Brian's Big 5!

Really, I am going to catch up this time. I promise. Both boys are at school, Allison is asleep, and the house can wait. So I will start with Brian's birthday.

Yep, it's official he is FIVE!! Wow where does the time go. With his birthday being the day before both Thanksgiving AND Allison's birthday I tried to think ahead and plan ahead. Quit laughing, I am perfectly capable of planning ahead. Okay, I admit it I did put thought into it ahead of time but when it came down to it I had to hope I could find invitations at Rite Aide and get them filled out and to the preschool in time to pick Brian up. Which I did. The only problem was I had to change his birthday theme because the only invitations I could find were pirate invitations. Luckily Brian was fine going from Iron Man to Pirates of the Carribbean theme. His birthday party was planned for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Figuring many kids would be out of town I went out on a limb and invited his whole preschool class. Steve was a little nervous and told me I better be prepared to entertain the whole class, but I knew better. There were only 4 who rsvp'd, and 1 of those ended up being sick so it was a small group, but still lots of fun.

The kids had fun coloring pirate pages while we were waiting for all the guests to arrive, then I took them into the kitchen one by one so they could make their own pizza. I had the dough rolled out into personal sizes s for them and they got to put on all their toppings. While the pizza was baking I sent them on a treasure hunt. I was hoping for good weather so we could do this outside, but with it being the end of November knew it was a long shot. Sure enough it rained all day so the hunt was inside. I made a treasure map with cold coffee and crumpled it up so it looked authentic. They had 4 places to find and at each place there was a pile of gold coins waiting for them. Then the end of the treasuer hunt at the waterfall (Brian's blue sleeping bag coming down over the bunkbed ladder) was where the treasure was hidden. Instead of goodie bags I found these small cardboard treasure chests that my Mom and cousin filled with gold coins, a telescope, balloons, and a glow in the dark bracelet. The kids were so excited and immediately went to the living room to check out there booty.

By this time the pizza's were ready and they got to eat the pizza they made. Then of course presents and birthday cake. I was very pleased with the cake. I bought a cake set that had little figures of Jack Sparrow and Will Turner as well as railing and a ship steering wheel. Brian wanted me to make octopus legs coming up from under the ship. It actually turned out pretty good.

This was Brian's first birthday party where he was able to invite friends and not just family so he was especially excited. He had been asking us EVERY DAY since July if it was his birthday. No, I am not exaggerating. We were so happy for it to come so he would stop asking. Although he is already talking about what theme he will have next year!

Catching Up

I know, I know it's been a long time since I've posted and you know it isn't because I don't have anything going on because well, I've had 2 birthdays, 3 birthday parties and Thanksgiving in all that time. Well actually just last week all that happened, but you get my drift. I'm finding it harder and harder to find the quantity of time needed to both keep up on all y'all's blogs as well as blog myself. So today was spent reading and catching up in between normal mommy stuff and tonight I get to post.

So, where do I start? I guess I'll start with Brian's birthday. It's hard to believe that my little guy is 5! Where did the time go? It seemed like not that long ago he was 3. I was even thinking on Sunday when he was not quite sitting quietly during the Sunday school class where the church decided it would be a great idea to put all the families together to learn about the advent candles and why we light them and teaching at an adult level so the kids are not only getting nothing out of it, neither are the parents, I was thinking what do they expect from a 4 yr old I mean really that's barely over 3. Then I realized that he is 5 and that is quite a bit older than 3!!

Okay so maybe I will get to finish this post tomorrow. I've just been interrupted by the kidlets. We'll try part II later.

Crazy hair night and excitement at the Williams' house

Wednesday was crazy hair night at Awana and we took it to the extreme. Collin has wanted a mohawk for months and we kept telling him no. But we thought that this was the perfect opportunity to get that out of his system. So Monday night Steve cut his hair. I had bought colored hair gel after halloween. Unfortunately all they had left was red. Sound familiar Stephanie? Red hair gel on red hair. It did look better than these pics show. Needless to say he had about the craziest hair that night. After AWANA I had a leader come up to me asking if this was a permanent thing or if it was coming off. I told her we were going to let him keep it until this weekend and then it was coming off. She was quite relieved. She is one of the leaders for the Christmas program and said that they had never had a wise man with a mohawk before! I thought that was pretty fun. Especially after she had so nicely asked me about his haircut. Here I thought she was just making small talk. Hee hee!

This is what happens when an 8 yr old gets ahold of the camera. Thank goodness for digital cameras. Think of all the wasted film of our younger years that our parents had developed only to see half a roll of upclose pictures of nothing!

Every afternoon when Steve gets home from work, Allison is so excited she cannot wait for him to even take off his riding gear. She kicks her little feet and whines until he picks her up. She is definitely a daddy's girl, much to Steve's delight! So the other day he still had his helmet on when he picked her up and she was quite fascinated with it. So he put it on her (holding it up of course so she wasn't supporting the weight cuz have you ever picked one of those up? They are HEAVY!) and she was thrilled to have it on. She thought it was just the funniest thing. Needless to say, so did we!

