Most of the beginning of September was spent entertaining the children and preparing for Lance's 9th Birthday. His latest obsession is Pokemon, so I spent a couple weeks trying to put together a Pokemon-themed party with the help of Scott and Abbey. I always underestimate the amount of time needed for these things and ended up spending many late nights doing things like painting pokeballs and sewing satchels for the kids.
This peanut is my constant companion. I love it. She is happy most of the time and usually content to crawl around and entertain herself. She can't wait to be grown up and every day she amazes me by the things she's learned.
She's reached that stage already where she insists she can feed herself. She'll grab the spoon from your hand and shove it in her mouth and gets so upset if you take it away, even if it's just to feed her the next bite. She has spunk, this one!
We are falling more and more in love with our sweet puppy Bender. Yes, most days I get irritated at something or wonder if it was wise to add a puppy to our already crazy, loud and unorganized household, but his cuddles, kisses and happy prancing always leave me convinced we made the right choice. The kids adore him and fight over "who Bender loves best" (Lance is convinced it's him). Cole in particular seems to have a cute bond with him and I often see him snuggling with Bender, arms around his body, his head resting on Bender's belly.
When I start projects, I have a hard time relinquishing control and allowing others to help. I know it sounds silly; perhaps it stems from those long-ago days in school when we had group projects and I was often dissatisfied with the end result, thinking I could have done it better all by myself. Whatever the reason, I was proud when I held it all in and allowed Jude and Lance to help with the pinata without me hovering too much.
They did a good job! Even Jude worked hard at smoothing down the strips and covering the whole area.
Sweet boys.
One of the projects I did for Lance's party was painting pokeballs. The original idea was to have a hunt with all the balls and whomever found the most balls got a prize. We ended up doing a hunt with clues instead and while we did use some of the pokeballs, we did NOT use the 96 that I painted. Yeah. 96.
I tried to come up with a way to paint all the balls without having to actually paint them by hand, since that would take way too long. I ended up drilling golf-ball sized holes in foam core, spray painting the golf balls black, then wedging them into the holes in the foam core.
I then spray painted one side of the boards white and the other red.
(I told Jude to make a happy face and this is what I got.)
The end result was this:
Not terribly pretty, but I was able to quickly touch them up and add a painted button to complete the look.
I love how they turned out and Lance thought they were cute, too. I'm bummed we didn't end up using them all. If any of you have any need of golf ball pokeballs, just see me.
Along with a simple fleece satchel for the kids to put their treasures from the party, I also made these cute pokeball keychains out of Perler beads. At Lance's request, I did some master balls as well. I think they turned out really cute!
If I have one complaint about where we live, it would be the mosquitoes. Our neighborhood is surrounded on three sides by a bent creek, perfect breeding ground for clouds of mosquitoes. It makes it difficult to play outside much during the summer, but we try to brave the biting things and venture out to play most days.
The previous owners had these cute barrel planters in the back yard, but years of rain and sun have deteriorated it past the point of repair. The kids had a great time breaking the wood pieces and playing in the dirt. I caught Lily and Cole playing in it one day. These two are cute together.
(You can see Lily making her "fishy face" as we call it--she went through a couple weeks where she would randomly make this hysterical face. Love it!)
Sweet girl.
And of course wherever the kids are, this baby has to be as well.
Lance started up baseball for the second season. He has the same coach as last season which is wonderful. I know his coach was instrumental in helping Lance enjoy and get enthusiastic about this sport. Baseball practice on Wednesdays are fun because we get to play with the Elmers while Lance practices since practice is held right behind their house. Then it's off to Scouts with Scott. We'll occasionally stop and get some dinner on the way there.
(We were parked, hence the lack of seatbelts.)
And while the weather is still warm, we've gone back to the creek a couple times. Lance really wants Bender to get used to the water and every time we go he is braver and braver.
It's so cute to see a little dog running in and out of the water with the boys.
On to Lance's Birthday!
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