Mid-Month Randoms: Focus on Sophia and James

I went through my camera roll and decided to do a "Mid-Month Randoms" post with some of the pictures that were on the reel, and then realized that all of them focused on Sophia and James.  I blame that on the fact that we just got done celebrating their birthday month ...

On the morning on her 13th brithday:

Later in the day, she opened all of her presents from us and then we headed to Relli's for dinner, her restaurant of choice.  Grandpa joined us, of course.  

Sidenote: the weather was unseasonably warm.  In fact, the next day (my birthday), the high reached 72 degrees which broke a record.  Crazy!

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The same weekend that we celebrated Sophia's birthday with friends, we had a "Family Party" to jointly celebrate both Sophia and Jimmy.

I made a cake for Sophia and she absolutely loved how it turned out.  I kept it a secret on how I was planning to decorate it and it made it even more special for her.

Because I had already decorated a cake for Jimmy for his earlier party with friends, I kept it more simple and did some dinosaur-topped cupcakes.  That way, we had the option of either white or chocolate cake for our guests:

We kept the balloon arch up, although it was starting to lose a bit of its "ooomph:"

I then added a little plant to this adorable disco ball planter that I found and used it as a centerpiece.

A sign of a good party is wild hair when it is time to blow out your candle!

Sophia's hair was a bit more tamed, ha!

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As a potential decoration for the disco ball party, I custom ordered this neon sign for Sophia.  When it didn't arrive in time for the party, I completely forgot about it.

The following week, it showed up on our doorstep.  I had a good laugh about it and then waited for Sophia to get home from school.  Together, we did some rearranging in her room and then opted to put it above her vanity.  It is PERFECT there.

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Once a month, Jimmy comes home with an "extra credit math project."  It is completely optional, but we like to do them anyway.  The teacher gives the students plenty of time to complete them and we tend to add a little extra creativity to the project.  For this particular assignment, Jimmy had to compare the distances of two planets from the sun and share a few random facts about them.  He opted to use watercolors and the final project turned out awesome!

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