Happy half-birthday to B!

Poor B.  M and I were extremely poor planners when it came to that whole get-pregnant and have-a-baby thing.  His birthday is Christmas Eve, when it is VERY hard to get all your friends to come to a party.  To make up for our bad planning, we started having half-birthdays when he was three and a half.  On his actual birthday, we just have a small party for family.  The half-birthday is when we have the big bash with all his friends.

This year, B requested a rollerskating party.  He had gone rollerskating earlier this summer and loved it.  So a rollerskating party it was.  The rink even gave him a free pair of skates as a birthday gift!

Here's the half-birthday dude looking like a pro on skates:

And here are the three musketeers (B and his two best friends from school):

Here's one of the musketeers looking particularly angelic:

This little guy is the younger brother of the third musketeer, the one seated in the middle in the two pictures above:

I think B considers him sort of an honorary little brother.  He's very protective of the little guy, and genuinely likes him.

And this is our friends' daughter.  A lot of Z's pretty clothes are hand-me-downs from this very fashionable young lady.

I had forgotten how much fun rollerskating is!  It had been at least 25 years since I'd been on rollerskates and I was pretty rusty, but there's something very soothing about it.

Happy birthday sweet B.  I love you!

Backyard robots!

Happy birthday, sweet B!

It seems like just yesterday that we had this:


And now we have a big five year-old boy.

B has been convinced for at least the past two months that his grandma was going to give him a light saber for his birthday. So convinced, in fact, that after he opened the kid-friendly digital camera from us & the Star Wars soundtrack CD from Z this morning, he asked, "So do I get the light saber later?" Smarty pants.

Besides the light saber, some of the favorite gifts include a bionic eye, a Batmobile, a very realistic model dinosaur (I told him it would protect him from the aliens he's afraid of at night), and some new paints and a Star Wars book to paint in.

Of course, the cake had a Star Wars theme:

Here's B holding one of his party guests, the bella Stella G:

Look out Mom & Dad, you guys are going to be looking back at these pictures in what feels like a week or two and wondering how she got to be five so fast!

Earlier in the day, Ben's new BFF Piper and her mom, Hayley, in town for the holidays from Minnesota, came by for a playdate. Here are the two of them scattering reindeer food:



Seriously though, I can't believe I'm the mom of a five year-old. We do kindergarten choice enrollment in two weeks. Kindergarten! B is a kind-hearted, funny, smart (sometimes bordering on evil genius) and absolutely adorable little boy. We love you, little guy. Errr, I mean big guy. Happy birthday!

Catching up

We had a big party for Z on Saturday afternoon last weekend. There were all kinds of kids, a great big cake with Tinkerbell on top, and of course, lots of presents. We were lucky to have some extra-special guests -- friends from the lounge! Maia and QiuQiu are local, so we see them every now & then, but not nearly often enough. But also in attendance were Mike & Piper, all the way from Minnesota (they didn't come just for the party; Mike was here for business & to visit his folks). We were really excited to meet Mike & Piper, and only sorry that Hayley & Paisley couldn't be here too. Next summer, Hayley! Party pix from the big birthday bash:

Z opening gifts, with lots of help from Piper (that's the back of her head in the foreground)

Friends from the Lounge (left to right: Maia & QiuQiu, Mike & Piper, me with my two monkeys)

A very happy & very silly B

Jelly Belly & the Poodle earlier today, on a spectacular Colorado fall morning:




Z sporting her new winter hat:

Happy birthday to Z!

Z is two today! Happy birthday, big girl!!

Party & a picnic

B's birthday is Christmas Eve, so we've been having half-birthday parties for him. It doesn't seem fair that he should have to get all his new toys in two days. M likes to tell people that we give him batteries on his birthday, and the toys they go in on Christmas. Poor kid. Anyway, the half-birthday party is great fun. We do it in June, so he can do all the fun outside stuff that you can't do in late December. We put out the wading pool & a slip-n-slide and invite over all the friends. I imagine someday we'll have to step up a little more and have it at a "real" pool or something, but for this age, the backyard party rocks. This year's party was last weekend. I have just two pictures, both of some of the many fun gifts he got:

The Super-B cape wasn't actually a birthday present. It was a gift from an online friend that just happened to arrive the day before the party. The Hulk mask & fists are from my parents. Remember how we found him a Hulk costume at a yard sale a few weeks ago? He loves that ratty thing, and now he's Hulk from head to toe. The mask has green lights inside the eyes that glow when you push a button, and when you hit the left fist into anything, it roars and mutters, "You're making me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry!" It's pretty hilarious. I guess my parents' dog didn't think it was so funny -- she was very suspicious & probably glad when they left the house.

