Reluctant Cuddlers

Well, they're getting better at spooning since someone decided it was a good idea to shred his dog bed.

Thank you!

Thanks to your generous support of the Scouts fundraiser, Max got to throw a whipped cream pie at the Scoutmaster. What fun! You should've seen and heard the boys giggling and giggling and giggling some more as about twenty boys got to do this.

And the Baby Turns Five

Ben's party was this morning, which wrapped up birthday week around here. Since he went with Lightning McQueen for the second year in a row, many of his pictures look the same as last year, just the kids are a year older. It's amazing though how much difference one year makes. This year some of the kids are in kindergarten and the others are in pre-K. They were so much better at playing party games, taking turns, etc. One of the boys said "I love games - let's play some more!"

Birthday boy. Playing a little "Pin the Hook on Mater."
The ever popular "Lizard/snake in the boot."
Pinata! Loot! Coloring while waiting for pizza and cake. Cake! Ben wanted Lightning's eyes.
The party went really well and I think all of the boys had a lot of fun.

Scooby Dooby Doo

Here are some pictures from a certain boy's seven-year-old birthday party last night. The cake Mom and I made.
It's sure handy to have a mom that went to bakery school. :)

When we went to open presents, we found that a villain had stolen them (oh no!!) and the kids had to follow clues to find the presents before the villain took off with them. You can see that this involved a lot of kids running around - very quickly. Now where is that clue???




All the meddling kids.
Then onto pizza and cake.




The pinata.
And then settling onto the couch to watch some "Aloha Scooby Doo."

All in all, a success!

Vintage Scooter Project

Yesterday, Andrew, the boys and Cedar went to hang out with Lloyd while I made a covert trip to Toys R Us for some doorbusters. Lloyd always has treasures for the boys and he certainly did not disappoint yesterday. They came home with a scooter that was either Barbara's or Lloyd's sister's (he couldn't remember whose) when she was a kid. So Andrew and the boys have been hard at work restoring the scooter. This has involved trips to the auto parts store and Home Depot, some power equipment, breathing masks...pure fun for the boys and Andrew. Here are the boys sanding away.


They currently have the scooter sanded down to the metal and are getting ready to prime it today. I'll make sure to post some pics of the finished product.

More "Smooky" Fun

Saturday, we carved jack-o-lanterns.


I also bought some of those fake flickering LED lights and I LOVE them! They looked great in the jack-o-lanterns and little Halloween candle holders!

Sunday afternoon, we met up with some of the boys' buddies downtown to check out the hay maze and do a little trick-or-treating at the local vendors. It's impossible to get a picture with this many kids and have them all looking the same direction. :)

The boys were very wary of this guy. They finally determined that he was fake and cautiously took a treat.

The Cat in the Hat was very popular.
Then we headed home to trick-or-treat the neighborhood.
Funny, I never thought of this as a particularly dangerous activity, but this year I think we were more aware of the massive amount of alternative "safe" trick-or-treat activities. I think it's a little ridiculous. We just stuck with class parties and neighborhood trick-or-treating. We like to live on the edge that way.

So, Halloween: check. Next up: birthday parties. The soon-to-be seven-year-old picked a Scooby Doo theme, and, unbeknownst to him, a villain will steal all of the birthday presents! The meddling kids will have to do a scavenger hunt to recover the gifts. And the soon-to-be five-year-old is going with Lightning McQueen again. Mom and I will be making a Mystery Machine cake and another Lightning McQueen cake. And both boys passionately requested pinatas, so we'll have those as well. Looking forward to it!