The Quints 4th Birthday!

Kyndall, Kassidy, Rustin, Ryder and Kaydence

I am more than two months late, but I am finally posting pictures from the quints birthday! Their birthday fell on Sunday this year, so we went to church in the morning and had a few families over for cake in the evening. They are old enough to really "get" birthdays now, so they were SO excited!

The Fab 5 with their gifts---Five is a very "normal" family size, so the quints birthday is like some families Christmas! (Something I should have thought about before saving all the present wrapping until the last minute :-) )

The present wrapping started out with order and taking turns....

...but quickly evolved into mass chaos!

The quints take a break----All that present un-wrapping can be exhausting!

I made each of the quints their own little mini-cake in their color. In addition to color coding, each of the quints has a symbol that they chose to identify their things when multiple colors are not available. Kassidy--flower, Kaydence--sunshine, Kyndall--heart, Rustin--basketball, Ryder--changes his mind a lot (for his cake it was a monster)

Kassidy, Kaydence, Rustin, Kyndall and Ryder

Happy Birthday to Kassidy!!

Happy Birthday to Kaydence!

Happy Birthday to Rustin!!

Happy Birthday to Kyndall!!

Happy Birthday to Ryder!!

For the rest of the party guests, I made two cakes---a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling (to die for!) and...

Lemon cake with raspberry cream cheese filling

The day following the quints actual birthday, we had their "friend" party. After spending lots of time on Riley and Kaiya's birthday parties this year, I decided to make life easy on myself and have the quints party at the Big Bounce.

We invited all the kids from church who are in their Sunday School classes----there are 21 kids their age, so it was a big group! I was really interested to see what my kids would do at the party. They don't get invited on playdates with other kids very often and they are so used to playing with each other, that I wondered if they would stick together or branch out. To my surprise, none of them stayed together---they all buddied up with someone else.

Kassidy with her friends Paige and Marcy

Kaydence with her friend Emmie

Rustin with his buddy Weston

Kyndall was more of a free spirit, running around by herself---she did join a bunch of other girls watching a movie for a little bit.

Ryder with his pal Andrew

We sang Happy Birthday and had cupcakes. I made rainbow cupcakes (pink, purple, yellow for the girls and blue, green, white for the boys) but I was so busy I forgot to take pictures of the inside!

Party Room

Present Time!

Present un-wrapping quickly turned into a free-for-all!

The Party Kids!

The quints with the cute gal that hosted our party at the Big Bounce! It was so much fun, and the best part----I didn't have to get my house ready for a party, or clean up after the 4-year-old invasion!

The Quints 4th Birthday!

Kaiya Turns 8!

For birthdays, the policy at our house is that the kids can have a birthday party with their friends every other year. This was the rule in my house growing up and now that I am a mother, I can fully appreciate it! Kid birthday parties are a lot of fun, but they can be a lot of WORK too! (That being said, I have no idea how I am going to implement this with the quints yet, since there are five of them....maybe the girls get to have a party one year and the boys the next---when I made this policy, I would never have imagined having quintuplets!)

This was Kaiya's year for a friend birthday party. Within about a month of her last birthday party (nearly two years ago) Kaiya decided that for her 8th birthday, she wanted to have a Hawaiian themed birthday party. I thought for sure she would change her mind in the two years she had to wait for the next party, but she stuck to it! That was fine with me, because I could think of lots of fun things to do with the "Hawaii" theme!

Party Invitation

When all the "passengers" arrived at the party, they boarded the "plane" for Flight 306 service to Honolulu, Hawaii.

All aboard Flight 306--10 very excited, very active, very LOUD girls get ready for take-off!

Once the "plane" had reached its cruising altitude, the passengers were served beverages and snacks.

Snack packs filled with macadamia nuts

The handsome flight attendant (aka Riley) serves drinks to the passengers

The flight attendant collected all trash and remaining service items as the passengers returned their seats and tray tables to their upright and locked positions in preparation for landing.

