stop eating or raving about them. I might be making them again for 4th of July...I don't expect there to be left overs.

Cake table, a good friend made the cake, isn't it awesome?

Wait let me get a close up for you.

How cool is that volcano? The bottom part is chocolate while the top part is rice krisipies! (TIP: Our friend bought a sheet cake from Costco, and then scraped off all of the frosting and decorated it herself, guess how much frosting was on it? 3.5 pounds, yep you read that correctly 3.5 pounds of frosting, think about that next time you eat a cake from Costco)

See, everyone discovered the cookies and their almost gone...

We did cake about 2 hours after the party started (just before people started to leave for nap time)

Most of the people from the party...some people were being dumb camera shy and didn't want to get in, go figure.

All in all it was a great party with some even better friends. Thank you for sharing in Baby Fox's half birthday. 

Cousin #3

Baby on left is 7 months, Mini Fox (9.5 months) and Baby on the right is 5 months

Next year, note to self, take more pictures! Or designate someone to do it!

Linking up with  Angel and  Nicole