Cel-ah-brate good times...

I hope I'm not dating myself with that song for my title.

Middle girl celebrated her birthday in style on Sunday and Monday. Sunday was the friend party at the local gymnastics school where she has been taking classes for about 3 years. She had nine friends along with her two sisters as guests and they all had a ball with the "party people" Ann-Marie and her husband Bobbie.

Here are a few choice photos from the party:


A gaggle of girls ganging up on Bobbie.


The birthday girl waiting for instructions (along with friend M).


Eldest girl enjoying Ann-Marie's antics.


Youngest girl stuck close to me for the entire party with the exception of this short
stint on the trampoline - which she obviously enjoyed thoroughly!


Cake time! And for the record, I can no longer be called 'Martha on Crack' (right, K?). I forked over big bucks to let someone else run the party AND I bought the cake from the local bakery!


Present time - with help from mom and friend N.

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On Monday she woke up at 6:30 and I was able to wish her a happy birthday on the exact moment of her birth - 6:53am. Hard to believe that this baby is now six!


(....and equally hard to believe that the other "baby" in the photo - who seemed soooo big at the time - is going to be 9 this winter).

At school she celebrated with all her classmates. Her sisters and I ate lunch with her in the classroom and then we handed out cupcakes (homemade but with canned frosting - see, K? No Martha living here no mo'). This teacher does such a nice job of making the child feel special on their birthday (and even the summer birthday kids get to celebrate before the end of the year). During circle time they do a special little birthday 'ceremony' and sing a special song. One child sits in a chair holding a small candle - this child is the "sun". The birthday child carries a globe and walks around the sun as many times as they are old to signify how many times the earth has been around the sun since they were born. The teacher also reads the A.A. Milne poem "When I am Six" to the child and the class then sings a second 'birthday song' which is not the traditional birthday song. I don't know the words to the songs but they are both very sweet. :-) Oh yeah, and a birthday story is also read to the class and the birthday child gets to take home a special book bag of birthday stories to read at home. I can't say enough how much I love Ms. W!!!

Here are a few pics from the school celebration:



Putting on her special crown.


Circling the 'sun'!



A special birthday poem.


Lunch with mom and sisters.


Happy Birthday!


Time for cupcakes!

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And last but not least we celebrated with my in-laws by having them over for dinner that night! Middle girl requested chicken with spaghetti sauce over pasta and green beans. Nothing fancy so it was an easy relaxed dinner...and of course...more cake for dessert! :-)

All in all, a wonderful couple of days to celebrate the day we first met our very special Middle girl!

Update on Crazy City

Things are still busy in E.W.

PGO
I finished typing and binding the first set of books I brought home. The day I dropped them off I received 6 more to bind (already typed by another volunteer, thankfully). Those are now sitting on the counter awaiting my attention. One of the books is R's book ("All About Rocks") and it's quite the masterpiece. Not that I'm biased or anything.

The PGO is holding a Tag (or Garage or Yard, depending on your geographic location) Sale on Saturday. Looking around to see what we had to donate was a rather dangerous activity. It made us start to think about whether we have stuff for our very own tag sale. This in turn lead us to begin a rather massive Spring Cleaning Frenzy which has resulted in one bay of our garage being full of tag sale-able items. I will be bringing some stuff to donate to the school tag sale but the remainder will wait until next weekend when we will have our own sale. The girls have even been bitten by the tag sale bug (they are anxious to get some cash to buy NEW toys...) and have willingly brought out some toys for sale. They are even will to part with some of the larger outdoor toys that are just sitting out back collecting wasp nests and dirt. In fact, over the weekend, they got out the garden hose and scrub brushes and had fun getting a few items clean enough to sell!


CE Board
Things are at a standstill on the CE subcommittee to find our church a new Christian Ed. Director. I'm hoping that our job is complete and I'm anxious to see what the hiring decision will be (we have given our input to the Pastor who must complete the next step in the process). I still have those darn meeting minutes to type up. I hate having stuff like that looming over my head but I just have not had the time!


Celebrations
We had a nice visit with some of Rick's relations this weekend and the Saturday birthday BBQ was enjoyable and delicious. The next celebration coming up is Father's Day. Negotiations are in progress to figure out just when and how to celebrate with the dads in our family. Thankfully, it's usually a low-key affair.


