And Adam is Four

We love Adam.  And he had a birthday.  Here are some things that we love about Adam:

Adam has the greatest smile ever.  Ever, I tell you. 

When he is upset it is easy to make him feel better by doing something to make him laugh.  We'll tell him something funny Owen did or if he's throwing a tantrum we might say, "You must be joking," and lots of times he'll smile and laugh at himself. 

He is a great little singer.  His teachers have told us he is the loudest singer in junior primary (kids 3-8), though he is one of the youngest.  He remembers songs easily and is almost nonstop singing throughout the day.  He can even sing most of the Fifty Nifty United States song.  You should ask him sometime, I'm sure he would love to sing it to you.

We had a little party with a few of his friends.  A few weeks prior Adam had told us he wanted to do a "Race Car Water Party."  He said, "The race car team goes 'zoom!' and the water team goes 'swish!'"  In my mind I couldn't figure out how to do that but as time went on he was still insisted that he wanted a Race Car Water Party so we figured out a way to make it work.  Mainly, it was race cars.  I got most of my ideas from other blogs I searched.  I wish I had saved the links to credit but I didn't.  (I love using Google Blog Search for this kind of stuff.)

The game below is where we incorporated Adam's dream of having a race car team and a water team.  The goal: race car team runs around the "track" while the water team tries to pelt them with water balloons.  Simple, strange, but surprisingly fun.

This is one of the fun things I did: I printed out little labels for the kids' drinks.

And that is the conclusion.  Thanks for stopping by.

Dallin is 6

Hi folks.  So, I hear Dallin had a birthday early this week.  Here's how it went down.

Dallin was born on Labor Day, September 6, 2004 at 11:57 pm.  I'm pretty sure my doctor thinks it's great to deliver a baby on Labor Day.  He probably hopes for at least one each year. Fast forward six years later and it's Labor Day on September 6th yet again.

Dallin decided he wanted a robot party this year.  I had a bit of a hard time coming up with games and activities for this party but was just happy it wasn't Transformers or some other character.  We had a good 12 guests plus our own little boys and it was rowdy, but I think they all had fun.

Dallin and his robot cake.

The decorations.  I asked Dallin if he could build some robots to use as decorations for the party and he told me something like, "You know that I'm pretty creative, so I can make some good robots."  We had "Nuts and Bolts" (Chex Mix) and I made labels for the water bottles that said, "Machine Oil."

This is a relay game we played.  The kids had to wear a robot breastplate and use the grabber to transfer the power cells (balls) from the basket to the power pack.

Mark's sister Stacey made this robot costume for Halloween a couple of years ago (sorry the picture's not great.)  She came out to attack the kids and they were suppose to throw balls at her to defeat her.  This is the part of the party that got a little out of control.  Note to self: next time you have fourteen little kids wild at a party you might want to sit them down and explain just exactly what "attack the robot" means and what it doesn't mean.

After the party we went to Mark's grandma's house to see Mark's aunt Penny and her daughter Adeline.  Adeline is Mark's cousin but she is Adam's age.  They were visiting from out of town and apparently Adeline was telling Grandma she "wanted to see her people," meaning she wanted to hang out with some kids.  We went swimming and had lunch.  Adam and Adeline are in this blurry photo here. 

After swimming and getting dressed Owen discovered the fun of the slide.  He would climb up the steps all by himself, get to the top and twist his legs under him precariously until he could scoot forward and slide down.  He did this over and over and it was lots of fun to watch.  All those parks apparently have influenced him.

For dinner later that night I pulled out our birthday plate for Dallin to eat off of.  I painted this with Mark's mom and sisters at As You Wish. 

Next up, Adam is four next week.  Wow.  Just keep the birthday plate on the counter.

Some Photos and Stuff

Here's the ever-popular catch-up post. 

The boys were over at a neighbor's house on voting day.  I hadn't voted yet so I took the opportunity to take just one kid with me to the polls.  On the way back it started to sprinkle.  By the time I got into the house it was raining and soon it was pouring.  Then it actually hailed for a couple of minutes.  It was 110 degrees that day and a couple of hours later ice was falling from the sky.  After the storm calmed down I called my friend to let her know my boys were welcome to go outside and play in the rain.  Her kids came outside as well.  Did I tell you that I love my neighborhood?

Owen had to watch most of it from inside.

Then it cleared up and we got to go out.

Adam is doing Joy School with a few neighbor kids.  There are four kids and the moms take turns teaching preschool.  All of them are almost four, with Adam's birthday next week and the others turning four the same week in October.  A couple of weeks ago preschool was at our house.

Here are the kids doing a sorting activity with beans, rice, pasta, and cheerios.  This kept them interested for a really long time.

This is chocolate pudding "finger painting"

Did you see Owen back there?

He got in on the action as well.

This summer we have been participants with Kaboom in a challenge to visit 50 parks or playspaces around our town.  Tomorrow is our very last park!! If you have any questions about Mesa parks, feel free to ask. :)

Here's Dallin at Quail Run Park:

Owen is a different kid now than he was when we started this challenge in the beginning of July.  At that time he would mostly play in the sand or I'd push him in a swing.  Now he is up and all over the playground equipment, crawling around, climbing up, and even sliding down slides of his own accord. 

At Red Mountain Park:

And someone special (the older guy) had a birthday last week.  I have the greatest husband.  Amazing, I tell ya.

The boys helped me come up with "33 Things We Love About You" for Mark and we wrote them on balloons that we threw around the house.

This is what Owen does when Daddy gets home from work:

And a short video of some of Owen's first steps. 

This was taken about 2 weeks ago. He is getting more and more confident all the time! He's walking of his own accord now and can get pretty far before he falls down. Could there be anything cuter?  I submit that there cannot.

Westwood Reunion

Warriors through and through.  Mark class of '96, Marily class of 2000.

This last weekend was my high school 10 year reunion.  Time to catch up with old friends and see people I haven't seen for years.  It was a long, fun, weekend packed with three different events.  On Friday night was the family event.  My friend Kathryn put it together.  She asked me a couple of months ago if she decided to put a family event together for the reunion if I would be interested in helping.  I said something like, "uh.....maybe?"  So, I wasn't the most supportive friend because frankly, life has been kinda crazy lately.  But I helped out a bit. She had a great idea for a photo booth at the event and the photo above was taken by a fellow classmate in the photography business.

Saturday lunchtime we went to a pool party with a smaller group of Westwood Warriors.  After our senior year of high school several of us drove to the outskirts of town and buried a time capsule to be opened in 10 years.  Our friend Thomas was pretty technologically savvy at the time because he had a GPS to coordinate the whereabouts of the capsule.  Ten years later it was dug up and hauled back to the pool.  I got back a couple of Westwood soccer memorabilia, several photos from school dances, my high school IDs and a letter I wrote to myself.  It's a lot about where I wanted to be in ten years and fortunately I didn't disappoint myself. Go me.

Amanda, Kathryn and me at the pool.  Picture swiped from Kathryn's blog.  (We should have gotten a group shot with everyone, dangit)

Back in junior high, at one time it was just the three of us.  Eventually we made some other good friends, then even got brave enough to sit with the boys at lunchtime.  It started with the group of girls sitting next to the group of boys then one day we devised an infiltration.  At the signal we all got up and each squeezed in between a couple of guys until we were no longer girls on one side boys on the other.  Big step.

That night was the actual reunion. Our friend Josh (the night's photographer) handed his camera off to Kim to take this photo:

And yes, here is a picture actually from my very own camera:  See?  Mark was there too.

Go Warriors!