Happy Birthday Henry!

Henry just had his 4th birthday!  Growing up my parents always sang Happy Birthday to us first thing in the morning.  I carry on that tradition.  Unfortunately Henry inherited my extreme dislike of mornings so he got mad at me for singing at him.  He said he didn't want his birthday, he didn't want his friends, and he didn't want his pirate party.  Luckily most of Henry's bad mood disappears once he has eaten something.  

He wanted to have dinosaur chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.  I did my best; but Henry was happy and that was all that mattered.

Henry wanted a pirate party.  He was a pirate for Halloween so we decided he could wear his pirate costume and I would dress like a pirate too and we would do some pirate "things."  The problem was Henry is very impressionable and I made the mistake of letting him watch 'The Incredibles' the day before so he didn't want to be a pirate or wear his pirate costume, he wanted to be a "super".  So I dressed like a pirate and he wore his cape and his bike helmet (I didn't ask...).  I felt a little silly being the only dressed-up pirate, but I went along with the plan.

We played "pin the eye patch on Skinny Bones Jones" and "shoot the cannons" (knock around black balloons), and went on a treasure hunt.

I really get into the cakes on birthdays so I wanted to make a cool pirate-themed cake.  I went online and found instructions on FamilyFun.com for a pirate ship cake.  It was so easy and I was pretty proud of myself with the finished product.  I had way too much fun with that cake; seriously, I was almost sad to cut it.  (The following picture is for bragging purposes mainly.)

The kids might have been impressed with how the cake looked, but really, all they cared about was eating it.  "Cake, yumm..."

I had to put this picture in.  I love how I caught the "Ahh" look on Henry's face when opened this.

Finally after everyone went home he decided to put on some of his pirate costume and take a picture with me.

Later that evening we had a family party.  Henry got some more (boy) dress-up stuff.  He loves playing make believe and hero stuff so he got some more options to choose from for his daily world-saving adventures.

I also made him a cape.  He now has his own cape (yeah!).  But he still mostly wants to wear Kincaid's old one (boo).

Kincaid had a little bit of a hard time missing Henry's party and then watching Henry get all the new cool stuff.  But Henry is a great sharer and let Kincaid play with his new stuff (which later led to the new remote control car taking a bath. Lovely!)  And we reminded Caid not to worry, because in a few months it will be his turn to get new stuff and for his brothers to take it and break it too.

Officer Caid is on the watch!

My parents came later that evening to celebrate with us.  The boys and them had a great indoor football game.

Henry got to have an extended celebration also.  Sam's mom came over the next day to celebrate and tell Henry happy birthday also.  

We had a lot of fun celebrating Henry's birthday.  Thanks to everyone who helped him have such a great day. At the risk of getting mushy I will say that we are so happy to have Henry in our family and all the fun and adventure and "flammy snuggohs" that come with him.

Happy Halloween!

Our Halloween celebration started on October 25 when we went to Sam's Grandma's retirement home to visit her and attend their Halloween party.  (Well, actually it began on October 7th when I let the boys put up the Halloween decorations and start wearing costumes, but it would have begun in August if I would have given in to their constant pleading.)  Here are the boys, great grandma and some of their other cousins:

Henry was a pirate, Miles was an elephant and Kincaid was a power ranger.  Their cousin Colby was also dressed up as a pirate and him and Henry happily played pirate sword fights most of the party. 

Kincaid found the cupcakes and that's what he did most of the party.

Saturday night our friends Sammy and Rodney (below as Jesse and Buzz Lightyear) threw a Halloween party.  It was a blast.  I didn't get pictures of everyone there, but here are some of the costumes:  (FYI: Rodney made the Buzz costume.  It was very impressive. Kincaid was jealous.)

This "Mulch" and "JoDeen."  It was their wedding day, don't they look  fabulous?

Wes and Amber decided to take a quick hike that afternoon and got lost along the way.  

We went as Popeye and Olive Oyl.  It's a shame I didn't get a close-up on my fake eyelashes, those were serious business.  It took me most of the evening to figure out how to blink.  I thought we looked great, but Sam said he felt like he looked like a member of The Village People.

