Olivia's 6 year photo shoot

Happy Birthday Olivia you are such a doll! Here are her six year old photo's. If anyone has any helpful pointers when it comes to taking children's photographs I am all ears as I kinda struggled during this photo shoot. Enjoy!

Here Olivia was climbing a tree and I zoomed in while she was looking up

I tried to get her little hand with this flower (she is always picking flowers) but you can hardly see it!

I love her hair in this picture

These are the coolest flowers that blossom in spring. She is looking at a bird and looks unusually stiff!

It is spring here so I am loving all the green during October

A pretty good smile, she is starting to pull the fake smiles now!

It is a fake smile but I liked the red brick against the blue eyes/ dress

I couldn't choose between these two pictures, they are pretty much the same pose but different smiles, and these are the flowers right outside our mailbox!

Birthday Parties

With Mary and Olivia's birthdays only 5 days apart (Mary's induction date was Olivia's birthday, but she came early) it has been a birthday party week. It has also been the end of term 3 so we have the next two weeks off from school. Here are some pictures from the girls parties.

First, Mary's Birthday breaky (what the Aussies call breakfast). Pink pancakes with sprinkles.

Some princess PJ's and figurines from Grandma Swinton

Here is Mary opening some gifts from her birthday party--Thanks everyone!

That excited face is because there is a PINK yo-yo in that purse, given to her from her "boyfriend" William Bennion. Apparently they are going to get married but they won't hug each other when they say good bye...watch out for cooties!

Olivia's birthday breakfast

And some pictures from the party. She had about 20 kids over and we played A LOT of games!

In Australia you don't open the gifts during the party. We finished with 30 minutes to spare so I did the tacky and called everyone over to open the gifts. The kids were SO excited to show Olivia what they had bought her. It was a perfect way to end the party!

Olivia went from zero Barbie dolls to 10 in about 5 minutes. She told everyone all she wanted for her birthday was a Barbie doll.

One kids mom offered to make the cake...and look what she did!

Wow a barbie doll cake--nothing like turning 4 & 6 years old! Happy birthday kids!

Random Tangent: I was once in this sociology class in graduate school and we were going over research about "mean girls" in grade school (elementary and middle school) and bullies and pecking orders etc... anyway I remember the researcher discussing the Hail Mary card for a girl who wants to get in or out of cliques...it was the BIRTHDAY PARTY (I have the statistics to prove it and it is particularly true for girls vs. boys. ). The excitement of getting an invitation in the mail, having everyone talk about your party at school, picking out a gift for your friend, celebrating, and then all the talk afterwards. In addition, the social pressure of if you invite someone to your party they feel pressure to invite you to their party, so you get to do it all over again!!!!! Birthday parties are awesome and I feel sorry for the kid who either doesn't get the party or worse...gets the "get away weekend with their mom/dad" As tempting as it is to get some face time with your kids, life is so much better when they are socially accepted at school. They are pleasant at home, confidant with them self and more likely to talk to you as a parent. O my gosh, I just got on a soap box!--I am getting off now :) Summary: Always throw your kids a birthday party, it is so important for their social development and social/ emotional intelligence!