PreK Graduation
A's graduation was short and sweet and I was the first-class idiot who forgot her camera that day. I did ask a few parents to take some photos of A for me and will hopefully get some copies emailed to me very soon - at which point I'll be sure to share them here. A's class sang three very sweet songs and each child received a small gift (a book) and a certificate that stated one reason they were so valued in class this year. A's certificate this year was for "development of her leadership skills" (last year she got a certificate for "being a friend to all"). After the certificates were handed out I said a few words and presented the teachers with the monetary gift from the families and another mom handed out beautiful baskets of flowers. Then we all enjoyed a potluck lunch together and headed home. A is signed up to continue at school for "camp" which is basically an extension of the school year (for an additional fee) to more closely match the public schools. So, she has not yet said her final good-byes to her teachers.


Head Cold or Tree Pollen?
Seems to have been a head cold that I suffered from recently because a few days after I came down with a sore throat and stuffy nose Rick became the next victim. I can't for the life of me figure out why I am so blessed with the spring sniffles every freakin' year but this year I am fairly certain that it was not an allergic reaction to tree pollen. It was just another stinkin' cold. Grumble, grumble.


Life
They say that time flies when you are having fun. Well, I must be having a BLAST because I can not believe that it is nearly June already. In some ways I feel like we skipped May because it has been such a blur. This whole 'work' thing is putting a Fast Forward button on life. If anyone knows where the 1/2 speed button is, I'd love to hear from you. And if you can figure out who these "kids" are that are living in my house and what the heck they did with my 'babies' I'd be happy to know that tidbit as well.

Happy (Belated!) 8th Birthday to R...

Alternative Title: I Have an 8-year-old and I'm Feelin' Old

Due to a host of mundane but relevant reasons we had postponed R's birthday party by a couple of weeks. We had celebrated with family, given her our gifts and made her a special dinner, but we decided to wait on having a birthday party with some of her friends until March 8th. In the wee hours of the morning of March 8th E woke up and puked in her bed. Needless to say, the delayed celebration needed to be postponed yet another week. R was very disappointed but took the news as well as could be expected.

Yesterday was the much awaited and anticipated birthday party with her friends and they all had a great time. All her friends are great kids and had me laughing over one thing or another during the course of the afternoon. They ate pizza, sculpted with Fimo clay, goofed off together, visited the rats, ate cake and ice cream and then R opened her gifts. A fun afternoon! Here are a few pics from the day:


Although we had no consistent "theme" to the party this year, R decided that she wanted reptiles on her cake. So, I made frosting grass (I'm thinking SPRING!) and put the little plastic guys on top.


R and A working with clay. All told they made three trays worth of little pieces of art that I baked and sent home with the kids in their goody bags. It was a huge hit!


Sculpting aftermath....


E had fun with all the big kids.


Pig pile!!!


Waiting patiently for cake.


Mom and the birthday girl.


Good cake...


...and ice cream!


R has matured so much in the last year. She is a book worm who loves nature and science and her reading interests of late have been adventure stories (Deltora Quest series, Andrew Lost books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Spiderwick, etc...) as well as nonfiction books about a variety of subjects from the human body to the solar system to frogs and amphibians. Her classroom this year is heavily math-focused and she is proving to be up to the task even if it is not her most favorite subject. She can be a bit of a hot-head at times but she is beginning to get more of a handle on her feelings and expressing herself in a more constructive way. She is artistic and creative and loves to do anything crafty from making jewelry to drawing to creating objects out clay, paper, yarn, or anything else we have hanging around the house. She is a collector of rocks, sticks, and just about anything bright and shiny! Although she is quiet and tends to be shy in certain situations she has made some great friends is school this year.

It is hard to believe that it was more than 8 years ago that we brought home our sweet little bundle called R. She is not such a small bundle anymore (and growing taller by the minute!) but she continues to bring pride and joy into our lives and will forever be our little girl! Happy Birthday, R. We love you!

In which I finally get around to sharing some pictures I've been meaning to post...

I'm obviously not participating in NaBloPoMo this year since I haven't posted a damn thing yet this month. But there are a few participants I'm rooting for this year and will be stopping by to check on them daily (just giving them fair warning....if they happen to stop by here).

I have yet to post pictures from my October girls' birthdays! Horrors! And then of course there is Halloween. I'm slacking off around here. I guess I've been a tad busy with other things - sewing for the church fair, reading The Outlander (instead of the book I'm supposed to be reading for my book club**), failing miserably at learning to crochet (OK, so I did teach myself the basic stitch but the 'square' that was supposed to 13"x13" came out as 11"x12" and I decided to just ditch that project for now...I don't need that kind of stress! I want my projects to be fun and I use them to reduce stress, thank you very much), and just generally surviving our crazy fall schedule (I'm happy to report that this was the last week for session one of swim class - I have the girls signed up to take their swim lessons on the same day at the same time for session two - Phew!).

