Christmas 2010

Yesterday I took the tree down and put away all of Christmas. As I did it, all I could think was that this was the last Christmas I would have with my kids being these ages. This was Miss H's first. E will never be 2 again and G will never be 5.

  Did we have enough fun? Did I enjoy it enough? Was there enough love?

G told me on Christmas Eve that part of what we want for Christmas is to have each other. I'm grateful for that gift most of all.

Mission Accomplished

We had a good Christmas--pictures to follow soon. My kids are all SUPER exhausted. (I'm guessing this isn't anything new to all of you with young children.) One thing that I will never understand about kids, though, is that when they are too tired they refuse to sleep. I mean seriously? If someone even starts to say the word nap I am halfway to my bed.

Anyway, Miss H refused to sleep all day yesterday. After hours of nursing and rocking and walking around the house, I finally got her to sleep and was sitting on the bed with her. About 10 minutes later E walked into the room with our toy electric keyboard.

"Hi Momma!" he said. "Turn it on?"

This is like a train wreck waiting to happen. I know that if he turns it on it will wake up H, but if I get mad and tell him "no" he will throw a fit and wake up Miss H.

"No, honey," I said sweetly, "take it downstairs and watch your show ok?"

"No, turn it on!" he said and flipped the switch. Automatically a drumbeat comes on and he loudly hits all of the keys.

Miss H jumps a foot and looks around wildy.

After about 2 seconds of playing, E says, "All done." He then takes his piano and walks out.

Mission accomplished...little booger.

The End

Well, I hope you enjoyed our Hubs series. We sure love him and are so grateful for him. He is perfect for me and a really great Dad.

Handsome

Understanding

Brilliant

Silly

In other words you're the best, Honey!

The magic pill

A couple of Sundays ago, Hubs woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I'm not sure what happened, but all day long he was the grumpiest person! The kids were being pretty obnoxious and pulling their normal nonsense and he was just not having any of it. At one point it was pretty sad, all the kids were huddled around me while he sat all alone on the opposite side of the room. I had to laugh. "No one wants to sit by you, grumpy pants!" I said. "Fine!" He grumbled, "GOOD."

Later, I pulled him aside and tried to remind him that the kids were just being kids and not acting any different than how they act for me every day.
"I have something for you." I said
Hubs looked at me seriously. "Is it a chill pill?" he asked.
Floored, I looked at him. "How did you know? I have never said those words to you before!" I laughed.
He laughed for about 5 minutes straight, congratulating himself for being a genius.

Unfortunately, he never took his little pill. Luckily he was over it by the next day.

Embarrassing stories about me

As an added bonus for Hubby's week, I thought I would throw in a new feature. Today I will share a couple of embarrassing stories about me. Since I am the primary writer of this blog, I get to determine the way I am presented. This generally means that I try not to humiliate myself if possible whereas Hubs gets his embarrassing stories shared.

So here are two little gems out of the vault.

The first happened when I was a laurel (16 year old girl in our church's youth organization). We were having a program called New Beginnings where we welcomed in the new year and discussed the organization. When I showed up that night, I was asked to give an impromptu talk about how our organization had helped me in my life. I quickly wrote something up. As I began to read it I could feel everyone listening and admiring how well I was able to perform under pressure. Like they always say, pride cometh before the fall. I began to discuss how this program had helped me.

"I've found that it has lent me a newfound sense of clairvoyance." I stated. Immediately I knew that I had said something wrong. A bunch of the adults were smiling and trying not to laugh. For the life of me, I couldn't think of what had happened. I thought that I had just used a fancy word for having insight and thinking clearly.

Never one to take embarrassment well, I finished sullenly. Later my friend's dad came up to me. "Clairvoyent huh?" he said laughing. I just tried to laugh it off and walk away.

In the car my mom asked, "Do you know what that word means?"
I told her what I thought.
"No, you were thinking of the word clarity." she said, "clairvoyant means that you are like a psychic."

