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.

Big Strides

Here are a few things I wanted to include before time got too far away from me.

Last month, N was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a special day for him and we were especially grateful that T was able to baptize him and confirm him. After the service we had ice cream sundaes at the house. Yum!

This is by far the girliest non-church outfit I have put on V. I still have a hard time dressing her in girl clothes after having three boys. Her bald head doesn’t help things, either. I put it on her almost as a joke because it is so different from how I usually dress her, but I figured she ought to wear it at least once. I’m going to try not to impose my blasé sense of style on her as she grows, but it might be inevitable. 

Here is a video my mom took at her house of V walking, falling, and walking again as Papa P and I look on...

That was taken about two weeks ago, and she gets better and better every day.

Finally, here is photographic proof of J trying ketchup… and surviving! If you know J you know that this is a big deal, especially since his brother N is the self-proclaimed “King of Ketchup.” He didn’t decide that he likes it, but at least he knows that it’s not poisonous. Now to get them to try ranch…

Back Again

It's been a while since I added a post and am determined to put one up today, even if it only says that I am determined to put one up today. I feel a need to give a shout-out (Am I allowed to do that as a thirty-something, white, incredibly unhip stay-at-home mom? Probably not.) to those of you who are so good about posting on your blogs and letting the rest of us peek into your worlds - and you know who you are (SK!).

I'll include the recent pictures of V since she is the one who changes the most. A couple of weeks ago I realized I hadn't heard or seen from her in a few minutes. I was sitting on the couch to the left in the picture and couldn't see from there that she had fallen asleep half-hidden under the rocking chair. Yes, I did take the bottle out of her mouth after the picture. I don't want her teeth rotting out either.

Here she is in her goldfish robe fresh from the bath. I got this robe as a present at my baby shower for E back when we thought he was going to be girl and held on to it till I had a cute girl to put it on! Totally worth the wait.

Finally, here she is doing her weekly chores. It's about time she started pulling her weight around here! She actually was doing a good job of pushing the broom around until it got stuck under the stove. I would be embarrassed about all the stuff on the floor, but those are things she pulled out as she did her daily rearranging of my cabinets. In the last picture she is saying that she is done with the kitchen and will be moving on to the bathrooms. It's so nice to have help around the house.

N's Birthday

N turned 8 at the end of August. For something different, we decided to take some friends to the bowling alley. I got pretty ambitious (for me) and made bowling-themed invites, matching T-shirts for all the kids, and a bowling ball-shaped cake. We played one game, had a pizza, then went back to our house for cake and presents. It was a good time! E's ball rolled so slowly that we weren't always sure if it was going to make it all the way, but it did every time. Thanks to cousin C for helping us out. 

The next night we celebrated with cousins at the Butlers' house. I have to post this first picture of N with cousins E and J because it makes me laugh every time I see it. It's just one of those odd moments that happened to get captured forever. The next picture is pretty good, though, and makes up for the absurdity of the first.

Happy birthday, N. We love you!!!