Chase's Birthday Party

A couple of weekends ago, Chase had his 5th birthday party at the Skate Center.  Though Chase has been a few times, this was the first time a lot of the kids at the party had tried skating.  Suzy also only invited the older kids since she knew it would probably be too hard for the younger ones like Rylan.

Carter was so excited for the party.  He was a little nervous though too because he knew how hard ice skating was during his hockey program.

I got Carter the slow-roller skates and then he was also able to use one of these skating frames to help him not fall.

Carter and Will ...

After about 5 minutes he decided he could ditch the skating frame and wanted to show off that he was able to "skate" without it.

Carter's skating was more of a walk ...

Even though it was open skate time for young kids, we have the skating rink pretty much to ourselves.  It helped that the party was the day before Easter and the weather was gorgeous.

When the limbo game came out, Carter was excited to try it!

I love how he has the straightest arms and hands while going under the pole!

The last three remaining got a special Easter surprise (lots of candy!).  Carter was so excited to win (he's such an over-achiever!!!).

Carter, Anderson, Addy, Chase, and Riley ...

Will, Carter, Chase, and Carson ...

The Easter Bunny even came out to visit the kids (with a basket full of candy!).

Carson, Carter, & Chase (Carter requested this group photo!) ...

The Hokey Pokey - I haven't done that since I was a kid at the skate rink!!!

The kids all had a blast!  Right now Carter is requesting to have this 6th birthday party at the Skate Center!

More Easter

I have a few more random pictures left over from Easter to share.

I had lots and lots of Easter crafts and egg decorating kits I had gotten last year on clearance.  My mom spent many hours working on those with the kids while Brian and I worked in the yard.  Since we were doing other things, I didn't get pictures of those, but I did get a picture of the boys painting old plastic eggs I had left over from last year's egg hunt at Cheekwood.

So here is what the boys got in their Easter baskets from the Easter Bunny.  I totally raided my gift closet of super clearanced items!  They both got a bug vacuum, a set of plastic animals, a gardening tool set, and an Ice Age movie.  Carter also got a puzzle to color and Rylan got a pair of Ninja Turtle socks.

The Easter Bunny hid the baskets on top of the dining room cabinet.

It took the boys forever to find them!

As expected, Rylan was most excited about the Ninja Turtle socks!

The boys also got tons of cool presents from the grandparents.  My mom gave the boys some of their gifts early.  One of the gifts was a Rainbow Loom so there were tons of bracelets made during the week.  Among other things, the boys got headlamps from Brian's parents and Super Hero Lego sets from my dad and Jan.

Easter Party

Carter's class had an Easter party the Thursday before Easter.  I was in charge of the party since Lauren (Sophie's mom - the other room mom) had to work that day.  I spent a few evenings getting ideas online and then had my mom help me on Tuesday get everything prepared.

My mom's main job (that took quite awhile!) was to make 13 sets of bunny ears for the kids.

We had two crafts.  Lauren had bought some foam flowers for the kids to put together and glitter glue to decorate them.  While the kids did that, I had them fill these egg buddies that my mom and I made with dirt and grass seed.  I was going to let the kids also put these together but we really needed hot glue to make sure everything stuck.

Carter's has been sitting in the window sill since the party and now looks like this:

I hope that some of the other kids' also grew hair!

I planned on doing 2 games.  One was an egg and spoon race.  The other was an egg toss into buckets.  (Only plastic eggs were used!)  After the games, the kids got goody bags filled with bubbles, Easter stamps, and some chocolate eggs.

After the game the kids got snacks.  I made Rice Krispie Treat eggs ...

and carrots of bunny crackers.

I only took 3 pictures during the party!  I was too busy keeping everything going that I never had a chance to get my camera out.

The kids split into 2 teams for the egg and spoon race.  A lot of them forgot to NOT hold the egg on with their other hand.  It was very chaotic :)

For the egg toss, I used several buckets from around the house and taped eggs to them with point values.  All the kids got 6 eggs to toss and all of them scored.

Enjoying snacks!  Carter only got to sit for about 2 minutes before we had to run off early to speech.  Luckily Lauren was there by then to finish up!

Ms. Denise also had a gift for the kids - we need to coordinate better! :)

Overall I think the party went great and the kids had a lot of fun!

Recent Pictures

It's been a few weeks since I posted my random photos so here is the past 3 weeks of them.

We went to a birthday party at Pump It Up recently.  This time it was for twins - Christopher and Jack Henry.  The boys go to our preschool and were turning 5.  Carter and Christopher have speech together on Thursdays so Kristen (their mom) and I wait in the lobby and talk.  Rylan and Jack Henry have become friends as they play games together on our phones.  It's really cute - they share a comfy chair and usually switch phones back and forth.

Christopher is to the left of Carter and Jack Henry is next to him - Carter ALWAYS has to be next to the birthday kid(s)!

The birthday boys!

