Happy Birthday Lindsay - Whew, we made it!

Happy Birthday to my Lindsay who turned 9 on Thursday the 23rd! I must say she was rather spoiled this time around. We began the week with a celebration of my Dad's birthday and Lindsay's birthday with all of the family on Sunday. Grandpa was kind enough to allow Lindsay to choose their combined birthday dinner so she chose hamburgers and hot dogs. It was a beautiful day so the kids all had a great time playing outside together. I totally should have taken a picture of Damon and Summer working hard at the grill making our delicious meal but I failed.

Part 2 of Lindsay's birthday took place on her actual birthday. We couldn't let that day go by unnoticed. After she arrived home from school we gathered together the money she had received and we all headed up to probably the two most favorite stores in this family, Toys R Us and Barnes and Noble. After much deliberation she chose a plushy animal from Toys R Us and wanted to save the rest for Barnes and Noble where she purchased an American Girls book. Of course Katie wasn't left out of the fun, she had managed to have saved $8 of her remaining birthday money and she picked out a few coloring books. Lindsay was for the second time in a week, given the power to choose what she had for dinner and she chose.....McDonalds. Unfortunately we had spent so much time at Toys R Us and Barnes and Noble that her dinner had to be eaten in the car in order to get her to soccer practice on time. And no, soccer practice attendance wasn't our decision, she refused to miss it.

Part 3 of her Birthday took place yesterday in the form of a girlfriend party. Oh my...6 girls plus my girls, it's a houseful. They seemed to have had a lot of fun. They bounced from activity to activity playing a bit of Dance Dance Revolution, which Lindsay had received as a gift the evening before, Disney Scene It, beauty salon (manicures and make up included), a semi viewing of Kitt Kittredge American Girl , Foosball and running around in the backyard. Doesn't Allison look like she's having the time of her life? According to Lindsay 3 hours wasn't nearly long enough. It was just right for me lol. It only took about 15 minutes of Team Weber picking up all of the mess left behind by the tornado of girls that had swept through the home, so not too bad.

Whew, now the annual April Birthday Marathon has come to an end and we seem to have survived intact, mostly. I won't say that our pocket book is as intact as it normally is but after a month full of birthdays and buying a new car, we haven't done too badly AND we managed to once again do our part and put money into the economy. Although it appears as though our sacrifice and purchase of a Dodge Journey wasn't enough to keep Chrysler afloat lol.

Happy Birthday Katelynn

My baby is 6 today! I can't believe time flies so fast.

Katie had been asking me for a birthday party for her friends for the last year, since Lindsay had hers last year. This year, now that we're in our house, I decided to take the plunge. I had shopped and prepared for a maximum of 12 girls a few weeks ago, because that's the number of girls in Katie's class. On the last day of school before the week long Spring break I sent Katie off to school with invitations for all of the girls in her class with instructions to hand them out before the bell rang as the kids lined up at the door. She returned home with 6 of the 12 invitations. I didn't know what to do because the kids are scattered all over and I of course don't have the phone numbers of all the kids to call each of them individually so I prayed that the ones that did receive invites actually came. For a whole week I was just sick to my stomach hoping that someone would show up for her first birthday. Luckily 3 girls did come and luckily they were the ones Katie most wanted to come to the party. They seemed to have a lot of fun.

Sunday we celebrated Easter as well as Katelynn's birthday with the family and Nils. We enjoyed a yummy ham dinner (even if I do say so myself) and Katie enjoyed opening a few more gifts. If you look closely at the picture of Katie's cake you'll notice a hand print in the cake, no that isn't on purpose. Apparently Allison's Tourette's kicked in and she decided that she had to put her hand in the cake.

On a side note:
In addition to Katie's birthday party on Friday we had an unexpected visitor. I've never been so happy to have an unexpected visitor as I was to have Lilly. Damon called asking if I would be able to take care of Lilly because their regular sitter had sick kids. Of course I jumped at the chance to get some time with my Niece and not have to share LOL. She was such a sweetie and was an angel, thankfully. Later that evening Allison expressed her gratitude that we didn't have anymore kids because she realized how much more attention they require and she didn't want to share my attention with any other kids, nor did she want to have to increase her chore duties. I think it was mostly about the chore duties myself, the other stuff was just added as a distraction from the truth.

Spring is Here!!

Finally, Spring has sprung!! I don't know about everyone else but I have been ready to see the pretty spring flowers and feel the warmth of the sun for a month or so now.

Since we weren't in the house last spring I didn't know what to expect from the front yard flower bed once the temperature began to warm up. So far we have the pretty yellow flowers as seen on the left and the pretty pinkish ones below on the right. Not quite sure what kind they are though, but they are pretty. There's another purplish flower blooming but it's not picture ready yet.

I'm looking forward to the next few weeks and hope to try my hand at planting some flowers and bushes in a planting area on the side of the house. That should be quite the adventure.

Happy Spring Everyone!

Go Grizzlies!

On Friday April 3rd we ventured down to the E Center to attend another Grizzlies hockey game but this time we brought along Nils. Nils is a Foreign Exchange student from Germany staying with Koren and Dan for the next few weeks. He had never seen a hockey game and the girls were dying to see another Grizzlies game so we thought we could all go and give Nils a new experience. Our first stop was dinner at Applebees. After we filled our bellies we made our way over to the E Center.

Even though the Grizzlies lost we managed to enjoy ourselves quite a bit. I think it was the big fight at the end that Nils, Todd and Lindsay, yes Lindsay, enjoyed the most. I believe we've learned a valuable lesson however; NEVER attend the first night of a two night game set. Just about everytime we've attended the first run of the series against a team, the Grizzlies seem to lose the first night and win the second night. Friday night they lost 6-0 to the Alaska Aces, and yet they won Saturday 5-2. Somehow they have managed to make it into the playoffs and of course the pleas to attend another game have begun.

Goooo Grizzlies!