Eavesdropping

On the way to school today this is what I heard the kiddos talking about...

Olivia: When I grow up I want to be a famous pediatrician and a mommy.
Grant: Oh, well when I grow up I'm gonna be a chemical engineer like dad.
Isaac: Well I want to be a SHARK when I grow up.
(a few moments later)
Isaac: Wait! Dad likes to EAT SHARKS! I don't want dad to eat me, maybe I should just be a fire fighter instead.
Grant: Yeah, that's probably safer...

LOL Dreaming big!

Happy Birthday Grant

Grant turned 7 today. In honor of his birthday here are 10 fun facts about Grant...

Grant...

1. can have a intelligent conversation about which super hero beats which and explain why. Ones I've never even heard of. Ask him sometime, you'll see.

2. can name every state in the USA. He learned this when he was 4.

3. eyelashes are soooooooooooooooo lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnng. ;)

4. is a yellow belt in Karate.

5. loves reading.

6. loves video games.

7. tries really hard to choose the right.

8. always has thoughtful questions to ask.

9. loves riding his bike. He will usually only ride as fast as he can. No leisure rides.

10. has a great sense of humor

Just the tip of the iceberg. We love you Grant, Happy Birthday!

Cake Drama

All growing up my mom would always make whatever we wanted for our birthday cake. It was totally our choice. Whatever we wanted to think up she'd do. Even if it was a pie instead! When we got older sometimes she'd bake the cake and let us do the decorating. That was SO MUCH FUN. I'm TRYING to keep that tradition going as best as I can even though my only experience in cake decorating was a my older birthday cakes that I decorated, a few YW activities growing up, and now decorating my kids cakes. They have come up with some doozies (sp?) too, for example Olivia's pink and yellow WEDDING cake, transformers, basketball, cookie monster...
So anyway, Grant originally wanted a Thing (or is it THE Thing?) cake, but he wanted his decorations to match and they didn't have those and so he changed his mind to spiderman. So yesterday I bake the cake along with 30 cupcakes for his class. Then after I get Seth down for his nap I decide to really be organized and hurry and decorate the cake before he wakes up. BIG MISTAKE! Note to self: Never try to decorate a birthday cake when you are in too big of a hurry because you do stupid things!!!! I forgot to level the cakes so they stack up more sturdy, I forgot to make the frosting blue, and I was being lazy and thought I could decorate it with the can of frosting from the store. It was awful!! It was all lopsided and even though the cake was COMPLETELY COOL, the frosting wouldn't stick on to it. It just slid off everywhere. I was trying to do the sides and when I got back around to where I started, the frosting in a pile on the bottom of the cake plate. UGH! I freaked out for a little bit and then called my mom to vent about it. Then I put another cake in the oven to bake and dumped cake #1 down the disposal.
Cake #2 went MUCH better. I remembered to level it and I used whipped cream frosting and I even remembered to dye it blue. It still didn't turn out perfect or the way I would have liked it. But its how my Grantman wanted it so here it is. Lessons learned: Don't procrastinate, don't use the store frosting!!

P.S. Happy birthday my sweet Granters. More to come on him later...

Easter Sunday

Today was a great day. We took a few pictures of the kids in their new Easter Sunday clothes. We kind of had to rush that because I needed to get to church early for prelude (organ subbing). After church we ate and had fun being a family. Yay for wonderful holidays!

This is mostly so the grandmas and grandpas can see the kiddos cute Easter clothes...


The girls

The boys

The kiddos :)

Easter fun

Happy Easter! We have been celebrating all week. We went to the Easter Pageant earlier this week. We sat closer than we'd ever been before. As always it was awesome. Me and the kiddos were going to sign up for it this year, but somehow missed the audition dates. Hopefully next year we can do it. We decorated Easter eggs today (Friday) since there is no school. Thankfully no die spills on my kitchen counter, and thankfully Seth took a little nap while all this fun was going on and woke up just in time to get in the picture.
Here's the loot. I had to take a picture of the eggs so they could always remember them after I had mentioned to the kids that we'd be eating some of them. That is such a hard thing for me every year. We mess up our kitchen making the eggs, then we either have to eat them or throw them away in a few days. I still do it, but I stopped feeling guilty about trying to get everyone to eat them before they go bad. Now I figure I bought them on sale, and I'd pay WAY more than that price NOT to have to eat them! I like an occasional deviled egg and a small serving of potato salad, but enough is enough.

The kiddos with their favorite eggs.

I gave Seth one of the eggs that wasn't died...straight to the mouth it goes. At least its not covered in die and glue and glitter!

(FYI) before I get tons of questions about it, yes that is a patch on Grant's eye. He has to wear one for a whole MONTH in hopes that it will make his weak eye stronger. Yesterday he came in crying because some of the neighbor kids were calling him a pirate. Next week he starts wearing it all day at school. Wish us luck, it may be a LONNNNGGGGG month. poor kid.

Olivia with some of the multitude from the Easter pageant

The boys with a "knight" (Isaac's words). lol

Isaac's face + really big rock = ...

GUILT for me, and a HUGE bonk for my little guy.

Shortly after dinner Isaac came in crying. I gave him a hug, and told him to he could rest on the couch if he was tired of playing outside. Because he was crying I really couldn't understand what he was saying. Something about a ball and his face...Grant and Isaac fight pretty much daily over this little ball they like to throw up in the air and then kick it, so I thought this was just another fight. He looked fine to me and so I really didn't pay it much attention after that. So many times I've thought about buying another ball so they'd each have one but I don't because either 1. they will fight over who gets the "new" ball, or 2. I feel like I'm rewarding their fighting with a new toy. So I've kind of been waiting to get two new balls when I catch them doing a good job sharing. ANYWAY, I assumed it was another tantrum over the little ball.

(Side note...both Grant and Isaac were extremely dirty. One of the dirtiest I've ever seen for them. And they were only playing out in the drive way, no mud or anything--time to hose down the driveway I guess. I didn't say anything about it because I knew they'd play outside 'til bath time so let em' have fun and get a little dirty. That is why I never saw his giant ouchie.)

That was the last of it 'til I came into the bathroom to get after Isaac because he was taking so long in the shower. That was when I saw his face CLEAN and his HUGE goose egg and bruises. He was standing in there crying because Ryan saw it a little earlier and thought he didn't wash his face and sent him back to the shower to finish. I felt SO BAD. Poor little guy. He tried to tell us and we didn't listen. When we asked him what happened the crying started again, so we finally got Grant to tell us the story...

They were playing NICELY together and then got the ball stuck up in our tree. They tried to get it down with a stick, but it was too short. So Grant grabbed the biggest rock he could find to throw straight up over them to try and knock the ball down. So the ball is still in the tree and the rock found Isaac's face on the way down. OUCHIE!!! Nobody did anything wrong, just an accident, and a poor little kid who didn't get any more than a quick hug for it. I LOVE motherhood more than I can ever say, but GUILT I really think I could do without!!!

I tried to get a shot of how much his forehead bonk protruded, but these were the best I could get with our bad lighting. They are even more colorful today!

By the time I took this picture he was feeling a little more loved and started having fun with it. He was asking me if he should look sad or smile for the picture. I told him he could do whatever he wanted. This was the face he came up with. lol