398 Connor is THREE!

We are going to wait and really celebrate on Sunday when we visit Chip's family, but we did have to do a little something for Connor on his actual birthday. A little cake (that did not totally survive its trip home from the store) and a couple presents. Connor would be absolutely satisfied with just that, but Katie seems to feel gyped for him. So thankful that Connor hasn't been overcome with greed just yet .... no matter how hard Katie tries to influence him.We actually got a slight sprinkle of rain today, the first in what seems like forever. I was starting to think I would not be able to get a true three year old shot of Connor, but the weather cleared up and I was able to get a few quick shots. My favorite part? The blue tongue from his cake icing obviously!

When I wrote Connor's birthday post last year I wrote a little description of what he was like as a one year old, so I guess I should give a little rundown of his two year old self. Though much of what I said about him then is true now.

He is a smiley boy with a truly infectious laugh. He is full of mischief. Today he drew with a crayon on the stairway wall (he is drawing closed shapes and spirals, trying to color and stay in the lines). His favorite thing is anything that Katie would like to have as her own. He loves to be read to at night (he no longer allows me to sing, and he will tell me to stop if I try) and most nights he will pick out three books for me to read, though he will try to add more to the list when I finish. He is FEARLESS! He is fast, and he will tell you how fast he is when he runs. He loves animals, especially the neighbor's dogs. He wants so badly to be a big boy, and to play with other big boys. He is "Mama's Boy!" unless Katie tries to claim Daddy, then he is "Daddy's Boy!" Don't ever try to tell him different. He is beyond sweet, and whenever anyone leaves our home he tells them to "be careful" in the cutest voice. He melts my heart on a daily basis ... then makes my blood boil. Other than nighttime accidents, he is fully potty trained. He can go to the potty all by himself, but he canNOT pull his pants back up by himself. He doesn't fart or poot... he "parts". He uses potty training to stay up later than he should, waiting until storytime is over to tell me that he needs to go poo. He is speaking more clearly, though it still leaves a lot to be desired. He still yells "NO!" and the cute factor has worn off just like I thought it would. He is THE AWESOME! There is no other way to put it. He just IS awesome.

Happy Birthday Connor! We love you beyond reason.

383 Shelby Turns Eight

Birthday parties at Shelby's house are always a blast. They rent a HUGE waterslide, so the big kids have fun! They had a baby pool for Connor and Shailey, so the wee ones have fun. And I have so much fun hanging out with Indira,Ryan, and their friends that I think I have the most fun of all. The party started at noon and we stayed until after 7. So much fun and laughter AND GOOD FOOD! I was exhausted when we got home, but it was completely worth it!! (and yes, I took more pics than this but I try to keep pics of others kids to a minimum)Connor loves him some Mia. He insisted on this shot. Such a ladies' man!And with Shailey. It took her a while to warm back up to him, but by the end of the day they were fast friends again.And the highlight! A Bieber effigy ... I mean ... pinata. All these girls just waiting to have a whack at Bieber! "Ohhh Justin! We love you, now hold still while I beat you with this colorful wooden stick!"
Happy Birthday Shelby! Hope it was the perfect start to another wonderful year!