This story still makes me cringe. Lesson 1--make sure you know what a big word means before you use it! Especially in a public speaking situation!!!

This second story involves my mom too. Good thing she is there to help me not be such an idiot!
A couple of years ago we were driving in the car around Christmas.
"I love this CD," I said regarding the instrumental Christmas CD we had just purchased, "but there is one song I just can't figure out. Why do they have 'Oh Susanna' on it? That is so weird."
She asked to hear the song. I turned to it and when the section came around loudly sang along, "With a banjo on her knee."
Mom started laughing. "That's not 'Oh Susanna'" she said. "That is 'Go Tell it on the Mountain. The line is 'Go tell it on the mountain, Jesus Christ is born!"
"Oh." I said. "I guess that makes sense."

Lesson number 2: "Oh Susanna" and "Go Tell it on the Mountain" are not the same song.

Ughh! Still cringing!

You're welcome, Honey.

Look Alike

So Hubs is going to HATE this post. Sorry, Hon!

 He says that people tell him all the time that he looks like:

Jim Carey

and 

Jimmy Fallon

When he was a kid he wanted his family to call him Jimmy for a while. Coincidence?

Oh he was also told that he reminded someone of Phil Dunphy too!

Ty Burrell

Needless to say, Hubs is offended by all of these comparisons.

He would accept, however,

Ha ha ha. He's going to kill me!

I think he is the most handsome as himself, though. 

Love you hot stuff!

Straight Shooting

This summer before our road trip, I decided to sew holders for our portable DVD players in the car. I made up the design and set to work using trial and error.

Everything was going somewhat decently until I cut the window that would show the screen. It was really difficult to make sure it was straight, turn it over and hem it. I grumbled and cursed the stinking fabric as I tried to manipulate it into doing what I wanted. Hubs happily sat and watched t.v., looking over every once in a while and reassuring me that it looked fine.

Finally I got to (what I didn't realize at the time) was the worst part. I sewed in some clear plastic to cover the screens from dirty little fingers. The plastic stuck to the machine and wouldn't feed. It was like those little plastic/vinyl window decorations you can buy at various holidays. I was so frustrated and was ready to give up. Almost in tears of frustration I kept repeating things like, "This stupid plastic is impossible to move!" and "It looks like a 5 year old sewed this!" and "I'm ruining this thing. I've been working on this ALL NIGHT and it is ruined!!!!"

I finally finished it and Hubs looked at it. Being the sweet, confidence building husband that he is, he reassured me that it looked great and that it would work perfectly.

"And," he said, completely innocently and earnestly, "maybe when you make the next one, you can try to sew it straight."

Miss H's birth

When Miss H was born, my water broke around midnight and we headed over to the hospital. Once there we had the fun job of just waiting. Hubs immediately conked in the chair next to me while I laid and stared at the monitor ALL NIGHT LONG. Every time I tried to go to sleep my blood pressure monitor would go off and wake me up. All the while Hubs snored in the chair next to me. Finally at around 7 in the morning they decided to give me pitocin to speed the process up. After waiting and worrying all night long I was totally ready for it.

Since we had rushed out of the door around midnight a lot of things at our house were left sort of unsettled. I told Hubs that he might as well go home and check on the kids since we were still waiting, but to be quick. He agreed and assured me that he would be home in well under an hour.

I waited and watched t.v. until the nurse finally came in to check me about 45 minutes later. She took one look and said, "Oh you're ready to go. I'll go call the doctor." Surprised and happy, I wasn't too concerned. Hubs had assured me he would be back any minute.

A couple of minutes later the nurse came back in and started readying the room. She looked around slightly concerned and said, "Is your husband going to be here?"
"Oh yeah," I said, "he'll be here soon."
She still looked a little worried but kept working. After the room was all set up and he still wasn't there she handed me the phone. "Do you want to call him?" she asked.
Chagrined, I took the phone and called him. No answer. Now she looked really concerned.
"Don't worry," I said, "we only live a few minutes away. He's probably doing something stupid like taking a shower and eating breakfast."
We laughed and I called again a few minutes later. This time he answered.
"Would you like to see the birth of your child?" I asked, "because if so you'd better get over here right now."
"I'm leaving now!" he assured me.

