Birthday Parties, Round 2

In May, we always have a big round of birthdays.  Haley, Ben, and Matt all celebrate theirs within a week of each other.  It happens again in September, with Andrew and Grace.

 

Andrew is always happy to combine his birthday with her, because then he doesn't have to wait a whole week to get his presents.  He is always gracious enough to offer to do that for us.  What a guy.

 

I was feeling bad about being a boring mother, so we added an activity to this birthday party.  We bought some canvas, printed out their names in vinyl lettering, and then finger painted over that.  We then waited for it to dry, took off the lettering, and it ended up being a cute finger painted canvas with their names in white silhouette.

 

Now I just have to hang them all up (it's only been a month... I'm working on it).

 

***

 

Matt had been excited all day to share (leftover) birthday hats with everybody.  He had them on the front table, ready to go when people walked in the door (except nobody wants to wear them because they hurt your neck and are super annoying), but they humored him anyway.

 

By the way, that's grandma Jane in the background, trying to escape the picture.  I could have cropped her out, but I didn't just for the sake of it.

 

 

***

 

Now, on to the presents.  Grace only requested a few things this year, including: makeup (daddy is not happy about that one), a jump rope and hula hoop, and (most importantly -- she reminded me every day) COOK BOOKS!!

 

She also received a few surprises, like her Harry Potter wand that has an actual light at the tip of it.  You just have to wave it, and it turns on.  Super cool.  She thought so, too, as you can tell.

 

She also was super happy with her new pajamas and sleep mask (more on that later).

 

***

 

Then it was Andrew's turn.  He had been really excited to unwrap the gigantic gifts he got, until he noticed that he had a gift the exact same size as the one Grace opened, that had contained the Harry Potter wand.  So he went straight for that one as soon as we gave him the go-ahead.  I should have faked him out and put something different in there.  Maybe next year.

 

He also got lots of Lego's and Ninjago stuff, which he has since put together and are now sitting on his shelf.  (That's our neighbor, David.  He lives here, mostly.)

***

 

Now, for the cake(s).  Grace wanted chocolate cake, and Andrew put in a special request for carrot cake.  So like the awesome person that I am, I made both.

 

Grace was in charge of the candles.  She put 11 on for Andrew, and 6 on for her.  There were some extra in the box, so she put those on the leftover cake, too.

 

 

(Notice Matt in the background trying really hard not to help blow out the candles.)

***

 

And then we went out front to try everything out!  Grace and Joey are working on their jump-roping skills.

 

***

 

Later, I found Andrew sleeping with Grace's new pink Sassy sleep mask.  I'm glad he's confident enough in his manhood to wear this.

 

Random Pic of Haley, and a Bountiful Garden

For some reason, Haley had to have a picture with an animal for a school assignment.  And I think it was for English, if I'm not mistaken (which makes it all the more weird).

 

But whatever.  Far be it from me to argue with an assignment, so off to the backyard we went.  Luckily, we have an animal, and this is how it turned out:

 

 

Not too bad!

 

***

 

In other news, somebody please make our garden stop!  Nobody wants this much zucchini.  Nobody.

 

But thanks to Lowes, we had not one zucchini plant, but TWO -- all because they had their plants labeled wrong.  And I'm too dumb to know the difference, so I bought what I thought was 1 zucchini, 1 cucumber, and 1 butternut squash plants.  However, once they started growing, we found out that the butternut squash was in fact a zucchini.  The zucchini was also a zucchini, which is the big problem around here.  The cucumber was a butternut squash, so that worked out okay.

 

But nobody in their right mind wants or can consume this much zucchini, even if they do have 5 kids and a big fat dog.

 

Ben wanted Matt to sit up on the counter to show how big the pile really was.  But Matt didn't really want to, which is the reason for the sourpuss face.

 

***

 

P.S. I have killed the zucchini plant.