The party was during Rylan's speech time which I would not normally miss.  However, the theme was Ninja Turtles and as soon as Rylan saw the invitation, there was no way he was going to miss the party.  He was so worn out afterwards that he fell asleep on the drive home - while still wearing the mask from his goody bag!

A few weeks ago when Carter's letter of the week was "X", Ms. Denise had the kids bring anything they wanted for show-and-tell.  Carter chose this ninja bracelet my sister gave the boys awhile back.

Baby #3 got his/her first present!  My mom brought this along on her recent visit.

I decided to try a new pediatric dentist for the boys.  I liked our old dentist fine but didn't love the hygienists.  Both boys were always scared and I didn't feel like there was enough patience for them.  Well, this one didn't go all that much better (though I don't think we'll switch back)!  Carter was nervous but did fine.  I scheduled the boys back to back so I could sit with each one the entire time. However, both boys have blackline staining along their gums and since the hygienist wanted to get it all off, Carter's appointment was taking longer.  The second hygienist wanted to start working on Rylan so my mom brought him back.  Once I got Carter comfortable enough, I had my mom sit with him and I sat with Rylan.  Rylan was okay for a couple of minutes and then he freaked out.  Wouldn't open his mouth and just cried SO LOUD.  The hygienist forced him some to let her keep working and we got pretty far on getting the staining off but it was a little torturous.  I really try to prepare the boys for these appointments but haven't figured what works for them yet.

The boys both did fine with the dentist and let him check them.  And at the end of the appointment, they both got Build-A-Bears.  They are still obsessed with them.  Maybe we can use them somehow to start preparing a couple months before their next appointments.

I'm still drawing a picture on Carter's lunch napkin everyday.  I'm not the most creative and thinking of something new each morning is a struggle!  This was one of my better ones lately :)

The week before Easter, Carter's class was to bring in something Easter related for show-and-tell.  He brought these bend-able bunnies.

When Carter was in school, my mom and I took Rylan to the zoo.  This was the first time my mom got to the see the new kangaroo exhibit.

This was my favorite Easter craft the Carter brought home from school this year.

When my mom was here and could watch the boys for us, we added another zone to our irrigation system.  We wanted a zone that we could use to water all our landscaping along our fence.  On Good Friday, we rented a trencher so we didn't have to dig a couple of hundred feet of trench to put in the PVC pipe.

Carter borrowed my camera and took this picture of the valve we added.

Testing out the system ... it works!!!  We added a hose bib to this pipe and are going to added a low pressure irrigation hose to it that we can move around under the mulch as we add to our landscaping in the fence beds.

After completing our project, we decided to have a fire in the fire pit and roast hot dogs.

And marshmallows (no need for the graham crackers and chocolate).

My mom left on the afternoon of Easter Sunday so we stuck with our tradition of having Easter dinner at Chuy's (a Mexican restaurant that is usually at least an hour wait - except for on Easter).  The boys' kids meal included a rainbow sherbet pop-up.  They both actually ate a little of it (they are very picky about their desserts)!

Luke's birthday was the next day so we celebrated with a playdate at a park and superhero cupcakes.  These may have been messier than my yellow and black construction cupcakes for Carter's second birthday!

We hit up Chick-fil-A for kids night last week and got balloons from The Balloon Guy.

Last week's letter in Carter's class was "Y" so he brought a yellow Transformer for show-and-tell.

Rylan and I met a bunch of friends at the Brentwood Library storytime on Wednesday before we went for a walk on the greenway.  The book this week was about a caterpillar so the kids got to make one from egg cartons.

On Wednesday afternoon, the boys want to another birthday party at Pump It Up.  This one was for Austin.  He's on Carter's soccer team and also goes to the boys' preschool.  Jennifer got the glow-in-the-dark party so most of the lights were turned off, there were a few black lights, and the kids got glow bracelets.  It was a bit too dark but the kids seemed to have fun.  They turned the lights on for the group picture but it took awhile for the lights to warm up.  I grabbed a close-up of Austin, my boys, and Christopher and Jack Henry (the boys who had a party there a couple of weeks earlier).

Carter with a horrible picture of the birthday boy!  Surprise, surprise - Carter sat next to Austin for cake!

I'm working on redecorating the boys' rooms now that we have decided to have another baby and to make our playroom a bedroom for the baby.  We had thrown around having the boys share a room but they decided they wanted their own spaces (which we are fine with).  But until we made that decision, I had left a lot of their baby stuff up in their rooms (like their newborn hand and foot prints).

I've gotten most of the stuff for Carter's room and have started Rylan's room.  We still need to get him new furniture.  Once I'm done, I'll do a post with before and after pictures, but here is one major change in Carter's room.  He REALLY wanted a desk.  And his favorite color is golden.  I found a pretty cool golden desk at Target and decided it would go great in his room.  Carter and I put it together yesterday afternoon and he is in love :)