At that point I started to have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I couldn't believe he might miss H's birth. On the other hand, if he did I could hold that over his head for the rest of his life. Hmm...options, options.

Anyhoo, about 7 minutes later he hussled through the door right behind the Doctor. The nurse and I were very relieved. I looked at him and said, "what took you so long?"

His answer? "I was taking a shower and eating breakfast."

That's what I thought.

Dimensions

I wasn't actually here for this one, but the story is just too good--and so Hubs.

Hubs explained to me that when his family built their house, they were one of the first new homes in their still undeveloped neighborhood. They slowly watched as other homes were built around them (and loved to do that thing where people walk through houses under construction--not my favorite. It makes me feel like a criminal.). ANYHOO...

Apparently one of the houses had moved some dirt around so that there was a big dirt pile sitting in front of one of the lots that Hubs had to pass on the way to school. Hubs said that it was there so long it just became a part of the sidewalk landscape and he didn't think much of it, until one day when he was walking to school he came to that section of sidewalk and it was GONE. He stopped, and looked around. Finally, absolutely bewildered by this sudden change of events he came to the most logical conclusion.

"I have entered an alternate dimension," he decided.

He said that it wasn't until years later that he realized that the dirt had just been moved.

As a side note, a couple of weeks ago we watched some old home movies of Brian's family and in one he slid off their cabin's roof into the snow while he yelled, "Coming soon to your galaxy!"

Do you think it is possible to watch a little too much Star Trek?

Hubsapalooza

A couple of years ago, I wrote a week of posts about Hubs to show our love and appreciation for him. This year for his birthday, I will attempt to repeat the aforementioned feat (now that we have more kids it actually is more of a feat to remember). I may also throw in a bonus feature that I did not do last year, so you can look forward to that. So starting tomorrow, you can enjoy a little hubs in your life as well (but not too much people--he's mine)!

29 + 1/2

Me 29, Miss H 6 months

I can't help thinking that so far, 29 looks pretty good. 

We'll see how I feel next year! Thanks for all of the love. Right back at you.

Some E quotes

Thanks for everyones' well wishes last week. Thankfully this week has been much better! I thought I'd share some quotes from E, he is such a funny kid. Seriously, if you want to be entertained, hang out with him for an hour or two, you won't be disappointed.

(While running around the house) "Where's Nemo? Where's Nemo? I can't find him?"

(He'll start running then stop and act hurt) "I'm stuck, I'm stuck." (He pops up) "I did it!!!"

(He constantly steals toys from Miss H, then is disgusted when they are all slimy.) "Mommy, baby, eww."

Last night at dinner he started begging to go visit his Auntie A and Uncle B. I tried to explain that we couldn't just hop in the car and see them. He was not happy.

And I'm starting to wonder if he has ever had a traumatic incident with the toilet because when I ask him if he wants to sit on the potty he says, "NO, NO POTTY!!" I would be ok with this, except yesterday he kept pulling off his diaper and streaking around the house any time he had gone in it. I was not super happy when he smeared poop all over.

Now that I'm reading over these stories, they don't seem that funny. Probably because 90% of what makes this kid funny are his facial expressions. He is so animated, when he is asleep or gone the life just feels sucked out of the house. We sure love our E.

A post in which I pity myself, you can pity me too!

Last Sunday (as previously stated) E ate peanut butter cups in nursery and ended up having an allergic reaction. As always it was super scary, and the poor kid was distraught. Apparently not breathing well and having your whole body covered in an itchy rash will do that to a person.
1 epi pen, 1 trip to the emergency room, 1 case of uncontrollable shaking, and 2 incidences of vomiting later, he was finally feeling better. Did I mention that it cost us over $165 when all was said and done? Merry Christmas, E, we give you the gift of life! E continued on a steroid for the next four days to help with his reaction.

