Becca's Birthday #1

This week is Becca's birthday.  The actual day is on Thursday, but our Thursday is a bit out of control scheduling wise, so we are spreading out the celebrations.  Yesterday was part #1.  Per Becca's request, we took a family trip to Crazy Bounce.  In the past, she has always gotten too scared of the big slides here, so I was a bit surprised that this was where she wanted to go to celebrate her birthday.  In fact, she has been waiting since Michael's birthday in August, always insisting on Crazy Bounce for her birthday.

My goodness did she have fun.  She went on everything in the building and had a huge smile on her face the whole time.  I guess the fun anticipation helped build her confidence.  I can't believe she is just about 4 years old.

Jon's Half Birthday

Jon's half birthday was a bit crazy this year.  The actually day was this past Monday.  Last Wednesday the snow craziness started for us.  School was canceled Thursday and Friday and we didn't get out of the house much because the plows were having trouble keeping up with all of the snow.  Saturday both Tim and I were pretty sick with a bad head cold.  And Sunday I had a big day at church in the morning and then we hosted our small group for a family meal with 9 adults and 10 kids at our house for a couple of hours.  So Sunday night we sit down to figure out what to make for Jon's half birthday treat for school and realize we can't make the cupcakes he wants.  First, I don't have any cake mix in the house, and second, even if I wanted to get ambitious and make the cake from scratch I can't because I don't have any eggs.

So I got out a couple of options for Jon: muffins, brownies, or sugar cookies - all of which I had mixes for in the cupboard.  Jon picked muffins.  :)

The weather forecast was looking iffy for school on Monday so I waited until 9:30 to make the muffins just in case school was canceled.  We literally got the call as I was putting the muffins in the oven - No School.  So Monday morning we had 24 muffins waiting for breakfast.  Luckily my family loves muffins.  In fact, they were actually all gone by noon on Tuesday.

So then at dinner we wanted to do a family treat for Jon.  He wanted to eat muffins and ice cream, but if you read the above paragraph you will know that the members of my family had already eaten a lot of muffins that day, so we decided on settling for just ice cream.  (Not to mention that there is something weird about muffins with ice cream, even though it is not much different from cupcakes and ice cream really I guess.)  The dilemma of candles in ice cream was solved by our trusty supply of play-doh.





To finish the story, we had snow days on Tuesday and Wednesday as well and I was actually able to get to the store and buy some cake mix.  We actually ended up making cupcakes in ice cream cones for a fun school treat.

A few fun pictures

We had a never ending Christmas break.  With one snow day before and two after, it ended up being almost three weeks long.  Poor Becca just couldn't wait one day and started walking around the house with her backpack, making sure everything was ready for when she'd finally be able to go back.



For Christmas I got an amazing calendar from Michael.  Each month is a new picture he created at school.



Can you explain to me how one can even sit like this?  And he stayed that way for like 10+ minutes!



This past week was Tim's birthday.  The kids were so excited to make him cards and give him a cake.  When he sat down to this, the math teacher in him couldn't resist asking the kids, "If I'm turning 35, then how many years does each of these 5 candles have to stand for?"

Birthdays

Summer is full of our children's birthdays.  First up in July Jon turned 5.  When asked what he wanted for his birthday his response as always was "more cars."  So the highlight of his birthday was a treasure hunt we set up where he had to follow clues around the house to find each car.





Then Michael turned 8 at the end of August.  For his party he asked for a baseball cake.  Please notice that the candles are the players - blue team vs. red.  This was very well thought out.





And don't tell Becca, but we totally forgot that she turned 3 and a half this month (I know, I know, third child and all....)  So on the evening of Michael's birthday after doing all of his stuff we announced to Becca that she was 3 and half and after some practice she was able to hold up the right fingers and was thrilled to have some candles of her own.

7 and a half

Yesterday was Michael's half birthday.  He chose to go out to eat for the night and mid-afternoon it started to icy rain and then turned to snow.  We decided to stay in instead.  So his second choice for a birthday treat:  Milk Shakes!

We had to get a bit creative with how to put candles up with a milk shake, but play-doh to the rescue!


Anticipation....


Taking in a deep breath....


Blow....


And blow some more....


And blow some more....


Seven and a half candles is a lot - especially when they are all around the cup.

Happy Half Birthday Michael!

Happy Birthday Becca

This week my baby girl turned 3.  I know so many moms say this, but with my oldest I was in great anticipation of his birthdays and milestones.  With my second, it seemed that time was going by quicker, but this one completely caught me off guard.  How is she already 3?

I asked her what kind of cake she wanted and she asked for "yummy" cake.  She picked strawberry cake out at the store and pink, red, and white heart sprinkles.



Becca has been practicing holding up three fingers so she would be ready for today.  She was SO excited and proud.  When you ask her how old she is she always holds up three fingers now.  Half of the time she still says "two" but we are working on that.



She got a package in the mail from Grandma and Grandpa Haig.  It was so fun to watch her open it.  She was so excited to see these air filled packing bags.  :)  The kids love to jump on them and hear them pop.



Eventually she found her presents though.



