Birthday Party Time!

Connor and Alaina had their first real birthday party on Sunday, complete with guests, presents, cake, ice cream, balloons, and games. They loved every second of it. The theme was supposed to be round things...bubbles, balloons, water bombs, etc, but the wind had other plans for us.




Melon balls!

I had this idyllic vision of late afternoon sun, late spring warmth, kids chasing bubbles in the backyard. But alas, all bubble play was moved to the garage. The kids didn't seem to mind too much, though.






I learned through this experience that my party planning skills leave a little to be desired. I read online about how you can make your own bubble wands out of pipe cleaners, but it didn't even cross my mind to try it before the party! I think ours were a little too fuzzy and promptly collapsed at the weight of the bubble solution. Live and learn.






Connor soon tired of the faulty wands, and used his hands instead. I had shown him how to do this last year, but I can't believe he remembered without any prompting!








After the bubbles, it was time for cake and ice cream. Once again, I had dreamed up this creative idea (with the help of Mike!) of filling the centers of the kids' bundt cakes with ice cream balls rolled in colored sugar. Blue/yellow for Connor and pink/purple for Alaina.


Instead of a pyramid of perfectly formed colored balls, the ice cream wasn't hard enough (Mike also suggested liquid nitrogen, but I think that'd be a little overkill!), and resulted in a melty blob (and a candle with a bite taken out from a little sister). Oh well, I tried. I will, however, claim some good mom points for actually making the cakes, instead of buying them from the store like I did last year. :P






Alaina goes a little comatose when she knows lots of people are looking at her.



Sneak!

At the last minute, Anthony and I decided to take advantage of the wind and bought dollar kites for all the kites. Thank goodness that part went well! :)












After the wind (and house, and trees) had claimed a few of the kits, we came back inside for presents! Since Marshy Marshmallow can't fly a kite yet, he opted to play with the streamers.


PRESENTS!



The kids with their loot from the cousins. Through the chaos of organizing this picture, I am mad that I didn't push harder to have Wes and Chris in this photo. I am kicking myself! We love you guys!

And that's the end of it! I am scared at the prospect of having another party next year! Man, I am a wimp. With Alaina's real birthday still pending, look for a future Day Out With Thomas post! Or perhaps I should call it "Time Out For Thomas" to confuse the kids like Grandma did. :)

An unpublished post from the archives of two weeks ago...

It's been a while! April has been a crazy month of ups and downs, and I don't anticipate May being much calmer (let's hope it's more ups THAN downs, though). We've been itching for spring, and as much as I have been whining about it for the last three months, it's just not coming. I suspect that this year will be much like last year, with two weeks of nice weather at the end of May, then summer. I just take heart in knowing that it will be warm eventually, and most likely in the next month!

I don't have access to my lovely big computer right now, and that's where all my camera/photo stuff is, so I thought I'd update with some older pictures. I've had high hopes for a garden this year, so the kids and I bought some shovels and started digging. We had to do it all by hand, as this was somewhat of an exploratory measure, avoiding sprinkler pipes and unearthing years of different landscaping measures. Connor and Alaina loved searching for worms, and Alaina even got a little attached to them. When we'd find one, she would inform me that we needed to find its mommy or its daddy. Eventually, we found a whole family.


Connor quickly tired of digging outside (that surprised me!), but Alaina would have done it all day. I love the dichotomy of this picture. With her, everything needs to be "peent" (pink). Peent shirt, peent pants, peents boots, peent necklace, peent hairbow, and since purple is a variation of pink, her purple bracelet is peent, too. All that peent, but still digging in the dirt. You must curl your fingers, however, to avoid getting mud on your peent nail polish.


Despite my grandiose ideas for this little strip of dirt, we quickly learned that when watered, our "garden" turns into concrete and there is little hope for plants. I must admit, I feel a little bit defeated, and just want to shake my fists at it in dismay, rather than plant in containers. One good thing about this nonexistent spring is that it will give me time to get over this and on with growing my own tomatoes in pots. Goodbye, garden dreams!


...and a couple more funny ones of the one that begs for her picture taken. :)
Every night, when I get home from work, I go check on the kids and give them a goodnight kiss. Walking in on this scared me a bit, but it's also kind of funny. How can that be comfortable?


Three year old attitude is already setting in, a few months early. Alaina received these sunglasses in her Easter basket from Grandma and Grandpa, and she believes that this is how they are meant to be worn. Connor tells her over and over that her glasses are upside down, but she refuses to listen to him. That's really Alaina in her full glory...crazy cat lady hair, upside down glasses, face full 'o 'tude, and no pants. That's my girl.


A couple of weeks ago, Wes invited us to a barbeque at his house, and I snapped this picture of Janet's magnolias. Rather than broadcast any of the photos of Grandpa Broadhead's funeral, I think this picture abstractly describes my feelings. We love you and will miss you and your happy countenance, Grandpa.

A Post of Epic Proportions

I wrote an extremely long post about our trip to San Francisco, but I guess blogger doesn't like huge entries, so here's a link to where you can view it in its entirety with no clicking, just scrolling!
http://your-amygdala.livejournal.com/233005.html

Want some pictures?

Hey, family! If you want some photos off of my blog, simply click the picture you'd like, which will take you to my photostream on Flickr. Up on the top left, there is a button that says, "ACTIONS", click on that, then click on "VIEW ALL SIZES". It will then take you to a different page with all the sizes and there is an option at the top that says, "DOWNLOAD THE LARGE SIZE OF THIS PHOTO". I know that I am terrible at emailing out pictures, so VOILA!

It's been a busy week, and I'm not complaining! On Thursday, we went to see "Teeweesa" and baby Oliver. What a cute baby boy!


Then on Friday morning, we met up with Aunt Mary Ann and her girls, and the Whites. Sorry about posting this pic, MA, but it's pretty funny. Are we mean that we got a kick of out terrorizing Maesa with the automated puppets?


After dropping the kidlets off at home with Daddy, my mom, Kandis, and I made our way up to Park City to shop at the outlets and kick of my mom's 60th birthday celebration! You know it's a bunch of moms shopping when the biggest chunk of change we dropped was at Carter's! We shopped for a couple of hours, then met Janet, Marinda, and Mary Ann up in Midway. We ate at Tarahumara, a Mexican restaurant. I'd give our entrees a B-, but the desserts were a definite A.


Hello, gorgeous.


...And then the crazy Broadhead antics began. For some reason, they usually include terrible table manners.


Janet was unimpressed with our behavior. Cue the upturned nose. :)


Grandma got a little bit crazy with the desserts! You only turn 60 once!


After gorging ourselves at dinner, we stopped at the grocery store to punish ourselves further! I'm sure Mom's blood sugar spiked just standing next to this stuff!


We stayed at the Zermatt in Midway! What a beautiful resort! I wish we could have stayed around a little longer to take full advantage of it!


Nothing says 5 star like jumping on the bed! If you haven't noticed by now, we are models of exemplary behavior.










We stayed up until the early hours of the morning, laughing, talking, and stuffing ourselves. It was so nice to have some girl time and we had so much fun that we are already planning our next trip!


Bwahahaa!


Mary Ann compiled a book of our favorite memories of Mom. I think it was a hit! Heavy Heavy Hangover Grandma's Poor Head!
\

Of all the things that we laughed about that night, Kandis' baby legs on the huge chairs were definitely the most hilarious!


We awoke the next morning, ate more sugar, got dressed, and toasted to Mom's wonderful 60 years.






Happy Birthday, Mom! We hope you enjoyed our little trip as much as we all did! We love you!