Saturday Hubs took the boys with him to the oil change. When he got home, E was freaking out and starting to get all rashy again. Turns out that he had been messing around with one of those candy dispensers businesses put in their lobbies and had somehow managed to (we think???) ingest the peanut residue from the one with peanut M&M's in it. Note, we're pretty sure he did not even eat a peanut, just the residue! He immediately started getting rashy with hives and was wheezing. (This is already being on the steroid--ironically his last dose). We managed to get his reaction under control with his albuteral inhaler, benedryl, and the steroid this time and didn't have to go through the epi pen, emergency room fiasco again.

(Here is a washed out picture of him after he had all of his medicine in him. It's hard to tell from the picture because of the flash but he looked AWFUL!)

The next day, Sunday, we went to Hub's mom's house for a belated Thanksgiving dinner. When we arrived we were informed that two of his brothers were there and were sick with nausea and vomitting. Needless to say, 1 immunosuppressed child + 2 of his favorite uncles who are really sick = not a great plan.

Tuesday at 5:00 am we were all awoken to E uncontrollably vomiting. This continued pretty much all day long. E would try to hold it in, so it would come out of his nose. Then he would freak out because--well vomit was coming out of his nose, not fun! If you have ever had a vomiting 2 year old on your hands you can probably imagine the number of vomit spills I cleaned up around the house that day.
Number in the toilet: 0.
Number in a bowl: 2.
Number on the floor: countless.
All he wanted all day was for me to hold and comfort him--not so easy when you have a 6 month old and 5 year old as well. Thankfully by the evening he seemed to be doing better.

Wednesday, I felt nauseated all day but it was akin to morning sickness. "If I can do this for 3 months," I told myself, "I can do this for a couple of days."
"Maybe only E will get it since he was immunosuppressed," we hoped.

What follows is a timeline of Wednesday night and this morning that Hubs and I have managed to piece together.

12:45 am: G wakes up bawling and vomiting. Dad cleans everything up.

1:15 Dad comes, lays down, and Miss H projectile vomits in our bed. We clean up until 1:30.

1:30 G wakes up vomiting. I rub his back. He proceeds to tell me, "I think something is not working properly," because at this point he is dry heaving. I assure him that it happens, he goes back to sleep.

2:15 H wakes up vomiting. Repeat cleanup.

3:00 H wakes up and I feed her.

4: 00 H wakes up and vomits. Cleanup.

4:30 G wakes up, runs to the bathroom and vomits. Comes in crying and asks for a blessing.

5:45 E wakes up and wants to get up for the day. Dad takes the boys downstairs so I can sleep a little.

7:00 I can't take E's constant whining (heard throughout the house) and go downstairs and trade places with Dad.

8:00 E wakes up H and Dad. I feed H. Vomiting ensues.

9:00 G vomits

9:30 H vomits

etc. etc. etc.


Did I mention I am nauseated through all of this? And the kids had diarrhea? And the laundry load this created? No? Well no need to tell all.

11:28 Having a little pity party for myself.  Join me!

(Not in the vomiting--no one deserves this. Ok maybe a few people, but definitely not you!)

Odds and Ends

I don't really have anything cohesive to write for a blog post, but I do want to get down a couple of stories for journaling purposes. Sorry if stories about our kids bug you, but I suppose if they do then you might as well not read our blog.

G:
This kid amazes me with the things he comes up with sometimes. He told me what the words "feast" and the term "white-out" meant and will recount entire stories that I didn't even know he heard. He has such a quick mind and good memory.

Apparently he gets around. I've had a couple of different moms tell me that their daughters talk about how they have crushes on him and want to marry him. One of them told me that her daughter said they held hands at preschool (yikes!) He wins over the ladies by complimenting them and telling them they look beautiful. The funny thing is that he really means it, he is just a sweet kid.

