12 already?

Yesterday was Hannah's birthday. To celebrate we took her to the mall for some shopping and beauty

So she got her ears pierced again

A manicure

and a pedicure

We had a family dinner

Make a wish

There were lots of presents

cake

and another wish for good luck

Another birthday for Cerah

We celebrated Cerah's birthday in a hotel room this year and still managed to make it fun. Morgan put up a few decorations for her and we dragged her presents from our house to Kentucky so she would be able to share her birthday with Papa and Grandma.

The package is unwrapped enough for Cerah to figure out what she was getting.

An Xbox 360 with kinect from Papa and Grandma

See the decorations? Cerah kept the poster to bring home and put in her room

A new study bible. Yay, she's using it already

A handmade chopsticks box with decorated reusable chopsticks bought in Taiwan.

Rob's friend James went there and Rob asked him to pick it up for us.

Lego Captain America from her bird. I don't recommend taking a bird shopping - they are worse than kids when it comes to picking something out.

A decorating kit from Grandma Anita

Surrounded by presents. Must be nice to be a kid.

This is the cake Cerah wanted. Yes, it's Avengers. The new favorite in our house.

Birthday Cakes

Cerah made our birthday cakes again this year. The theme this time around was our favorite movies. My favorite is Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and Robbie's favorite are the Indiana Jones series. She was pretty ambitious as she hasn't really learned how to make characters or any other items so pretty much everything on our cakes was trial and error but I think they turned out pretty good for her first attempt.

Unless you've seen my movie you probably won't get most of these decorations but she incorporated them from different scenes that were important to the movie.

I didn't want fondant for my frosting so that made it a bit more difficult to decorate.

This represents a doll from the movie. It looks pretty good to me.

My favorite quote from the movie

How she managed to make the keyboard stick to the side of the cake is a mystery to me.

These are shoes in case you are wondering. They are central to the storyline.

For Rob's cake she incorporated different scenes from all the movies.

We decided to make the snake the largest part of the cake since there's always one in every movie.

On the side of the cake is the map that always shows up when Indiana Jones is traveling. She also added some bones since he's an archaeologist.

She had some trouble with the fondant cracking. No matter how many times she made it, it cracked every time it was put on the cake. I think the temperature had a lot to do with it.

But, all in all, her dad loved it.

Honor Star Hannah

We had the Kids Award Banquet for our church on Friday night. One of the highlights of the night for this banquet is the crowning of the Honor Stars. These are 5th grade girls who have completed 3 years worth of Stars lessons in our Mpact Girls club. This year there were only two girls who finished although we had five in the class.  I'm the teacher for the honor star girls but for this night I got to be just the mom and enjoy watching Hannah go through the ceremony.

Waiting for the banquet to start. I had to get there a little early to finish getting badges ready

Let's get a more formal picture before we begin.

Our kids pastor, Pastor Randy, giving Hannah an award for BGMC in Sunday School

Miss Rosemary, the kids pastor's wife and woman in charge of our Mpact Girls Club, took over for me and handed out the awards for the Honor Stars.

Hannah and Dad watching a short video Pastor Randy put together of Hannah - it included pictures of her and a voice over by her talking about what Honor Stars meant to her this year.

With her Honor Star sash at the end of the ceremony

We are proud of her. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to finish this program.

This year, because there were only two, they got their names on the cake.

Graduation for Anthony

Anthony finally did it!  We had our doubts and plenty of stressful times but Saturday we watched as he walked across the stage and accepted his high school diploma. YAY!

Right before graduation

School sign above the stage

In case you forgot which school you graduated from

Graduates filing into the auditorium

there were over 650 students who graduated

recognizing the valedictorians

Anthony walking up to the stage

accepting his diploma

walking off the stage

getting formal picture

yes, it's really a real diploma

posing with Papa and Grandma

I'm still in shock - can you tell?

Rob and Anthony still treating it like a joke

O.k, we're happy now

the girls are excited too