This past Friday was M's company picnic. I picked the kids up from preschool right after lunch, thinking Z would nap in the car. It's almost an hour drive, so it seemed like a reasonable thing to expect. Ha! She screamed for twenty minutes, then slept for fifteen. She & I didn't stay that long -- I tossed that grouch back in the car & took her home for a real nap, while B & his dad stayed to play. They had putt-putt, go-karts, a batting cage, and an arcade. B was in heaven. It was his first time driving a go-kart, and I think you can see the terror in his eyes in the close-up. He did great, and even managed to go fast enough on his second lap that the attendant had to pick up his pace in order to walk behind him the whole way. Heh heh. He's pretty cautious when it comes to trying new things. I bet the next time he drives a go-kart he'll be a little Speed Racer.

2 parties and a hike

Hiking is one of my absolute favorite things to do, and it makes me so happy that one of my favorite people, my B, is beginning to like hiking too. The two of us took a quick one-mile hike yesterday evening. We ran a lot, climbed on rocks, waved sticks around, threw rocks in a stream, and picked apart seed pods. It was divine. Now I just need to get him to move faster than a mile an hour, so we can do some "real" hiking. Maybe by next summer.

And when we got back home, M had made dinner for us all! He even did the dishes afterward. I definitely married the right guy, didn't I?

On Saturday morning, we went to a birthday party for B's friend Brooke. She is one of the few girls he will admit to liking. It was fun, and B can't think of anything better than cake in the morning.

The hat in the hiking pictures was a favor from this party. I told him he looked like a Jayhawk with that hat on, and he rolled his eyes at me and told me Jayhawks don't have orange tongues. I asked him how he knew that, and when he'd seen a Jayhawk's tongue, and got a big sigh and some four year-old sass in return.

Today, we had my parents, my grandfather, and my brother and his family over. Today was my dad's birthday, and my mom's was 10 days ago. She was out of town for her birthday, so we celebrated it today too. With more cake, of course. Wow, what a weekend for B -- two cakes!

And I'll leave you with this picture of Kenai, who has the mistaken belief that he is a lap dog. He was aiming for B's lap here, but the smart B got out of the way just before that 95 pound hunk of puppy love landed in his 35 pound lap. We still don't know what Kenai is, by the way. The test results should be here any day, and you'll know as soon as I do. The votes seem to favor lab + greyhound so far, and several neighbors who know him agree. He's certainly lazy like a greyhound.

Happy birthday to B!

B turned four on Christmas Eve! My brother & his family and my grandpa came over for lunch & cake. The menu was selected by B: sloppy joes, corn, and fruit cocktail. B mixed his all together; the rest of us took a more traditional approach. I baked the cake (must've been my lucky day -- it actually turned out OK), and his dad decorated it quite artfully with a Spiderman theme.

The cake was followed by presents, of course. I'm afraid I've lost track of all the stuff he got & have confused Christmas and birthday gifts in the three days since Christmas, but I know he got a space shuttle toy from Aunt Erin, a gumball machine and a lifetime supply of gumballs from Nana, a build & erupt your own volcano kit along with a DVD about volcanos from his Aunt Catfish, and a toolbelt from his Bumpa M.

After all that excitement, B, his dad, and my 20 year-old cousin S headed to Bounce for a couple hours of jumping while my mom & I stayed behind to get started on the Christmas cooking. I think B had a fun day!

Happy birthday, B!

Happy birthday to me

We're going to take a short break from the infinite baby girl cuteness today so that I can tell you about my birthday party. I turned 40 last week, and my men threw me a big bash last Saturday. There were about 30ish adults there, and what seemed like about two dozen kids but was probably more like eight or ten.

The party had an eclectic theme: pirates and superheroes. I imagine B may have had some say in the selection of the themes. All the party favors had a pirate theme -- treasures such as mardi gras necklaces and toy rings with giant plastic gems, as well as eye patches and gold hoop earrings (or nose rings, depending on your preference). The cake had a superhero theme, and read "Happy 40th Birthday Woman-Girl." If you want the backstory on Woman-Girl, you'll have to go read the last part of the Snow, sand and kryptonite post.

Lots of fun was had by all. Here are some of the party pix to prove it:

Me and my handsome B

Woman-Girl and Captain M

I had lots of help blowing out the candles

BFF

B's girlfriends