I think he is a little bit attention deprived right now. The other day we were at Old Navy and I looked up to see him holding hands with a mannequin. I said, "What are you doing?" and he responded, "Wall E does it!" It was so funny and sad at the same time. Poor guy.

E:
We had another allergic reaction for E's peanut allergy. This time we had the fun experience of using the epi pen for the first time. Little did we know that while we were happy E stayed in nursery the whole time on Sunday, he was shot-gunning peanut butter cups. Poor kid. We've told the nursery leaders that he had the allergy but they forgot.
I'm sorry, but I hate this allergy. It is so hard. It feels like people don't remember and they think you are harping on it or don't register how serious it is when you tell them. It will be a little easier when he is older and knows that he can't have these things, but the toss up there is that he will go more places and I will not be able to look out for him as much. I keep telling myself that it could be worse (and it could). Ok, pity party over.

Today we took E to the dentist for the first time, he tried to karate chop the assistant and gave everyone the evil eye. At least they thought it was funny.

Also, when I was doing the dishes G came in and told me that E was screaming. I ran into the bedroom to find him in our closet in the laundry hamper with his legs sticking straight up into the air. No, I didn't take a picture, it seemed too mean. Boy did I get a good laugh, though.

E is also trying to revert back to being the baby. It's pretty funny (although I'm kind of afraid he is going to break the swing and bouncy seat when he sits in them).

(Self inflicted hair bow and sister's coat.)

H:
H continues to be our little ray of sunshine. Her middle name definitely suits her. I'm so grateful for her presence in our family. I told hubby the other day that sometimes when I am just feeling so frustrated and fed up, she is such a comfort to me. Hubs can't agree yet because he is still too sleep deprived but I'm pretty sure he would be onboard if she would sleep a little better (we're still waking up every 2-3 hours).

And he is!

Hubs passed his final test to be licensed!

It has been a long road. Seven plus years of marriage and we are finally both done with school and studying. I feel like a whole new world has unfolded right before our eyes. What a perfect month to finish--I don't think I could possibly express the gratitude for my Heavenly Father that I have in my heart right now.

I love you Hubs, you most certainly are awesome!

Freaky

Does one of these things look like the other?

E

Hubs

It's kind of freakin' me out a little!

Busy

Miss H can't talk right now...

 She's busy reading the paper. Probably the style section.

By the way, E, she wanted you to know that just wearing snow boots and a diaper is definitely a faux pas.

But Mom thinks you're cute!

Halloween

Even though I am the Halloween grinch, and we have all had colds the last couple of weeks, we managed to have a great time celebrating Halloween again this year. We ate too much junk food, stayed up too late, and are still sick and grumpy. Success!

Carving pumpkins. E hated it, H didn't care, but G actually helped. (You can click on the pictures to enlarge.)

Halloween night we ate this for dinner:

The boys LOVED it and gobbled them up. I ate a normal hot dog.

We trick-or-treated on Saturday and had a family party at Grandma's on Sunday. Turns out I only got a few pictures of the former and almost none of the latter. 

I was a princess, G was my knight in shining armor, E was a ninja, H was the saddest little bat you've ever met (turns out she has an ear infection--woohoo!) and Hubs was batman. If you stretch it we sort of had a theme going like all of the crafty bloggers out there.

And to play us out, listen to the first 10 seconds of this song (although the whole thing is kind of awesome). For obvious reasons it's a favorite at our house.

Happy Halloween!

Another Birthday Bash

G just celebrated a birthday! Here is a quick rundown of his big day:

He woke up to balloons and doughnuts. We stole a tradition from some friends of ours and hang up doughnuts and try to eat them without using our hands. (No pictures--darn it! Imagine E attacking a doughnut.) The kids LOVE this game as well as fighting over the balloons. 

