WHY AM I ALWAYS SO FAR BEHIND???

Seriously. Time is FLYING. Four kids and Carson teaching Seminary (not to mention running his own business), and me with ADD and a big house and no house cleaner means we are constantly struggling to keep our head above water in so many ways. One thing I'm trying to do this year is break tasks into smaller, manageable pieces, so everything else doesn't get out of control while I focus on one big project. Like this morning, Trey & Becks would NOT cooperate and barely got out of the shower in time to go to school so I could only run 1.5 miles and do just the seated row and sit-ups before getting in the shower in time to get Caeden to preschool. But I realized that's probably better than doing a full-blown workout and making myself tired for the rest of the day, I should just do little bits while I can, slow and steady wins the race, right?

So I'm going to try to do the same thing with blogging. Hopefully before I pick up Caeden from preschool I can just do a short post about his birthday:

So I felt like I short-changed all 3 boys on their birthday parties last year because I was pregnant, and I want to make their birthdays really special this year. My friend Shaunie showed me the cutest monster cupcakes on this blog and luckily Caeden liked them too, so I pulled out some scrapbook paper by one of my favorite companies, October Afternoon, and made some invitations:

Then we ordered monster activities and party favors at Oriental Trading Company and put them in plain boxes so the kids could decorate them with the monster stickers:
This was 2 days before the party... I am not one to have all my ducks in a row but this is proof that I'm trying!
We had over 5 friends and I had considered inviting more but I'm glad I didn't because it was a little chaotic
Trey drew a monster rock band picture and copied it off himself for an activity... he LOVES to help plan parties
Of course we decorated the house and got a green balloon because that's Caeden's favorite color

And here are the cupcakes waiting to be decorated... I tried to make them look "furry" like the girl on the blog did, and I even bought Wilton frosting tip 233 but on the morning of the party I couldn't find my pastry bag coupler ANYWHERE :(

In the middle of the party the kids noticed that the chickens had laid an egg and Caeden wanted to show off how good he is at his chore of gathering eggs (look at that proud/mischievous face)
We made monster body parts out of colored melting chips on wax paper ahead of time and the kids used them to make their cupcakes into monsters... I learned a couple of things: first, you can mix the chips to alter the color but it has to be done at the beginning so they melt at the same rate, and you can NOT add food coloring of any type. Also, mixing the pink and light blue chips does not make a nice purple. But, for example, I thought the green was too dark so I melted together some green, white and yellow chips and it worked fine to make a lighter green.

Afterwards I made some thank you cards with the same paper, let Caeden stamp "thanks" on them and write his name on the inside.

I feel like a good mom.