This post is going to be heavy on the pictures, because they really do speak for themselves. We celebrated Natalie’s real birthday on March 1, but couldn’t schedule her party with friends until March 11. This is very confusing for a 4 year old! She very anxiously awaited the day of her party.

Andy took the kids to run errands in the morning so I could finish the cake…

6 layers of chocolate cake, with toasted marshmallow in between, and chocolate malt frosting on the outside.  I always have a stash of recipes I want to make on special occasions, and this is the one Natalie chose.

Natalie has been blessed with so many sweet friends (who also have awesome mommies… bonus!).

I think it took Ben a full 24 hours to come down from his sugar/party high! He was pretty wound up!

After the party, with the Curtis kids… these 4 spend a LOT of time together and always play so nicely!

I think you can tell by Natalie’s face that her party was a success!

I’m sure everyone knows by now that we got an entire week of rain last week.  It’s not often that SoCal gets a storm like that, and we personally enjoyed it very much.  The kids and I did end up feeling a little cabin fever by the end of the week.  Going out in the rain is fun the first couple times but after a while it becomes annoying when you get soaked just trying to load the kids into the car!  One day we had some particularly loud thunder, it was actually shaking our house.  Natalie got a real kick out of that.

This recipe for Lemon-Vanilla Tart with Candied Lemon Slices was found in my Better Homes & Gardens magazine  and promised to be “Sunshine by the Slice”.  It was a nice treat in the middle of a very gray week.  So good and tangy and simple, I highly recommend it.  Though if I do it again I might try it with a different pastry, I like a thicker and sweeter crust.

Coloring is Natalie’s favorite rainy day activity.  We went through an unbelievable amount of paper last week.  She especially loves these princess coloring pages.  She’s starting to get the concept of staying in the lines, but truly her favorite thing is watching ME color and directing me what to color next!   Fortunately for her I think coloring is relaxing and I had extra time on my hands last week, so we had nice times together.

We have three rules about crayons:

1. No snapping crayons in half.

2. No tearing the paper off crayons.

3. No dropping crayons on the floor or Ben will eat them.

We make Natalie repeat them to us and it’s always so funny to hear her say them.  She tends to forget numbers 1 and 2 (she seems to have an uncontrollable urge to do those things), but is VERY concerned about #3.  “Ben will eat them ALL GONE!” she says.  Yes, he really will.