G also got to open a special present at breakfast. He was so excited until he opened it to find... a pair of jeans and a shirt that I had made with the number 5 on it. 

"Oh, new clothes," he said in a monotone voice. 

Success! Thinly veiled disgust is generally what I'm going for on a birthday. 

Anyhoo, we finished up breakfast and ran out the door to preschool so for picts of the outfit look below. 

G came home from preschool with a small pumpkin and a black eye. He said he ran into another kid but that it felt ok and everyone was fine. 

"Well it's your first black eye, I'll take a picture," I said. 

"No!" he said, "you'll put it on the internet." 

And I just did. 

(Don't worry, I didn't promise that I wouldn't.)

Nothing more to report until Dinner, G picked it out so we had homemade pizza and french fries. (Again you will have to use your imagination. Whoops!)

Here is G's cake this year. He loves the movie Bolt and has been begging for it, so he said he wanted a cake with all of the characters. I did my best at making characters out of rice crispy treats and cookies, dipped in white chocolate and decorated with candy and frosting. They turned out ok; Ace of Cakes I am not. I also didn't realize the scale of my decorations, I was planning on putting a giant lightning bolt in the middle of the cake but by the time I got everything on there wasn't much room. He was happy, though, so that's what matters. 

This was the most important part to me! It was cookies and cream cake with an amazing cream cheese frosting. Don't ask how much I have eaten. I may have a problem...

He got some cool stuff, including a Spiderman web slinger (thanks Grandma and Grandpa)! My favorite gift was his back scratcher, $1.50 baby! That's a present I can really get on board with.

I think he warmed up to the outfit a little more when he realized that it wasn't all he was getting. Plus he said that they noticed it at school so that they sang Happy Birthday to him. Ha see, your mom is always right!

Can you believe he was smaller than this bear when he was born?

E wanted his picture taken too. Doesn't he look happy?

We stayed up late and watched How to Train Your Dragon (really cute!) and then had a quick visit from Hubby's Dad and his wife. Overall it was a good, and incredibly full day.

G is such a sweet kid, we love him so much. He is so smart sometimes you just can't help but laugh. We started talking about the day he was born (a tradition in Hubby's family) and I jokingly asked him if he remembered. He replied, "Yes, you've narrated it to me before." 

He's also starting to really get into humor and trying to make up his own jokes. He does much better with ones that we get him to memorize, but it's fun to see him try to understand language and timing. 

Finally, he just has a really good heart and wants to do what is right. He helps his brother and sister a ton and even used his penny at the wishing well to wish that he wouldn't fight with his brother anymore.

We sure love you G and are so glad you are part of our family!

Do we have a bit of a superhero complex?

As I was driving kids to preschool...

G: "For Halloween I'm going to be what my dad is being. I'm his sidekick."

The other day after I was giving hubs a hard time about something--probably eating Cheetos and candy with the kids when they should have had something healthy...

Hubby: "You are in charge of all of the mental and emotional areas of the family. I am in charge of the physical and medical."

(Me rolling my eyes)

G: "I'm in charge of all the superhero areas of the family."

Me: "Sure kid, you can be the head of our superhero committee. Any area that falls under superhero responsibilities can go straight to you."

G: "Yep. Sounds good."

I'm starting to understand that Jerry Seinfeld was really right when he said, "When men are growing up, reading about Batman, Spiderman, Superman, these aren't fantasies, these are career options...Every man thinks of himself as a low-level superhero."

Let's just hope a situation never arises where we have to put this sort of thing to the test, shall we?

Small things

Recently my sister-in-law had her first baby. It's been really fun watching her new little family interact and it reminds me so much of when we first had G. We were talking about motherhood and how it can be hard. There are long demanding hours and people who don't listen to you. It can feel isolating and lonely where you are dying for adult conversation. Often times you feel unappreciated for all of the sacrifices and changes you are making. I once told my mom that if this was a job that I was being paid for, I think I would quit!! 