Then came a present I've been anticipating giving her for a while now - my old doll house.



Michael helped me go through all the furniture and we packaged them up so each room was in its own box.  She had so much fun opening each new box and furnishing the house.



Happy Birthday Becca!

Happy Half Birthday Jon

This last weekend we got to celebrate 4 and a half with our special Jon.

He was able to celebrate last Thursday with his class at school and got a cool birthday hat (see pictures below).  He wants to wear it around the house a lot and of course Becca wants turns wearing it too.  We were scheduled to bring a treat in to his class last Thursday since he's not in school on his full birthday.  However, they always have a fairly big snack already so I wanted something small.  Jon asked for cupcakes, so I suggested mini ones (think mini muffin size).  Jon thought that was fabulous and that everyone should get 4 of them.  I suggested that everyone get 1, but that Jon could choose the frosting.  He settled on strawberry sprinkled cupcakes with chocolate frosting and colored sprinkles on top.  He had so much fun helping me make and decorate them.  :)

Then on Sunday we celebrated as a family and Jon, and he wanted brownies and ice cream.  If you remember from previous, Jon posts correlates birthdays with candles pretty strongly.  So all day long he was still 4 he insisted, but after blowing out the candles he announced that he was now 4 and a half.

Happy Birthday Tim

Saturday was Tim's birthday.  Since we had gotten a babysitter for a dinner out for my birthday we decided to do dinner out with the whole family for Tim's.  He chose Crust54 which is a fairly new pizza place downtown.



Upon arriving we found out that their deep dish pizza takes 45 minutes to make so that was out, but let me tell you we saw one and it was DEEP dish.



We got a thin crust instead so we could eat before the kids bed time.  Cheese for the kids and ham, bacon, pineapple for us - wow were the toppings amazingly delicious!!!

Then off to ice cream at our favorite spot down town.  The kids got theirs and headed outside where we usually eat only to start shaking and shivering and quickly agreed to come inside to eat when I offered.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I am 36.  I'm very excited that we found a sitter, so Tim and I will be going out for a date night dinner to celebrate this evening.

However, Jon was devastated to find out that he would not be a part of the celebration.  He kept asking about cake or brownies or some birthday treat.  I finally found out that it wasn't the missing out of the treat that worried him so much as that he wanted to be there for the candles.

So, Jon, Becca, and I had a mini birthday celebration over lunch.  We made cinnamon muffins and eggs for lunch and put a candle in my muffin.  After helping me sing Happy Birthday, both Jon and Becca got to help me blow out that candle.

7 year old party

Last week we had Michael's birthday party for his school friends.  He wanted a soccer party so we chose to have the party right after school and at the school since there was a soccer field there.  Hard part: I had to get everything there and ready.  Easy part: it was all outside, the kids had a blast on the soccer field and playground, and everyone from his class could come since it was right at school at the end of a day.

So what do you do with 14 6-7 year old boys?  We started with some soccer ball relays and an obstacle course.  Then we had a ring toss game where they could ring a water bottle.  This was followed by cake and popsicles.  You can't tell from the picture, but this was a soccer field cake.  I picked two colors of candles to make the teams and the boys all thought it was funny that the teams were 3 on 4.


Then of course there were presents, highly concentrated around legos.


And then we set up a game of soccer.  I was so impressed at how they all played so well and stuck with it without half of them getting sick of it and wanting to stop.


Michael had a blast as did the rest of the family.  :)

2 years old

Once again we have a 2 year old in the house. We celebrated with the DeJong family and joint party for Becca and her cousin Luke who were born only two days apart.

We decided to do a Mickey and Minnie party since the kids have been fascinated by them especially since going to Disney. I tried my best to create fabulous cakes for them. :) Considering I'm not a cake decorator by trade or hobby I think they turned out fun.


Here are the kids blowing out the candles with the help from the Dads.


And then it was on to the presents. Allie (who is only a month younger than these two) did a fabulous job staying happy even through none of the presents came to her.

We've been sick and a birthday post

Well, as you can tell from my lack of posts recently things have not been normal around here. As the title says, we have been sick. We are going on two and half weeks of sickness in the house. Good news is that most everyone is finally done with it. Bad news is I'm still fighting a bad cough.

However, we did have a small moment of fun in the middle of it all. Jon turned 3 1/2 and we celebrated with brownies. (Notice that there is only one candle because it was all I could find, but Jon still had fun blowing it out.)

Happy Birthday to ME

As of this past Saturday morning I am 35 years old. Or to word it as we use to as kids when we thought our parents were ancient, "I'm half way to 70!" I had a wonderful birthday. It started on Friday with whispers between Tim and the boys and between Michael and Jon throughout the day about what they were planning.

Then Friday evening I got early birthday flowers!


On Saturday I got up to a yummy breakfast of eggs made for me and some wonderful birthday cards. We had a low key morning and then after naps we headed downtown for an ice sculpture contest. It was so much fun to watch the carving and see the creations. Many of them from the day before were mostly unrecognizable because of the warm weather, but we did see this fun sea horse.


Then we ate an early dinner out and had brownie sundaes back at home. Becca helped me blow out the candles.