Happy 6th Birthday Lex!

I’m filled with emotions today, but I’m going to keep this short and sweet because my thoughts don’t often come out well through my fingers. Instead I’ll just say Happy Birthday (quietly) to the sweetest little boy I know. The boy who made us a family. The boy who changed my world forever. The boy who can make me laugh, cry, yell, and hug, all within the span of six minutes. I love you Lex. Thank you for being you. A strong, confident, silly, smart, loving little boy.

Happy Birthday!

birthday table

I like to leave a little something for them to find on birthday mornings. I was also going to make a special breakfast, that didn't happen, so instead he had oatmeal with leftover chocolate "dirt" sprinkled on top. He was happy.

early morning

It's 6:00am and this is his "put down the camera and let me open presents" face.

rubiks cube

A Rubiks cube. It's good to challenge your brain at 6am, right?

x

Lex had show and tell today and he had to bring in something that starts with the letter X. He chose to draw a xylophone with his fancy new markers. I love this boy!

I uploaded all of the birthday party pictures to Picasa. Check ’em out! (just click on the little picture below)

Lex's 6th birthday party

Tonight we are going out to dinner to celebrate. When I ask about their dinner choices they always choose “out” instead of me cooking for them. I try not to take that personally! Lex threw us a curve ball today by requesting Friendly’s instead of Panera Bread. Assuming he doesn’t change his mind, that’s where we’ll be headed tonight. I can’t wait for him to come home from school!

A birthday party sneak peek

I’m super tired and about ready to pass out, but I wanted to post a few pics for those who couldn’t be there for Lex’s party this weekend. I’ll post more during quiet time tomorrow. For now…

monkey

The birthday monkey testing out the monkey bars. He's good at them!

eager swingers

Eager swingers, patiently waiting (kind of) for the swingbar to be ready.

happy kids

Ahh... this is what I've been waiting for all these weeks. Swing set up. Children playing happily. Life is good.

reach for the trees

Reach for the trees!

cake

Cake time! Can you believe he's almost six?! It makes me want to cry!
In a happy way. Usually.

bagels

Bagels for dinner. His choice, of course. Sandwich fixings as well. We did cake first, then presents, then dinner.

lego truck

Lego love

Hope that will tide you over for now. I promise more pictures soon to come. Thanks to all who attended. We had a fantastic weekend! Those who couldn’t make it were missed. Hopefully we can see you all again soon!

It was hard choosing just a few pictures to post! Also, I have to say, one of my favorite parts of this weekend is that Lex happily smiled for the camera. Many times! He’s so good to me.

So it begins…

image

image

Eve came home from school today and asked me to put her hair in two ponytails. She was very particular about how it should be done.  Eventually she told me that a friend at school had her hair that way and I had to explain to Eve that that girl (and all the other girls in her class) had much longer hair.  She settled, happily I’m pleased to say, for this hair-do. 

The swing set has arrived!!!

Those delivery guys do like to keep me hanging! After a bit of misleading tracking information on Friday (grrr!) the delivery truck finally made it here today, at 5:45! But boy was there excitement in the air. We were outside riding bikes, enjoying a break in the rain, when my usual call of “Car!” changed to “Truck! The swing set is here!!” (ok, the excitement in the air may have been created by me!)

The kids oohed and aahed at the ramp on the back of the truck that raised and lowered. They offered to help the sweaty, overweight delivery guy. I even offered to help him and he said keeping the kids out of the way would be the best help :) Of course! They danced and sang and merriment ensued.

here it comes

Here it comes!

dancing

Dancing for joy!

chain

Happy kids

Now we have three large boxes of swing set parts in our garage and the forecast looks like this:

weather

A rainy forecast

Hopefully we’ll have enough time between showers to get that thing built! And hopefully we get some sunshine on Saturday! Otherwise I am going to have a houseful of sugared up kids! Maybe I’ll send them out to play anyway, despite the rain! :) (Do you think there are enough exclamation points in this post?!! Do I need a few more?!!!)

Invitations

I can’t find a photo of the invites Lex made for his bowling party (is it possible I didn’t take photos?!?) but it was cute. It had a bowling pin and ball on the front and said Happy Birthday.

Here is the invitation he made for the neighborhood kids.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday. I'm not sure why, but on each of them he made the "day" a the end small and seperate.

Turning 6

I am turning 6!

I love these invitations. I love that he happily made them. I love that the idea was all his. I love that he writes “I am turning 6!” on them. The whole things amazes me and just makes me beam with pride and love. He is turning 6!

delivering

Knocking on a neighbor's door.

Quick update

I just realized it’s been four days since I last updated the blog! Eeek! Sorry! :) Lots going on I guess. Alan and I have been trying to go to bed earlier too, which leaves me with little time for blogging. Right now Eve is having quiet time with Dr. Seuss audiobooks and I’m turning my back to the dirty kitchen in an effort to get caught up on the important computer things.

My brain has been wrapped around swing sets, garage clean out, and birthday party plans for next week. The swing set is on it’s way and should be here this afternoon (I HOPE!). The garage is clean and I’m now dealing with a flurry of freecycle emails in an effort to avoid massive dump fees. It’s amazing the things people will take from freecycle.

We have three days of cake coming up. My little, low-key family party this weekend has grown into a neighborhood shin-dig, plus a few friends from a bit farther away. It’s taking a lot of restraint on my part to not invite everyone I know :) We gave the party a theme this week “Playing in the dirt” and Lex wrote invitations and delivered them around the neighborhood. I’ll post pics of them later. Actually, he made Eve do the final delivery because he got a sudden case of shyness. Good thing she was there and happy to help!

Next Wednesday we will have another round of cake (cupcakes really) for school. And the following weekend there will be one more cake for his party with friends at the bowling alley. We went to a party there once and the child invited the entire class. About half came and it was chaos. I told Lex he could invite four friends only! Hopefully they all can come. I think with them, plus him and Eve, that will be a manageable number of children :) I’m going to make a bowling pin cake for that party! Then I’m going to boycott cake for a long(ish) time! Maybe.

I started running again and made a few changes to my Weight Watchers process, and I’m hoping those things combined can help me combat the upcoming cake week. I do like cake.

Hmm… what else? Oh, yes, I’m working on a new chore system for the kids. More on that later. They are driving me crazy with the bickering and bad attitudes… so I’m going to put them to work! Just kidding. Sort of. I think they are old enough for some real responsibilities around here so Alan and I have been discussing the logistics of how to make that happen. Charts, stickers, marbles, money, allowance, etc. I’m sure I’ll be super proud of whatever I come up with and want to tell you all about it. I hope.

Ok, that’s all my tired brain can think of right now. Next post will include pictures. I promise! In the meantime, cross your fingers and hope that swing set delivery happens today. Otherwise my brain might explode!

A new toy

I broke down and bought a Swiffer Sweeper Vac. So many people say it’s wonderful but I have resisted spending money when I can just use a broom. A good old fashioned broom. But my kids drive me crazy with their crumbs and I just don’t sweep enough, so I thought I’d give this a try. It works well, and my unexpected surprise is that the kids love it too! Eve vacuumed the floor after snack and after dinner today. We started talking about chores again (more on that soon!) and she asked if this could be one of her chores. A-OK!

sweeping -p1

sweeping -p2

Here is a totally unrelated video. They bicker a ton lately so I love catching them in sweet cooperative moods. We had a really nice afternoon today. I love when things go smoothly.