Pool Fun

Grandma Jane gave us a giant inflatable pool this summer.  I was surprised how much fun the kids had in it.  It was big, but it wasn't that big, especially when there were 4 kids floating around in there.  I had to drag them out of it after a couple of hours.  It was the perfect size for Matt and Grace, but when you added in the bigger boys, space was limited.  We're going for the bigger one next year!

 

Joey really enjoyed it.  He would strap on his goggles and snorkel and have me time how long he could swim (in very tiny circles) around the outside of the pool.  He got up to 12 minutes!

 

And if you're a Big Bang Theory fan, my absolute favorite pool moment of the summer was when they were playing Marco Polo, and Joey would pop up out of the water and say, "Bazinga!" then disappear again (a la Sheldon in the ball pit).  Hilarious.

 

Here are some pics of the kids with their cousins (Lindsey's kids), who came down for a couple of weeks this summer.  I think we're going to have to make it a little longer visit next year!

 

(This is Joey's signature face)

Knuckleheads

Please excuse the mess in the background.... it's been a busy month.

 

Here's the oldest and youngest knuckleheads wearing headbands.  Matt thinks he looks pretty cool when he has one of these on.  And lucky for us, Haley eggs him on.

 

Fairmont

After our trip to Utah went bust, we spent a couple of days at home while Joey recuperated.  Then we felt so bad about our kids missing out on their only summer vacation, we called up Fairmont Hot Springs to see if they had room for 7 slightly strange people.  Luckily, they did, and off we went.

 

We went exploring as soon as we got there.  We found a nice golf course, a mini-golf course, some barnyard animals, and a playground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and a Totem Pole that reached to the sky.  It was huge, but I called Grace over to stand by it (she didn't want to, because it was weird, but she finally relented), just to show how big it was.

 

 

Joey likes to pretend he's a Ninja Warrior (thanks, Ben, for introducing them to that show).  He's really good at it, and he even does it on the school playground now (even though we don't tell anybody that's what he's actually doing).

 

 

 There was this old-timey slide at the playground.  Actually, there were two, but one of them was really long.  Matt was the first one down, and he landed in a heap at the bottom.  I'm surprised his butt didn't catch on fire -- he was going so fast!  He was a little shocked when he got to the bottom.  I don't think he even knew what happened. 

 

 

But, just like the lunatic that he is, he climbed right back up there.  I was relieved to see a look of contemplation on his face, though.  He thought for about 3.2 seconds about whether or not he should try it again.

 

 

And then he did.  And again, he shot like a rocket right to the dirt at the end of the slide.

 

And that was the last time he did that.

 

 

The very next thing he did was waddle over to the next slide, which was about half the size of the first.  This one had much better results.

 

 

And Joey was still being a Ninja.

 

 

Grace, who didn't see Matt's first attempt at this slide, got to the top of the big slide, and took a few minutes to build her courage to go all the way to the bottom.  She also hit the dirt like a rocket.

 

 

And back to our Ninja:

 

 

 

***

 

Before we hit the pools, we decided that a game of mini golf was in order.  It was super windy, but fortunately that is not a problem in mini golf.

 

Grace studying Joey's approach: 

 

Grace not being affected by the breeze:

 

 Grace cutting in line because everybody else was going to slow:

 

 

 Joey, looking very bored (but still cool):

 

 Grace working really hard to get that ball (she always quit counting after about 5 shots)

 

Matt (who didn't actually play) messing with all the stations:

 

 Every game means war for Ben:

 

After golf, we all dressed out to go to the pools.  They have 1 slide there, and I think our kids went down it about 100 times.  We even went back in the morning (because we had to work off our late night root beer float run) and swam again before we packed it all back up and headed home.

 

We also grabbed a few bags of farm animal food, and went to say goodbye to our new little friends.  The black goat, by the way, was a total meanie.  We didn't like him very much, because he kept eating all the food and biting the nice little white mommy pygmy goat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, I forgot -- we also found a super cool fountain.

 

AND... we even managed to get a nice family photo (minus the photographer, of course)