After the girls "landed", they were greeted with shell leis (which I picked up when I was in Kona in January). Then they completed two different craft projects. First they made some fancy flip-flops and then they put together their own candy lei.

Working on the flip-flops

Fancy Flip-Flops--The finished product!

Making candy leis

Riley models his lei (he didn't think it was manly to curl the ribbons like the girls did)

Next the girls learned a hula dance. I used to live in Hawaii when I was a kid, so I taught them how to do the hula to "Pearly Shells". Jayson took several pictures, but they must be on my other computer, so I will have to add them later :-)

After the hula, the girls played a game called "Boolah, Boolah", which we renamed "Hula, Hula" to go with the Hawaii theme. I remember playing this game at every birthday party I had as a kid, but I think it might be a game that my mom made up, because I have never met anyone else who knows what it is. It is basically a hot/cold game. Someone leaves the room and somebody else hides a prize. When the person comes back into the room, every one sings "boolah, boolah" over and over singing loudly when the person is near the prize and softly when they are far from the prize until the person finds it. The prizes for the game were these cute flower hair bows. I looked at the store for a more tropical flower to make the bows out of, but had to settle for these :-)

The game prizes: Fun Flower Hair bows

Goodie Bags for the girls to take home their loot

The evening ended with dinner! On the menu, Hawaiian Haystacks (which is rice, chicken gravy and toppings which included cheese, crunchy noodles, coconut, pineapple, and macadamia nuts), pineapple and cantaloupe skewers, and Hawaiian sweet rolls. To drink: tropical smoothies (with little umbrellas of course).

The serving table

The party girls enjoying their feast!

If after reading this post, you are thinking to yourself "Wow, she sure planned a lot of stuff for two hours!" You would be 100% correct! The girls barely started eating dinner five minutes before parent started arriving to pick up their daughters! We quickly sang "Happy Birthday" to Kaiya and sent everyone home with a cupcake.

Kaiya with her cake. The shape of the base of the cake is supposed to be an "8" for Kaiya's 8th birthday (it was pretty subtle, I don't think anyone caught on to that). The volcano was made by shaping rice krispie treats around the outside of an 8 oz water bottle. I filled the bottle with Cheerios so that the candles would say put and hopefully make it look like the volcano was exploding. The lava rocks near the base of the volcano are mini and regular sized chocolate chips. The "sand" on the beach is brown sugar. I picked up the hula dancer in Hawaii. The rest is frosting....lots and lots of frosting!

Make a wish!

On Kaiya's actual birthday, we celebrated with a small "family" party. We had GG and Ronnie and the Woods family over for dinner and birthday treat.

Kaiya opening her presents. Ryder was upset that he didn't get to open any.

The whole "family" at Kaiya's family party

I love planning parties, and Kaiya's party was a huge success, but I am glad I don't have to do another one for her for a couple more years! Now time to plan Riley's birthday party...

Kaiya Turns 8!

Layered Ice Cream Cake Recipe

I have had a few people request the recipe for the ice cream cakes I made for the quints 3rd birthday, so I decided to post it. I originally invented the cake a few weeks ago. Some previous house guests had left three full cartons of strawberry ice cream in our freezer and we were having some people over for dinner, so I decided to dream up a way to use up some of the ice cream. I generally think that all desserts should involve chocolate (see my post HERE to read more about that), so I created this "chocolate covered strawberries" cake.


1 box Devils Food Cake Mix
1 1/4 cup semi-sweet Chocolate Chips (divided)
1 1/4 cups Water
1/2 cup oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 cartons strawberry ice cream
1 tub Cool Whip
3 Strawberries for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Finely chop 1 cup of the chocolate chips and set aside. Combine cake mix, water, oil and eggs in a mixing bowl. Mix on low speed for 30 seconds, then for 2 minutes on medium speed, scraping bowl as needed. Stir in chopped up chocolate chips. Pour into two 8-inch cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 31-35 minutes.

