IV’s Birthday Bash

I really need to update on our fantastic three-week trip to Maryland.  We had a BLAST and I wouldn’t have minded staying longer. 

IV and I flew back Thursday the 31st of March.  Then on Saturday we had a combined Birthday party for IV, my nephew, and my SIL, and Easter Bash.  Crazy.  So we’re starting with that Saturday, April the 2nd. 

The day started off with a trip to Village Inn for our breakfast.  IV LOVES playing on the I-Pad and I like to eat at a restaurant sitting down.  It’s a win-win.  We got many comments on the I-Pad, from people commenting they’d like one for a toy as well, or from those who had no idea what he was playing with and were in total shock.  Someone even called it our “mini-computer”. 

I made the party cupcakes and I LOVE the way they turned out. 

To celebrate Easter we had quite the egg hunt.  Each child had to find 20 eggs apiece that had their names on them.  We try to make it so that the age of the child dictates how hard it will be to find them and boy does this work!  At the end all the young kids have found theirs while the oldest three are still left searching! Ha! 

Some eggs stuck to the window.  It makes me laugh how sometimes the most obvious are the hardest to find.

One under the table.

My husband is currently installing sprinklers at my parents’ house (while he is trying to finish his master’s thesis) and so he took one of the pipes, stuck it in the ground and taped an egg to the top. 

Here’s the crew about to start the hunt.

I REALLY wish I had pictures of IV opening his presents, but I don’t.  We start our children young and he got his first gun.  It’s a squirt gun and was purposefully bought to poke fun at my older siblings.  Many of them cried the horrors of letting kids play with pretend guns, until they too found their kids turning EVERYthing into a weapon.  Now it’s free game for all of them. 

His favorite toy (at the time) was surprisingly his Elmo doll.  He hugged it, gave it a kiss, called it “Elmo” (quite clearly) and then proceeded to run around flailing the doll with excitement. 

As we were driving home that night my husband decided to make a quick run to the computer store.  Still suffering jet-lag from our Maryland trip two days earlier and completely worn out from the partying, our son was out cold. 

He practically never sleeps anywhere other than his crib so to see him out while we were shopping was quite humorous to me. 

I sure love that cutie-pie 2-year-old!

Cupcakes

I've always wanted to try my hand at cake decorating and for my birthday this year Stephen bought me a ton of cake decorating supplies. My niece's birthday came up recently and it was themed a "Movie-Star" Party so I knew these would be a hit. I made funfetti cupcakes with gold wrappers, then I tinted some cream cheese frosting red (which took FOREVER!) Then I rolled out some fondant and cut different shaped stars out of it. Lemon extract and gold shimmer powder were mixed together to create a paint which was then painted onto the stars.

It was so much fun! I can't wait 'til the next birthday party!

Oh yeah, don't ask about the pie incident. I'm better off buying some things from the store ;)

Stephen's Birthday recap

For Stephen's birthday we drove down to Dallas which is about two hours away. We got down there and made sure we hit a Panda Express first thing. And I don't have a picture to prove it. There is no Panda Express any closer to us and Stephen misses it like no other. He really wants to try and get a Panda Express in town.
After Panda we saw a Target in the same area and so we went to buy his birthday present.

He is always waking up in the morning from headaches from our pillows and I knew I could never pick out one that would suit him so I let him choose one for himself. After looking at all the normal pillows and deciding they were too flat, Stephen went with a non-traditional arm-chair pillow. It was funny watching him try them all out and the above picture is of the winner.

Coming out of Target we happened to see this semi truck with a container full of flowers. It's sorta hard to see and for some reason was hilarious to us.

The real reason for the trip to Dallas was for Stephen to buy a new graphics card for his computer. (Actually I'm not really sure what we got but that sounds about right.) There aren't many electronics stores in town and Dallas not only has the closest Panda Express but they also have the closest Fry's Electronics. Apparently Fry's Electronics does not like it when people take pictures in store and so I don't have any documentation of the HOURS that were spent here. You know, I always have felt pretty computer savvy until I walk into a place like that and hear all the different pricey gadgets and gizmos that you can (and should) spend to place into your computer. I like things extremely user-friendly. Stephen at one point was asking for my opinion and while I am interested, I have no idea what he and the sales clerk were talking about. It sounded like alphabet soup to me and so I went with the prettier box. I'm sure that was a ton of help.

When we got home there was a package waiting for Stephen. It looked kinda funny because the address had been blacked out so many times, but I'm glad it arrived safely ;)

What could it be but a microwaveable single serving of cake! How marvelous. Thank you Pollyanna (and mom too who happened to send one earlier in her package).

We had half of a cake already from something else and so I decided to make the microwaveable one for Stephen.
I wasn't really thinking and put the candles into the cake right when it came out of the microwave and when we pulled them out they looked like this.
They did not look like this when they went in! The cake actually melted the wax and so Stephen had to be careful and only eat where the wax wasn't. Oops.

Happy Birthday Stephen!

Today Stephen turns the big 3-0! We have several things planned for today, I don't want to mention them now but hopefully I will take pictures and I'll share them later. I thought it would be fun to go through a flashback of Stephen's life. Plus it's fun to see him as a child because then it gives me ideas as to what our children will look like :)
Here is Stephen, his brother Daniel and mom and dad. I love Stephen's hair and I'm kinda hoping that our children will have platinum blonde hair like some of my nephews. Here's Stephen at the beach. And yes I will be commentating on the pictures even when it's quite obvious what you are looking at ;)
I love this picture! I'm laughing as I look at it. Stephen's the oldest holding the hose.
And here you can see his BLONDE hair. I love it!

I believe this one is at Sliding Rock in Arizona. Look at those skinny legs!
He looks like he's about the strangle his poor brother. I don't think he ever grew out of that phase.
Here he is I believe in Japan with his mom. Of course this could be one of his brothers and I just don't know the difference. I'm sure he will correct me later if I am wrong.
Here they are in Hawaii.

Stephen apparently broke his bones as as child. I never dealt with things like this and I am scared to have to go through it with our children!

Here's a more recent photo of Stephen. I was going to post some high school pictures of Stephen that we have, but they are all hard copies and I don't know how to use his scanner. Sure I could have asked him for help but I didn't want him to know what I was doing.
And here he is Christmas last year at my sister's house. I had to put at least one recent silly photo!
I love my husband and am so grateful for him.

Here's to starting a great new decade!!