There are those times, though, when everything seems to come together. Today we stayed home and had a lazy day. At one point I was caramelizing onions for dinner and the whole house smelled amazing. G sat next to H and proudly read her a book that he was making all on his own. She smiled and laughed at her big brother. I checked in on E and found him laying on the floor happily playing with cars. I went back and stirred my onions and listened to the happy noise of children playing and smelled home-cooking. All of a sudden I had the crystal clear thought, "This is as good as it gets. Our lives are so good and I am so happy." 

Five minutes later everyone was fighting or crying again, but I've learned over time that these short moments somehow make it enough. 

Career Day

The other day G told me:

"When I grow up I want to be a dentist and a soccer coach...or maybe a veterinarian. They're nice."

"How about a doctor," I offered.

"Yeah," he said, "or I'll just be a superhero."

Calm down

Yesterday morning I got up with the boys while Hubby snuggled with Miss H and tried to get a bit more sleep. About 20 minutes later he came downstairs alone. 

"You can go upstairs (to nurse her), she is up and freaking out." 

I quickly went upstairs into the bedroom as Hubby followed. When I walked in, though, everything was quiet. "Is she still sleeping?" I wondered out loud. I looked at her only to have her return my look with a face like this:

"Calm down, H!!" I said. "Calm down. Seriously, stop freaking out!!"

Hubby just rolled his eyes. "She was freaking out."

Yep. We better call for backup.

First day of school!

G started preschool again so we took another first day of school picture.

If you need to make your 5 year old smile, try telling them that their dad has hairy eyeballs. It works for us!

E decided he wanted in on the action. These brothers...pretty sure they cant live with or without each other!

Happy Birthday

E celebrated a birthday recently and we had a day packed with fun. Here's a quick run-down of the festivities.

A local real estate agency was giving hot air balloon rides at a nearby park. We didn't tell the boys about the rides, but surprised them by going to look at the balloon. It turned out that they were way behind schedule and we weren't even sure if we could get a ride anyway (they deflated the balloon at one point). We were really glad we hadn't promised a ride or we never would have heard the end of it. As it was, they were thrilled to see the huge "bawoon" and eat free muffins and drink hot chocolate.

As you can tell, Miss H was very impressed (and wearing the cutest boots EVER)

Then we loaded up the kids and headed to the zoo where we hung out with Grandma and Grandpa.

Grandma and baby H

Side note: E tried to climb into every enclosure. Then he started yelling and motioning for the giraffes to "Come on!"

We went on a little train ride

Pretty sure this was the only voluntary picture of the day!

We happened to walk up to the elephant enclosure just as they were having the elephants do tricks. There was a baby one that was so cute!! The best part, though, was that as we were watching the baby and mom, the trainer had the elephant suck up some water. We didn't think anything of it until it sprayed it at us and completely drenched all of us. It was so funny and unexpected, we couldn't stop laughing.

Once everyone was so exhausted they were crying, we decided it had been a successful trip and was time to go home.

We bribed E to take his now yearly picture by the bear. Then sat down to eat pizza, italian sodas, and cake.

If you know E at all, you know he loves cars and trucks. I decided to try my hand at making him a car cake and I thought it turned out pretty cute.

I just made a normal double layer round cake and cut it out and carved it to look like a car. The wheels are doughnuts and the headlights and tail lights are yellow and red sprees. Hubby gave me some advice on how to make the windows and doors not look weird. I appreciated his insight since I always draw dumb looking cars.

E really liked it, so I think it was a success.

Finally, E opened presents and received (you guessed it) cars. He was thrilled beyond belief.

What a great day! We sure love E and are so happy he is in our family. He certainly keeps us on our toes and makes sure that there is never a dull moment. He is stubborn, smart, energetic and sweet. He plays with your hair if you are holding him and growls if you do something he doesn't like. I don't know where this kid came from, but I have a sneaking suspicion he might be a lot like me. No wonder I think he is equal parts exasperating and hilarious! Love you kid!