On Sunday we went to my sister's house and carved pumpkins.  I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures of it.  But we only finished 2 of our 4 pumpkins so the boys and I worked on them some more Thursday night.

Here are the boys and their pumpkins.  Notice Kincaid's costume has now been 'morphed' into a No Stall race car driver.  No Stall is one of the lesser (or un) known race cars from the movie Cars and Kincaid wanted to be No Stall's driver for Halloween. Lucky for me it turned out to be easier to create than I thought.  And even Luckier for me, Kincaid was happy with how it turned out.

On Friday Kincaid's 1st grade class had a fall festival and I volunteered to help and brought along my mom and Henry to join in on the fun.

After helping Kincaid's class my mom took Henry Miles and I out to lunch.    Then we went home and she made some baked donuts with us.  It was a fun day.

That afternoon I finally finished the last 2 pumpkins (the third times a charm I guess. Come busy week, come unfinished Halloween costumes, come power outages- I was determined to carve all 4 pumpkins.)  Then we got dinner at the taco truck and spent a half an hour wrestling Miles into his costume and arguing with Henry about which costume and accessories he was going to wear ("I want to wear the (too small) Woody costume, or the (even smaller) fireman costume.") We finally got him into the (right size) pirate costume and happy (no small feat).  We didn't have quite as good of luck with Miles. (And seriously, can we just once have a normal picture of the boys, or even just Kincaid?  I guess this is just how they are going to record themselves in history.)

Although, once Miles was outside he was fine. And once we got home and he saw loads of candy and figured out how to unwrap a sucker all by himself I think he decided Halloween was really alright after all. 

I love Halloween, but I am looking forward to putting the costumes back in the trunk and having my children go out in public looking normal again.

Happy National CUPS Day!

Henry has announced today as a new national holiday.  This morning he said "today is a howiday."  "Oh?"  I said, "what day is it? Is it National Tapioca Pudding Day?" (They have been watching a lot of Garfield and Friends DVD's lately, and that is one of the episodes.) 

"No, it's National Cean Up Peopo's Messes Day."

I'm not sure how that makes today any different than the rest of the year, unless that means that those who normally don't clean up messes, do.  So far no one in my house (except me, of course) has decided to celebrate the occasion.  But I do love getting into holidays...  Maybe Henry's smarter than he appears; maybe that's his way of getting me to clean up messes happily.  So to all you moms, dads, and everyone else who is cleaning up someone's mess today, Happy National Clean-Up People's Messes Day to you!  May you celebrate it to the max!

Pumpkin Fever

I have been going crazy cooking pumpkin things lately. I know that's pretty common in the fall, and I'm sure that's because that is when pumpkins are in season; but I find it a little amusing since all my pumpkin comes from a can that's been sitting on shelves for months.  Oh well... In the past week or two I've made pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin muffins, and I have my eyes on 3 more recipes:  a pumpkin roll, pumpkin chicken (yes, I said chicken, I'll let you know how that goes), and a pumpkin cake that starts with a "crust" of crushed Nilla wafers and melted butter - how can it not be good.  I am in baking heaven.

Important Words

So Miles isn't really talking yet, but it sure seems like he started saying 2 words the past couple of days.  Uh-oh and no.  Any guess what I say to him most of the time?  They say if you talk to your kids a lot they learn language faster.  So it makes sense to me the words they learn first/fastest are 1. those that enable them to get what they want (mama, dad, please, etc.) or 2. those that they hear the most.  I guess I need to expand my repertoire of what I say to Miles throughout the day. But really, what else do you say when they thrown their food, pull all the toilet paper off the roll, bite (lovingly, but ouch!), take all the fake moss-stuff from the plant pot and spread it around the room, eat dirt, try to stick their fingers in light sockets, or get into the garbage and start playing with its contents (and that was just this morning!).  

Any ideas?...  One day I will get a "ma-ma," I just know it.

Summer Fun

Here is a pictures-only (mostly) post of some more of what we did this summer:

(More on that later)

If you hadn't noticed, there isn't a single picture of me.  I was there for all of that.  But I bet you can guess what I was doing. 