Remove pans from oven. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely. When cakes are cool, use a large knife to slice off any peaks that formed when cooking. Wrap each layer in plastic wrap and freeze.

Once cakes are frozen, remove from freezer and slice each cake in half to form a total of four circular layers. Re-wrap and freeze each layer. Build the cake by working on one layer at a time. Soften 1/3 of the ice cream (1/2 of a container) in a large bowl. When softened, use spoon to mix it up a little so that there are no hard lumps. Remove one layer of cake from the freezer. Spread ice cream over cake layer and return immediately to the freezer. Repeat with the next 2 layers, adding them to the top of the previous layer when finished. Top with the remaining cake layer. Freeze until solid.

Remove frozen cake from freezer. Using a rubber spatula, evenly spread cool whip on cake. Cut strawberries with a V to remove stems, then in half lengthwise to make a total of six "heart" shaped halves. Place strawberries in a circle on top of the cake. Place the remaining 1/4 cup chocolate chips in a Ziploc bag. Microwave in 20 second intervals at 50% power until chips are melted. Knead bag with fingers to mix, then snip a small corner of the bag. Drizzle chocolate over the top of the cake. Return cake to freezer.

Freeze until hard. When ready to serve, run a large knife under hot water and dry it off for easier slicing. Enjoy!

The "Chocolate Covered Strawberries" Ice Cream Cake

For the quints birthday party, I made two cakes, a "boy" cake and a "girl" cake with the quints colors of ice cream. For the girl cake, I used strawberry (pink), Dreyer's Take the Cake (yellow) and vanilla which I colored purple with food coloring.

The "girl" cake---pink, yellow and purple

For the "boy" cake, I used mint chocolate chip ice cream (green) for two layers, and vanilla ice cream colored with blue food coloring for the middle layer.

The "boy" cake--blue and green

Layered Ice Cream Cake Recipe

Quint's 3rd Birthday "Family" Party

We celebrated the quints 3rd birthday with a "small" family party----everyone who helps us out on a regular basis, whom we have grown close to over the past three years. We might not share the same genetics, but I consider these people part of the family :-) (NOTE: All the pictures in this post were taken by my photographer friend, Kristen Duke---she was nice enough to take pictures so I could serve cake and mingle withe the guests--thanks Kristen!!)

The Whole "Family"! (or at least everyone who was in town)

The quints are not big fans of real cake, so I made them their own Rice Krispie Treat cakes with Froot Loops in "their" color. We took turns singing "Happy Birthday" to each of the kids, starting with Kassidy (the oldest) and ending with Ryder (the youngest...by 3 minutes).

Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday dear KASSIDY, Happy Birthday to You!

Make a wish!!

Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday dear KAYDENCE, Happy Birthday to You!

Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday dear RUSTIN, Happy Birthday to You!

Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday dear KYNDALL, Happy Birthday to You!

(This was Kyndall's attempt to blow out the candles...pretty weak!)

Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday dear RYDER, Happy Birthday to You!

YAY!

Kassidy

Kaydence (she isn't much of a sweets eater)

Rustin---this kid has the best facial expressions!

Kyndall

Ryder

I made a couple of ice cream cakes for the rest of the guests---a "girl" cake and a "boy" cake with layers in each of the quint's colors.

Cutting the cake---I liked the expressions on the two girls faces---I think they were a little anxious to get their piece!

The "girl" cake---pink, yellow and purple

The "boy" cake--blue and green

Alissa and Kaiya (they look a little happier now that they finally got their piece of cake!)

More party pics:

Kassidy with Norm

Kaydence with Barbara

Rustin (did I mention that he has the best facial expressions???)

Kyndall showing off her dancin' moves

Ryder

My parents gave the quints this awesome 7-seater airplane teeter-totter for their birthday. Most people would put something like this outside in the backyard, but our house already feels like a jungle gym, so we figured why not put it in the dining room???

Quint's 3rd Birthday "Family" Party