So, without further ado, here are a few shots from October that I wanted to share...

HALLOWEEN

R dressed as Violet from The Incredibles. Her personality changes completely when she dons this costume.

A as a Barbie...gag...cheerleader. Not my choice for a costume and I made her wear a leotard underneath for warmth and modesty. She was originally going to be a pink fairy but then found this evil lovely get up and decided to spend some birthday money on it. Her personality was not a whole lot different, just notched up a bit when she put this costume on.

Little Miss E dressed as a Ladybug - but hard to tell since all she was willing to wear was a pair of wings clipped to the back of her jacket. The cheesy grin speaks volumes about her personality.

The Thrilling Threesome ready to go get CANDY!


E's 2nd Birthday!

The birthday girl - see? there's that cheese-factor going full force again.

However, since we are talking about a 2-year-old, that cheese-factor can swiftly change to Major Meltdown in mere seconds.

E has never seen a single Dora episode, but thanks to the whacked-out world of preschool marketing she can certainly recognize a Dora figure 13 aisles away. So, I figured she would appreciate a little Dora-themed family celebration this year.

Happy Birthday, E! She did a great job blowing out her candles this year...even if she did try to actually eat the wax Dora candle later. Notice the wine in the foreground - I was not to be outdone by E's earlier whine, you see. Mothers have a way of getting by. Seriously!

Sisters three.


This year - as compared to last - there was no question in E's mind about what needed to be done with the brightly wrapped packages. Riiiiippppp!!!

A's 5th Birthday!

A chose a puppy theme for her party this year. I found a dog bone cookie cutter and the gingerbread doggy bones were a big hit!

Pink being A's favorite color, the pink poodle cake was a must-have for the party!

Oh yeah, and there isn't much of it left in this shot but I also made the girls pink poodle pancakes for breakfast that morning.
At five, she is a pro at blowing out the candles...

And she certainly knows how best to rip into the brightly wrapped packages. She had a total of five friends at her party and they all had a great time. She was thrilled with all her gifts and she is already thinking ahead to next year and coming up with party-theme ideas!

OK, enough is enough. I think I've got the October celebratory pictures covered now. I'll be back soon and next time I'll try not to inundate the blogosphere with so many pictures at once!

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**Update on the book club comment! I'm glad I put my book club book aside because I just received this email from a fellow book club member:

At church today several of us were discussing the difficulty in getting ahold of this book/as well as not being crazy about short stories. The suggestions we came up with was to change the book to another one of Sena Jeter Naslund about Marie Antoinette . How does the group feel about that? Is it too late to change (believe next meeting is 11/19). Reply all with your thoughts,

Inger

I had only read the first short story in the chosen book so I'm glad I didn't invest too much time in it! Now I just need to get cracking on whatever book they decide on because Inger was wrong and our next meeting is actually scheduled for next Monday (the 12th)!

Stressed for Success...

At least I am hoping for a modicum of success this coming weekend.

My mom turned 70 this past month and since she was away in Bermuda for her actual birthday we are having her celebration this coming weekend. I live three hours from most of the rest of the family so we are having the celebration down where they all live. I ended up with the role of "Party Planner From Afar" and have managed to pull things together as best I can. There will be approximately 28 people in attendance from toddler to adult so I made reservations for brunch at a restaurant not too far from my parents' house. I have sent countless emails to my sibs and made follow-up phone calls to be sure that we are all on the same page and that everyone has all the information and knows where they need to be and when. After the brunch we are hoping to get the family all in one place (preferably a picturesque beach locale) for a family picture - except for the one nephew who has already left for his summer job/internship HERE!...life is rough, eh? We are still working on the "where" issue for the pictures and we are also keeping an eye on the weather which may cancel any such plans for our Family Photo Fun Fest (because at these kinds of family events you have to find a way to put the "fun" back into "dysfunctional", right?) . I have a couple of locations I need to scout once we get down there but I am hoping for a spot that is actually right up the road from the restaurant. If the weather is borderline crappy I think we'll be in luck because there should be plenty of parking. It is the downpours and thunder and lightning possibilities that have me a bit worried.