This is what I had to compete with yesterday morning when trying to get the kids ready for school. As you can imagine it was tough for the kids to want to leave the living room window to get dressed, eat breakfast and

brush their teeth when this big machine was in our front yard! What, you are wondering, is that doing there? Well, remember last week when we lost our power and had that fun adventure? This just so happens to be the solution. They dug a hole in our yard, surprisingly not all that big, and turned our power off. Then 15 minutes later problem solved. Our power was back on and we are good to go! Made for a fun morning for the kids. I even let

the boys eat breakfast in the living room so they had a front row seat!

Bonopoly

Last night we had a chance to redeem our ruined family night from the other night. So we pulled out Monopoly and sat down at the table. Brian and I were a team and we played against Collin and Steve. Both boys picked up on the concept rather quickly and I found I was only having to help Brian count his money when buying property and read his chance and community chest cards. He kept saying emphatically how he LOVES bonopoly. Hee hee.

Brian and I even pulled it out again today and played while Allison was napping. It's fun to be able to play more adult games with the kids. You can only play memory and candy land so many times before you go crazy!

An Adventurous Evening

Last night proved to be more than we anticipated. Since I work tonight and Saturday, we had decided to switch our family night to Thursday night, the bummer of course being that the boys still had to get to bed at a decent time plus get their evening showers since there is school the next day. So we ate dinner and shooed Collin into the shower with Brian in hot pursuit. We had plans to watch a dvd in our pj's and cuddle on the couch in a blanket. Sounded like the perfect thing to do on such a rainy, stormy night. Brian was in the shower and we were right on target for starting the movie in time for the boys to still make it to bed on time when we lost power in half the house. Unfortunately for Brian part of half the house included the bathroom he was showering in. He did, however enjoy finishing he shower with a flashlight shining into the shower. Actually that turned out to be lots of fun for him!


So now, Steve is in the garage trying to figure out what's going on. None of the breakers had been tripped and flipping them off and then back on wasn't doing anything. He is puzzling over this as we are taking stock in what we do have power-wise. Master bathroom, check. Ours and the boys bedroom, check. Allison's room, nope. Main bathroom, nope. Wipes warmer, check. Lamp in Allison's room, check. Kitchen and dining room, nope. Family room, check. Living room, nope. Oven, check. Refrigerator, nope. Furnace, nope. Washer and dryer, check. Really there was no rhyme or reason to this. It wasn't this breaker and not that one. The dvd player was out so no movie, the phone was out, the computer was out. But the cable was working. It was just plain weird.


Then some of the lights were trying to come back on and were flickering and very little light was coming out. That's when we were more concerned about the possibility of a short in a wire and the possibility of the house catching on fire while we were sleeping. So we called an electrician (with the cell as the land line was not working). He checked on everything and said that it was a wire from the road to the box that was not working and therefore it was PSE's problem.


Surprisingly someone from PSE came out about half hour later with light's flashing and checked it out for us. Then he sat in his nice big truck in the cul de sac for an hour while he waited for someone else to come with the equipment needed to temporarily fix the problem. I can only imagine what our neighbors were thinking. Here it was 10 at night and we have had this huge truck in our driveway just idling for an hour. One neighbor even called to find out what was up but since our phone wasn't working I didn't get the message till this morning. It turns out one of the 120 amp wires going from the street to our box is damaged which caused a spike in the power and then it corroded the wire and that's when we lost power. The hooked up the big box to our electrical box outside and next week will have to dig up the wire to figure out where the problem is and replace the wire. But in the meantime our power is back on, we just can't use everything all at once or we will again have problems. It ended up being quite the adventure to say the least!

Halloween Birthdays and a Walking Girl

That pretty much sums up this last weekend. The boys and I made cookies on Thursday night and I took them to school on Friday for Collin's birthday/halloween party at school. Then it was Steve's turn to take over that night while I went to work. He had strict instructions to take pictures, which he did, but not as many as I would have taken. He took all 3 kids trick or treating, then off to the fair at church. Overall it sounded like they had a great time. One of the games at the fair was a shooting gallery which Steve said both boys hit and knocked over the cans. He was very proud! They were still up and wired when I got home a little after 9 and I was glad to get to hear about everything from them before they were scooted off into bed.

The next day was Collin's birthday. He was so excited to be turning 8 and no longer have to use his carseat! Milestones, they come so fast. We had a quick celebration that morning before I had to go to work again. He had his best friend over for the day to help celebrate. He wanted a star wars cake, but I have to admit it did not turn out the way I wanted it to. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time to concentrate on decorating the cake with having to work, but Collin was still pleased.

Talking about milestones, Allison started walking Saturday while I was at work! She still is more comfortable crawling, but you should have seen the look on her face when I came home and she walked to me. She was just so proud of herself as was her mommy! Steve was so excited to be able to set her down to let her walk to me! I can't believe how fast she is growing.

Family Pictures

We decided to try our hand at some family snapshots last night to see if we could get a good one to go in our Christmas card this year. Surprisingly it ended up being a fun time for all. There were lots of laughs and lots of do overs and we even came up with a good one. Here are some of the "outtakes."