374 Overeating and Blowing Stuff Up

Like all good red-blooded Americans, we spent the Fourth of July celebrating our independence by overeating and then blowing stuff up. I hate to admit it, but it has been so long since I made pancakes that I had to google a pancake recipe. However, the result was perfection. I liked this recipe because you put oil in the mix and you don't have to keep greasing the skillet to keep them from sticking. I also used self-rising flour instead of all-purpose with baking powder and salt. I even got compliments off Twitter as to the size and perfect roundness (yes, I tweeted this picture. I am boring). The kids wolfed it down like no other breakfast food (besides bacon). Of course, the fact it is drenched in sugary syrup sure helps! I still find it strange that Katie insists that there be no butter on her stack. It seems like it would be totally lacking, but she will not eat the ones that are buttered. And it just isn't the Fourth unless you fire up the grill. One of the guys that Chip works with had told him how he cooks his brats, so we decided to give it a try. Rough chop up an onion and a bell pepper and crush a few cloves of garlic, and pour a couple of beers in the pan. Judging from the picture, Chip must have cooked the brats for a minute on the grill before he added them to the pan. THEY WERE DELICIOUS!I also made a salad using my Mother-in-Law's salad dressing recipe. It is to DIE FOR! Love love love this salad! It is helped along by the fact that there are so many other veggies cut up in there that lettuce only makes up half the volume. Hmmm, I didn't even ask if this should be kept a family secret? If you are lucky I will invite you over for dinner and make some salad for you. We finally sliced into my birthday cake on Sunday as well. I am pretty sure the kids were ten times more excited than I was to taste this cake. I guess Chip didn't want to set the house on fire again, so he bought the numbered candles. Added bonus of it being much easier to blow them out for my wish. And NO I will not tell you what I wished for, you know it won't come true then! How cute is this cake?! I know, it is meant for the Fourth of July, but I love it. Chip done did good! Notice in the bottom right of the next picture there is a little hand reaching in to steal some icing. That would be Connor. Thanks to this cake I think he can now properly identify red, white, and blue. I would not let him lick the icing from his finger until he told me what color he was about to lick. And yes, I was made fun of for taking so many pictures of my cake before I ate it. Katie had totally annihilated her piece before I took my first bite. Half of my enjoyment is in taking pictures. They should know this by now ... okay, so they do know but they still think I am insane.After letting all that food settle, we got ready and loaded up the van to head out for fireworks at Snowden Grove. I think Chip had promised Katie he would take her to the firework tent. There is no other explanation for stopping in on the way to watch fireworks when we had a bunch left in our garage from forever ago! We were big buyers. The kids each got a box of Snap Pops and we bought a couple boxes of sparklers. Judging from what some other people were purchasing there are going to be a few families going without food this week. We were a little late to get a really good spot for the fireworks, so we pulled up in one of the office parks down the street from Snowden Grove. We hung out in the van, watching a movie and enjoying the air conditioning until it was almost time. Then we piled out, opened the back and flipped the seats. Its a bit of a tight fit, but it was certainly cozy.Katie wore the tutu that Aunt Julie gave her when we visited Oxford last weekend. Yes, she is wearing shorts under it. We aren't complete heathens!I know this picture is terrible, but it is only meant to illustrate our position in regards to the fireworks. We did miss some lower firework action, but we were able to see most of the big stuff. I do wish we could have heard the music that accompanied the fireworks, but we were definitely too far away for that.Still, there were some pretty coool fireworks. Katie and Chip agreed that the ones that looked like smiley faces were their favorite. Well, Katie also liked the ones that looked like "chicken feet reaching out to get her".When we got home we finally got rid of those darn fireworks that have been in our garage for about two years. I mean ... we had our own small display. Katie was very excited, but unlike when we bought them, we were worried that there might have been some problems with them so Daddy had to light them. Katie and Connor stayed on the deck and played with their sparklers. Connor did one sparkler and he was done. He didn't enjoy it at all. Katie was happy to do the rest of the box while Connor was happy to watch the reflection of Katie's sparkler in the window.Once Chip started shooting off our fireworks Connor crawled into my lap. He did NOT enjoy the noise at all. He didn't really cry, but he did cover his ears and snuggle with Mommy. We had a great family day. Great food. Good fireworks. Very little fighting and almost no tears. And hey, WE HAD CAKE! Hope everyone else had a wonderful Fourth of July!

373 Thirty-three Years and a Firework Display

So, I turned 33 on Friday ... there isn't really much more to say than that. Once you become a mother birthdays just don't seem to mean as much anymore..... AS LONG AS THERE IS CAKE ....