After the brunch and photo nightmare event we will be heading to my sister's house for cake and ice cream (and drinks aplenty - after all, we are talking about MY family here). A couple of mimosa's a brunch followed by glass or so of wine with my cake and ice cream and I suppose I will be able to survive the day with my sanity intact... Of course, after the long day we still have a three-hour drive home to look forward to (whee).

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In other news, the girls are finishing up their school years. How is it that another year has flown by? R is finishing up 1st grade and we just recently found out that the combined classroom (1st and 2nd grade) that she was in this year will not be continued into next year. So, she'll be in a full 2nd grade classroom which we feel will be more suited to her needs. Now, we just need to find a way to ensure that she gets the teacher placement that we feel would be more appropriate. I plan to send an email off to her teacher later today regarding that very issue!

A is currently in "stay and play camp" which is a fancy way to say that we can pay extra to extend the preschool year so that it more closely matches the regular public school calendar. She is there three days a week and next week is her last week before summer vacation. Next year she is returning to the same preschool and she absolutely loves it there. The teachers are wonderful and she's made some nice friends. In fact, at their little "graduation/end of year" celebration she received a certificate for being "A Good Friend to All" (each child received a special certificate that honored something that made them special). She is such a little social butterfly who is truly kind and thoughtful of those around her. And she is so darn cute to boot!
But, hey, I'm her mom so I guess I'm a little bit biased.

E is starting to talk up quite a storm. Rick and I are now very afraid that we won't be able to get a word in edgewise at the dinner table in the near future. She is in that very cute parrot stage where she repeats - as best she can - what she hears...or at least the last or most vital parts of a sentence.

Mom:"Do you want some milk, E?"
E: "Mook!"

Mom: "Would you like some paper to draw on?"
E: "Pay-poo!"

Mom: "Peee-U! You are stinky! Let's change that diaper."
E: "Tin-kee! Die-poo!"

And of course, she is at the age where her favorite word is "NO!"

Mom: "Uh-oh. Do you have a poop?"
E: "NO!"

Mom: "Oh yes! Time to change that diaper!"
E: "NO!"

Mom: "Let's go!"
E: "NOOOOOO!" (giggling and running in the other direction)

Or better yet...I will catch her "in the act" - red-faced and grunting.

Mom: "Are you pooping?"
E: Straining...grunting. Tears forming in the corners of her eyes. "Poooooop." Then, looking away, "No! No poop!"

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I'll leave you with a few more pics of the girls. I took these while they were eating popsicles on our back steps the other day. This was the first time I gave E free-reign over the popsicle and I was quite impressed that she did not end up with half of it on the ground covered in dirt and swarming with ants. WTG, big girl!

Happy 103rd Birthday to Rick's Grandma!

And while I'm on the subject of birthdays (see meme below) I wanted to give a great big shout-out to Rick's Grandma (Great Nana as she is known to the girls) who is turning 103 today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GREAT NANA!!!

Can you even imagine? 103!? It's amazing to think how the world has changed in her lifetime and all the things she has experienced!

She lives out in California so we won't be able to wish her a Happy Birthday in person - so instead I put together some of the girls artwork and sent it along to her with a card I made. Check it out:

I hope she likes it (and I hope she gets it soon since I was a wee bit late in sending it out...oops)!

Anatomy of a Birthday Party

My baby - this one...


...had a birthday today.


Baby?...yeah...not so much anymore. Sigh. She'll be my 'baby' forever, though. How the heck did the last SEVEN years fly by so quickly? I honestly cannot recall life without my kids - it's as if that life belongs to someone else entirely. I was putting the balloons in place today and the smell of the latex reminded me of the time - long, long ago - when I worked for "The Balloon Lady" (and babysat for her two boys). I was just a teen in high school at the time and the memory just seemed to belong to another life! How can I be the mom to a seven-year-old?

Happy Birthday, 'baby' girl!! (well, officially at 11:10pm tonight...)

As I said before R wanted to have a "frog" themed party this year. So, of course I went all out with the theme...and well...here are the pictures to show you how things went.

Hoppy Birthday cake...


Presents galore (and special request "Gorilla Munch" cereal for birthday breakfast)

Decorations (including frog faces on the green party plates!)


Sign for the front door to greet the guests.

Plenty of friends to help celebrate the day!

Can't have a party without silly hats (which served as a fun craft activity to boot!)

More presents (opened while still wearing the silly hats!)

The Party Planner...

...and her Trusty Assistant!

I think she enjoyed her special day - and it's not quite over. We are off to have a special birthday dinner at Friendly's (her choice!).

Have a good one!