Party at the Treehouse!

For E’s actual birthday on Wednesday, he got an Indiana Jones whip (it makes a whip-crack sound and plays the theme song) and movie in preparation for the big event on Friday-
We had a great party at the Treehouse Kids Club with cousins and friends. They dug for dinosaurs in the sand, went on a treasure hunt, had cake, and played whatever they wanted. It was a blast! The bakery had a picture of an Indy cake but didn't have the figures to go on top in stock, so I had them do the base and we added a Lego Indy set to the top.
Thanks to Renelle, Edna, and staff for the great party.

T, V, and E's Birthdays!

First of all I need to say what a good time I had at the Twilight premiere party Thursday night. Many thanks to Lemmon & Lines and crew who put that all together. They rented out a theater for the midnight showing and did a pre-party with food, trivia, and prizes. It was great! Totally worth getting home at 2:30am and being useless most of the day on Friday.

Back to our birthday celebrations…
Since T and V’s birthdays were on the 3rd and E’s on the 12th, we celebrated all three of them at T’s parents’ house on the Sunday in between. I have a thing about taking a picture of birthday cakes no matter how plain or whatever, so here is the creation I came up with for them. One big cake with glaze for the grownups and individual cakes for the cousins using the rest of the Halloween frosting – and sprinkles! I know the picture of the three of them is out of focus (and I call myself a photographer!), but it is still a cute reminder of the moment.

T and V's Birthday

T’s birthday gift last year was a baby girl, born at 10:03pm. This year he got an ice cream maker. Almost as good, right? I actually gave it to him a month in advance, mostly because I found it on clearance and wanted to make sure he liked it, and also because I had a hankering for homemade ice cream. Notice that he is most excited about the fact that is makes frozen cocktails. Party at the Butlers'!

Their actual birthday was November 3rd. Since I have my backdrop up, I tried to get some pictures of the birthday girl. Most of them were out of focus because she was toddling all over, but this one captured her pretty well. Her current stats: She is around 20 lbs and 2 ft tall, which are both rough guesses. (She wears 12-18 month clothes so she must be pretty average.) She has 8 teeth. She walks pretty well but still stumbles a lot and likes to point at everything and babble. For the first few months of her life she had a single long hair on her crown (her “antenna”) but now she has a few tufts at the crown and the back – just enough to look messed up after she’s been taking a nap. She has been both my worst and my best sleeper. For the first two months she cried nonstop from dusk till dawn every single night. Was it colic? I’m still not sure. She slowly grew out of that and into a night owl, going to sleep between midnight and 2am but then sleeping for a good 12 hours. None of the boys would sleep that long at that age without waking up to eat at least once. Now she typically goes to sleep between 10 and 12 for up to 12 hours and takes a good nap in the afternoon. I love that if I catch her at the right time, I can even put her down awake and she drifts off to sleep without a fight. She is a happy, fun girl, and we love her a bunch!

That evening, all four grandparents came to our house for cake and presents. T made V her own little pink cake (notice the V in the frosting) which she enjoyed thoroughly. She got a singing purse and a Baby Alive doll, both of which she has been playing with a lot. Of course, she had to test out the baby's bottle first thing. We have already noticed that she seems to favor baby dolls more than the boys did even though they had dolls to play with and she has all of their old toys at her disposal. We don’t feel like we have especially encouraged it, but maybe we have without realizing it. It’s the old debate of nature vs. nurture, I guess.


Oh, yeah - it was T's birthday, too. Happy birthday, honey!

Freaky Week

Last week was all about Halloween. Tuesday night we sat down and carved pumpkins. I have to say that I have not carved a pumpkin since my college days (remember that, Stef?), but I thought the kids should have some memories of doing it for later in life. See – I’m thinking ahead. It started out as a family project and the kids picked the designs, but soon it was just T and I carving with J doing the occasional commentating. We ended up with a dragon and silly face on one pumpkin, and a super-cool chiseled design of Darth Vader on the other. We also used LED lights inside which I highly recommend (because I’m such a pumpkin carving expert now!). One flickered like a candle and the other had color effects.

Wednesday was the Trunk-or-Treat at church. Mom came with me to take our bat, pharaoh, grumpy ladybug, and vampire to walk around. If you can’t tell by my expression in the first picture, I went as a deer caught in headlights. :)

Friday, of course, was Halloween. I think this is the first time that we have trick-or-treated on our block here because we have always been at the Trunk-or-Treat in the past. We made the loop around our street and the one next to us and then we were done. For those of you not living in Yuma, it was in the 90s all last week and still a little too warm for comfort during the witching hour. We changed V into a cheerleader because the ladybug costume was too bulky and the hood thing just wasn’t working. Saturday we had a party with the Butler-side cousins at Aunt G and Uncle J’s house (thanks for hosting!). Our bat turned into a mouse for this one. The kids had a great time playing games and eating deeee-licious food. Grandma B put in a lot of work to make it fun for the kids. T made a cake from scratch, which he carved into the shape of a pumpkin and covered with fondant that he made from scratch and topped with a real stem. Impressive. Most impressive.
(Warning: Long but entertaining slideshow ahead!)

P.S.
I tried Photobucket's slideshow feature for these pictures, so they include all the fancy transitions that I wouldn't normally do. Are they too obnoxious? Be honest! If so I'll go back to making my own.