HUH?

So...I woke up on Saturday, thinking about the wedding I had to photograph. I looked outside and laughed. You've got to be kidding me? Snow?...a nice dusting across everything. WOW... Laughing I felt really bad for the bride who was so excited about getting outside pictures taken with the fall colors.



Waking up today (MONDAY) I couldn't figure out what month it was? Did I fall asleep and it's now December? Did I miss something? What's up with snow the middle of October? We haven't even had summer yet? I think I missed the warm summer weather, the mid-fall weather and just went straight to winter..again. Oh how I long for Hawaii :)

Party time!

We put the kids birthday parties together again this year. Last year we thought we'd try them seperate because they enjoy different things and are getting older. It was so hard. So this year, we were back together. 17 kids running crazy at Grand Slam, a huge building that had laser tag, mini golf, batting cages, bowling, arcade, indoor play zone, crazy bumper cars and more. It's great fun not having to clean for or up afterward. My kids loved it and had a TON of fun! I loved the stress free part of it all.

Cakes

I was thinking this might be the year I end up buying cakes for the kids...or making just a simple delicious out of the box, flat frosting across the top, cake. However....my kids informed me that one of the things they look forward to the most is the cakes I make them. So...after 4 hours (much faster than previous years) their two cakes were made.


I showed Sydney her cat cake. She looked at it and smiled and then shrugged her shoulders. "Mom, on the picture it showed that the face part had curly things on it."

"Actually, I followed the picture pretty closely because you wanted it just like the picture. I'm pretty sure there is no curly things on the picture."

"Mom, I saw it. I know there was."
So...being the mom I am, I went and got the picture and said, "See honey, just like the picture." "Well...I still think the picture looks better than your cake."

I told her that I didn't need to make cakes for her if she didn't like them, to which she responded: "Mom, your cake is good, just not AS good as the picture. You can still make them for me." ;)

Good thing my daughter has a lot of OTHER good qualities :)


Jordan loved his cake and everything about it :)

My boy is 8

That's right...eight. I'm not sure how it happened or where all the time went, all I know is I'm too young to have an eight year old :) October 1st he turned eight. On the kids birthdays if they want to stay home from school (just the birthday kid) we let them. Arlie takes the day off of work and we just spend time with them doing whatever they'd like (within reason :) ). Jordan, after checking to make sure he could celebrate his birthday with his class a different day, decided to stay home with us. He woke up that morning to his room full of balloons hanging from the ceiling (a tradition we started several years ago; decorating their rooms while they are sleeping so when they wake up they feel like it's their birthday from the second their eyes open). We dropped Sydney off at school and after some time with at home with just Arlie and I, he decided we would go to Brunswick zone to play in the arcade. NO ONE is there during the day. We had the arcade pretty much to ourselves. Two other people came toward the end, but other than that...we had free reign. We played a ton of games. He earned lots of tickets which he can turn in for prizes. The store to redeem the prizes didn't open normally until 4pm (we needed to go back to pick up Sydney by 3:45), but the lady who opens it was there early and opened it just for him. He was just about 13 tickets shy of 500 and had about $1.00 left on his card. She asked him if she could show him a game that would put him over 500 that way he could get a great prize. Of course he didn't pass that up. She brought him over to a game and proceeded to show him how to play, giving him tokens upon tokens, which ended up probably being about $10.00 worth of tokens. He ended up with 965 tickets. He was so excited. After that we went to the half-priced book store where we found a transformer dvd. We picked up Sydney and went home and had popcorn and watched the transformers. Then we went to Space Aliens (not my favorite food that's for sure) for supper and off to small group for ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. Jordan said he had a great day. We sure had a ton of fun spending time with him. We're very blessed with such a wonderful "not so little anymore" boy!

Kids who make me laugh

Jordan got his school pictures back from school. As we're walking home he said, "Hey mom, guess what? I got my school pictures back. I didn't know I had 100 identical twins." (He delivered it completely serious without missing a beat.) I probably laughed for 3 minutes straight.

I was giving the kids a lecture about their birthday party. If we open gifts and it's something we already have, what do we say? That's right...thank you. What if we don't like it? That's right...thank you. What if it's the second one we got that day? That's right..we say thank you. We never say, "I already have it, I don't like it, or again?" Sydney looked at me and grabbed a sheet of paper..."Mom, can you write that down for me, so i remember what i can't say?" I laughed and said, "Sydney you just be your polite self and you'll be fine. Just remember to say thank you." "Mom, can you write that down so i don't forget?" My funny little lady :)