Catching Up

Has it really been almost 2 months since I last blogged?   SO much has happened, and I took so many pictures, many of them with my blog in mind, but I guess that's why I haven't had time to blog about them, I've been doing them.  So in all honesty, as sorry as I am that I am so behind, that really is a more than fair trade-off.  

I have high hopes (but terribly low expectations) that I am going to go into greater detail and show you more pictures regarding all of the happenings this past summer in later blogs.  But in the interest of just covering the basics, that's what I am going to do.  In July (sometime), all the sisters-in-law on Sam's side of the family got together and camped at one of the sister-in-law's yard (yes, I said yard.  I could have said property, and I wouldn't have been wrong, but that makes it sound a little more remote than the reality.  You see the cream siding in the picture?  That's her house.)  We put up tents, one sister-in-law made some dutch oven yummy's for dinner and dessert, we started a fire and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, the whole bit (and without the help of any males - well except my 9 year-old nephew, he did a lot of the fire-starting).

Henry was the log fetcher.

No, I'm just kidding, but he really wanted to help, it was cute.  We had tons of fun.  Maybe we'll have to make it annual?

Also in July I took Kincaid and Miles and attended my own and my extended family reunions.  I stayed a couple of extra days in Utah to hang out with my sisters.  Its not very often the 5 of us all get together; it was great.  I also hadn't been to my extended family reunion for about 7 years, so it was great to go there and see everyone and show off 2 of my handsome boys.  Below is a 4 generation picture:  My grandma, my mom, me, and the 2 boys.

The beginning of August was busy.  I got back, then got ready for girls camp (I got to be a "unit mom", it was a blast!)  but not before my ten year high school reunion.  That was weird, but a lot of fun.  Even more important though, Miles celebrated his first birthday.  He liked the cake and the presents (and not just the wrapping paper), but he was really just all about the attention.

We tried to squeeze in some other adventures along the way.  Thanks to our good friends we went on a hike. A serious one, in my opinion (although take into consideration the 25 lbs of Miles I have strapped on my back.  That and the fact that I was the adult that was in the worst shape).  It was serious sweat and work and pain, but it was a lot of fun and really beautiful.

In the beginning of September we went to California for Sam's Aunt's wedding and while we were there:

Yep, we got to go to Disneyland.  For now this is the only shot you get to see.  Like I stated earlier, I have high hopes that I get to come back later and post the rest of my great shots and tell you all the details, but for now:  we got to go, and it was so fun.  I was so sad when we were leaving the last night.

Again, the reason for the trip was Sam's Aunt Karen's wedding.  It was in Newport Beach.  It was beautiful:  the temple was beautiful, she was beautiful; I am really glad we got to go.  While we were there and all dressed up, matching and at this point still somewhat unstained, I tried to get a family picture.  This was the best one.  It's realistic and represents us though, right?

We missed the first day of school while we were gone, but when we got back Kincaid got to go to his first day of First Grade.  He was so excited to take his lunch and get back on the bus.  He loves it.

Next, I celebrated my birthday.  I won't say how old I am (not that I am worried about getting old...) just that I will be staying this age for most of the rest of my life. 

A few days after my birthday Sam and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary.  (I still feel 17, and yet all of a sudden I have been married for 8 years, have 3 kids, and already went to my 10 year class reunion?  This is really weird for me.)  Sam's parents graciously took the boys for us for 24 hours straight (the first time we've been alone for 24 hours straight in I don't-know-how long).  We went out to eat, shopped, worked out together, cooked together, shopped some more (can you tell who was the gracious adapting spouse?), and just enjoyed having some time together where we could actually focus on just each other for awhile and not have to divide our attention.  It was wonderful.

So much has happened this past summer, so much more than I wrote.  This picture, though, is worth a thousand words.  We all felt this way at times, and I think Miles felt this way most of the time (I have several other pictures just like it).

It was all so much fun, but it was a tornado of fun.  It is nice to be back home and starting to get into a routine again.  At least until the rush of birthdays and holidays starts next month.