Happy 9th Birthday, Lance!

We celebrated Lance's 9th Birthday on September 13th. It was a week earlier than I had originally thought which meant some long nights getting ready, but with Abbey and Scott's help it all came together and by the 13th we were excited and ready!

Cole and Jude insisted on helping stuff the pinata. They had been eyeing the candy for days, especially the ring pops.

George was in the middle of a crazy ICU rotation (80-90 hour work weeks) and had just come off a week of nights. He is AMAZING because even though he was exhausted from working 6 nights in a row he came to celebrate with about two hours of sleep under his belt. Love that man! He was the official party photographer, so I didn't get many pictures of him. But he were there!

Scott and Abbey were wonderful and hosted it at their beautiful house. We were expecting 20+ people, so it worked out perfect.

The Birthday boy with his cake, Ash hat and satchel.

 

All the kids got an Ash hat and a satchel to wear at the party. I also made six Pikachu hats in case some of the kids didn't want Ash's hat (thanks, Amy, for the beanie pattern!).

Lily was a fan.

We were so lucky to have so much family there. George's parents and Allen came, as did Jen with Callie and Bryce. Laura and Tyler also drove from Winchester to be here for the afternoon with their two cute boys. Mom and Glenn were still in New Zealand and Australia.

Cole struggled in the beginning, but after being snuggled by Grandmom for a bit he cheered right up.

Mason was the happiest boy the whole time!

I had the neatest picture printed at Costco on posterboard as a gift for Lance/decoration for the party. (Uncle Chad and Darnell paid for it, so Happy Birthday Lance from them!) I found it on Deviant Art. It was done by a guy as a gift for his brother and he was gracious enough to send me rights to the image. It has all 700+ Pokemon on it! The kids had a good time trying to find their favorites while we waited for everyone to arrive. It really is the coolest picture and will have a special place in Lance's room.

See? Mason smiled like this the whole time.

(You can see all the little pokeballs I painted in the background. They became decoration which turned out really well!)

I wish I had gotten a picture of the buffet table. Abbey had gotten tons of snacks and made them all pokemon-themed. Fireballs for Charmander, gummy butterflies for Butterfry, etc. She was amazing.

While the big kids enjoyed the games at the party, Mom, Dad and Jen entertained Lily and Cole. It was so wonderful to be able to focus on the party and know the little kids were having a great time, too. Thanks you guys!

Grandmom makes everything better.

Even Bender got to come and play. He did a great job staying close to the house and watching the fun.

Once all the kids arrived, we started our first activity: build your own pokemon!

We got some Model Magic clay and had the kids all make their own pokemon. It really turned into the kids making whatever suited their fancy, whether pokemon or just mixing the colors together and forming balls, but they all enjoyed it and I ended up having to set a time-limit so we'd have enough time to do the other games as well.

Other than Allen, Callie, Bryce and Mason, we also had Killian and Kendall Elmer, Rose Bradford, Owen, and Abel (a buddy from the bus). All in all, we had about 12 kids!

These two boys were peas in a pod and got the biggest kick out of this project.

Now, Pokemon is all about catching, training and battling your pokemon, so after they made their own pokemon, we had to train them. We worked on teamwork by doing a relay race with the Pokeballs. It's like the egg and spoon race, but instead of passing off an egg, the kids carried a pokeball on a spoon across the lawn and passed it off to their teammate who then had to carry it back to pass it off to another.

The kids all did a great job. The prize for the game was a pokeball keychain with the winning team getting first pick.

Next up, we had to battle our pokemon! Scott and Abbey came up with the neatest game ever! They divided the kids into two teams and had them line up on opposite sides of the room.

Then each player had a balloon containing a pokemon figure tied to each leg.

The goal of the game was to stomp the other team's balloons and capture the pokemon that was released.

The kids all thought this was AWESOME. Seriously, this game would be so fun even as an adult. Especially as an adult. I definitely need to file this game away and pull it out again in the future. It was a hit!

Each kid got to keep the pokemon figurines they captured as a prize.

After a quick snack break, it was on to our last activity: a Wild Pokemon hunt! In the game and TV show, Ash is trying to capture wild pokemon that he can then train and battle. This hunt had twelve clues, each one leading to the next. Each clue was attached to a pokeball and picture of a pokemon the clue was about.

Reading the first clue:

I was impressed that the kids did such a good job finding the pokemon from the clues I gave.

Every time they thought they had figured it out, this hoard of kids trampled off in that direction. I had a hard time keeping up!

The last clue lead to a treasure: Pokemon cards for everyone to take home!

And finally, it was time for the pinata.

I was so sure I had made this one strong enough to last all the kids, but a couple well-aimed swings from the younger kids proved me wrong.

Scott manned the rope and with his evasive maneuvers and the help of a blindfold, we managed to make it all the way through the line-up.

Lance got his wish: after everyone had a chance, he got to try again and broke it on his first swing.

Cake time!

Singing:

Cole snuck up and blew out one of the candles before the song was over, stinker. I relit it for Lance so he could blow out all 9.

It was a fun party! I think the best part was just being with all the people we care about and love. Lance had a good time which made all the work worth it.

Here's George! Chatting with Aric about hospital stuff. Nice hat, buddy.

After everyone left, I stayed to help clean up and Lance opened his gifts.

This book is from Grandma:

She and Glenn started a tradition last year of taking the Birthday boy on a day trip somewhere special. Last year they went to the Spy Museum in DC. This year it's a surprise, but the book is a clue. Can you figure out where they'll go?

Lance recently picked up Calvin and Hobbes and LOVES it, so this book from Aunt Laura and Uncle Tyler was the first gift to be enjoyed. I think he finished it in two days.

The day ended with us going back to our house to spend a couple more hours with Laura and her family the the Glass family before they had to drive home. Happy Birthday, Lance!!

And of course it wouldn't be a real Birthday without bringing cupcakes to school. The following week Jude, Cole, Lily and I took Lance's class his cupcake of choice: chocolate with chocolate chips, chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles.

I think they were a hit!

Gosh I love you, Lance! I can't believe what a fine young man you're becoming. Thank you for making my life complete, for coming to our family and being my first Love. Life is so good with you in it. I wouldn't trade you for the world!

September: prep, puppy, pinata, pokeballs, and a pretty girl

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!

A trip back in time: Sibling Reunion 2007

This past August was not our first Sibling weekend. It all started summer of 2007 with a trip to Europe. 

Europe, Busch Gardens that is. Mom actually WAS in Europe with her two sisters and mom, so the six of us decided we'd do the next best thing and hopped into our 12 passenger van to spend the day riding roller-coasters.

You can never have too much sun screen.

Aww. Look how little they were! Apparently NOT enjoying the three hour drive to the park.

It was my Christmas present to them all (albeit about 5 months early).

Can I tell you how much fun it was to be there with just us?

It was the first year the Griffin was running, but the wait was worth it. I think it became my new favorite ride.

Turkey legs!

Apollo's Chariot, my second favorite.

It was an AWESOME day! (making our tired faces, except apparently Laura)

 And the greatest souvenir of all time?

Priceless!