I did wake up in a toddler bed for the first time in probably 31 years. Connor just would NOT go to sleep. He kept waking up, crying for me. Squeezing 69" into a 48" bed is just as fun and comfortable as you can imagine. In other words, I woke up on my 33rd birthday feeling closer to 83. We had a nice laid back day. Hot dogs for lunch and lazing about. That afternoon, Katie was playing at a friends, Connor was napping, and Chip had to run errands, so I attempted to lay out. IT WAS SCORCHING! I probably did not last 15 minutes and I turned over several times, hoping to find a way to persevere, but I finally admitted defeat and headed inside. I have no idea how we did this as teens. Although, one good point to laying out. I am so white that I reflect the sun. Just doing my part to stop Global Warming.
Also, as part of my relaxation I didn't take pics with the real camera, all pics of my birthday are off my phone, forgive the quality, enjoy the moments)After Chip went to work, Connor and I hit the backyard to throw the frisbee. That lasted approximately half a minute before Connor wanted to get in the water. First he played with the hose, but when his shirt got wet he stripped down completely. He found the sprinkler and threw a fit until I hooked it up. His cute little booty ran in the house and came back with his swimsuit. I guess he is shy ;) Then he must have gotten chilled because he wanted to get in the hot tub. Of course he was immensely surprised that the water was HOT ... but then most kids are. They touch the water and without thought they have to say "HOT!" every time! (yeah, so I do it too sometimes ... shhhh) Ah, Captain Obvious, how you make me laugh!It looked like I was going to have a cake-less birthday, but I loaded the kids up and headed to Schnucks. I HAD to have cake ON my birthday. I thought I would be able to pick out my own cake ... but obviously I forgot to take into account the fact I had two kids with me. Katie wanted yellow cake and white icing (my favorite). Connor was drawn to the chocolate. In order to save my sanity I opted for cupcakes, a little of each. After stuffing the kids full of sugar I attempted to get them tucked in. Connor fell asleep fairly easily, compared to the night before. Of course that was after reading all of his favorite books ... "The Night Before Christmas", "Runaway Pumpkin", and "The Little Duck". And then to get Katie tucked in. She has started reading me her bedtime story. We are bribing her to read right now by paying her a dollar when she reads certain books. The time will come when we stop paying her to read, but she still has a little room for improvement so she can earn a little more American Girl money. Although she officially spent her first real money on Silly Bands (aka the bane of my existence - damn expensive rubber bands). After I scratched her back and she dozed off, I spent a while just looking at her. Marveling at how this sweet gorgeous baby was made by me (okay, and a little help from Chip)! It continually amazes me!Chip felt like he had let me down when I told him I had bought cupcakes, so he swung into Walmart on the way home from work and picked me up this ADORABLE cake! The color is horrid in this pic, but it is so cute!And, even though my main gift (for the entire year) is my laptop, he also picked me up a little happy :) I can't wait to pull out the RockBand guitar and bust out this bad boy!We had already planned on going to the firework display on Sunday at Snowden Grove since Chip would be off work, but Katie came home from Kaitlyn's talking about the fireworks show at Latimer Lakes. She was so excited, and we didn't have any plans, so I packed some PB&J, chips, and drinks and we headed on out. The fireworks didn't start until 9 but we were there at 7. Plenty of time for the kids to play on the playground. A cell phone pic of us waiting for it to get dark enough for the fireworks to start. We met up with Katie's little buddies and laid out blankets. The kids ran around like wild things before it got dark. Luckily there was plenty of space. It was not nearly as crowded as I thought it would be.It never fails, 10 minutes before the fireworks were scheduled to start Katie had to go to the bathroom. Which of course meant that all of the kids had to go the bathroom. Weeeeeeee! We had to walk back without lights while fireworks exploded behind us. The girls were trying to check out the fireworks without falling. We made it back to our blanket safely and everyone settled in. Connor tucked himself behind my back. He wasn't crying or overly scared, he just needed the extra protection from Mom. About halfway through he scooted around and sat by himself. Well, when he wasn't sitting in Kaitlyn's Dad's lap. All in all we had a great time. The kids got to play, and they loved the fireworks. The weather wasn't sweltering. The bugs didn't eat us alive. We will be hitting the BIG show tonight at Snowden Grove! I might take a picture or two.
Hope everyone has a safe and happy Fourth of July!