A Seven Year Old!

Ahhhh...the third and final birthday of the season. May I make a suggestion? If you're into family planning and all that jazz...have your kids in different seasons!  That way, the birthday fun is all nice and spread out throughout the year, and not three children's birthdays in six week's time. :-P

Evander is seven!  And by this time in the birthday season, I can believe he's another year older. Ha.

He chose Transformers for his theme, and as you can see...I tried to bake and decorate a cake for his friend party.  Cake baking/decorating = not something I enjoy...but it turned out well.

He had three friends over and we had a beautifully sunny day, so we were able to do all sorts of games in the back yard.

Work in progress corn hole boards

Cody in action.

We had the family over for pizza and cake. Evander was so very pleased with the gifts everyone gave him.

Apparently seven year olds open presents lying down

One of my favorite things from the day was when he opened a microscope from his Auntie Mere and Uncle Will and hugged it!  Ha.

I made him hug it again for a picture. :-)

And then he ran outside to play with his friends before we even had cake. This is something we are dealing with a lot lately. All Evander wants to do these days is play out front with his friends! It's a little difficult getting him to sit down to do his homework each night...

BIRTHDAY QUESTIONNAIRE

Evander, Age 7

Nicknames: 

Eems

How old are you? 

Seven

What is your favorite color? 

Yellow

What is your favorite animal? 

Rabbit

What is your favorite book? 

Animal, rocks and earth books

What is your favorite TV show? 

Animal Planet and Transformers

What is your favorite movie? 

(whispers to me ) Animal Planet is also a movie

What is your favorite song? 

Transformers Theme Song and Eye of the Tiger

What is your favorite food? 

Noodles with olive oil and garlic salt

What is your favorite drink? 

Milk and chocolate milk

What is your favorite breakfast food? 

My favorite cereal (Frosted Mini-Wheats)

What is your favorite snack? 

Peanut butter crackers

What is your favorite outfit? 

My Transformers T-shirt

What is your favorite game? 

Guess Who?

What is your favorite toy? 

Transformers

Who is your best friend?
Cody and Dale

What is your favorite thing to do?  

Ride my bike and drawing

What is your favorite thing to do outside?

Ride my bike

What is your favorite holiday? 

Halloween and Christmas

What do you like to take to bed with you at night? 

Favorite blankie

Where is your favorite place to go? 

Dinosaur museum

What is your favorite restaurant? 

Pizza

Where do you want to go on vacation? 

Arizona and Dinosaur National Monument

What do you want to be when you grow up
Museum curator

What did you do on your birthday?
Went to school

I have been so blessed to be your mommy! We joke in our house how you are most like me. Maybe it's your love of animals and nature? Your creative tendencies? Or the fact that you like to collect and keep things? :-) Sometimes, it's hard for me to motivate you, but once your mind is set onto something, you are good to go. I love your thirst for knowledge and your desire to learn. I can't believe the baby I bounced to sleep each night (ha) is so big. I love you, Evander! I am so excited to watch you grow.

Power Ranger Birthday Boy

Emory.  Emory boyyyyyyyyy. Our Emory Hudson turned five last week!  I almost can't believe it.

In a moment of insanity...I decided to have a friend party separate from the family party for Emory (and Evander to come!).  It's just too much (read as "too many people" ha) to have friends at the family party. Plus...the family gets ignored if friends are around!

We've also continued to have the boys' birthday parties separately, even though their birthdays are ten days apart (whose brilliant idea was it to have these boys both in October? :-P). I just really like allowing them to have their special day (or two) and have their own party theme. Because you know...we probably could never agree on just a single party theme.

So, Emory!  Emory boyyyyyyyyyyy chose Power Rangers for his fifth birthday. :-) Did you know that there are 16 different Power Ranger Series? Ummmm...wow. Thank you, Netflix for making us acquaintances with at least seven of those.

Emory and his Power Rangers Jungle Fury cake. 

Emory started his birthday by going to school and then Skyping with his Popper in Arizona when we got home. He waited alllllllll afternoon for his three friends we invited from his preschool class for a little party. The boy was....so....excited. It was so fun to see his reaction when they pulled up to the house.

New this week is a cute little lean when taking photos!

Party happenings were not over the top this year! ;-) With the kids, I had plans to be outside and do a ninja-style obstacle course with them...but it was raining so that didn't happen. We ate pizza and cake and did a small craft and just played for most of the time. They were happy with that.

Emory ditched his training wheels this summer, so he got a new bigger bike for his birthday! He received it early so that he could enjoy it while it was still "warm" outside.

New helmet to match!

Stompeez!

Brothers both need to be in the picture

Cousin Anna's into kissing lately...

Their Power Ranger moves

BIRTHDAY QUESTIONNAIRE

Emory, Age 5

Nicknames: 

Emmer, Emerson, Emory Boy

How old are you? 

Five

What is your favorite color? 

Red and blue

What is your favorite animal? 

Kitty

What is your favorite book? 

Batman

What is your favorite TV show? 

Jake and the Neverland Pirates

What is your favorite movie? 

Phineas and Ferb Across the 2nd Dimension

What is your favorite song? 

My God Throws Mountains Into the Sea

What is your favorite food? 

Peanut butter and cheese pizza (but not together, ha)

What is your favorite drink? 

New milk (almond milk)

What is your favorite breakfast food? 

Bee cereal or dinosaur sandwich (Honey Nut Cheerios and PBJ)

What is your favorite snack? 

Um, poopy butt.

What is your favorite outfit? 

Power Ranger (Mommy says sweat pants...I can't get jeans on the boy!)

What is your favorite game? 

Mr. Kitty Pants game (whatever that is!)

What is your favorite toy? 

Hero guys

Who is your best friend?
Addison and Donovan and Gus!

What is your favorite thing to do?  

Eat

What is your favorite thing to do outside?

Ride my bike

What is your favorite holiday? 

Wednesday

What do you like to take to bed with you at night? 

Doggie and kitty and my beepies (one, two, three and four of them!)

Where is your favorite place to go? 

Dairy Queen

What is your favorite restaurant? 

Pizza

Where do you want to go on vacation? 

Maumee Bay

What do you want to be when you grow up? 

Construction worker

What did you do on your birthday? 

Ummm...I went to school and my friends came over

Emory. I am so privileged to be your mommy. You are enthusiastic....passionate....and full of emotion. I love your zeal and your silliness and how you think of others and want to buy them things when we are out shopping. :-) You grew, physically, too fast...but I still love to carry you like a baby to bed and look in your beautiful eyes. (There's a country song I think of every time..."I see them as babies, guess that'll never change.") I love your imagination and your drive....but mostly...I just love you!!!

Jack-O'-Latern Jars

Did you know "jack-o'-lantern" had an apostrophe after the "o?" Hmmmmm...I did not realize this until this day. :-P

This is a fun (and easy!) little thing the boys and I did the other night with tissue paper and olive jars.  I just *knew* those olive jars I was saving would come in handy. ;-) And, since Marin and I eat lots and lots of olives...pretty sure there will be many more jars to come!  Baby food jars would work great, too...but, sadly I dumped my stash a lonnnnng time ago. :-(

Start by cutting orange tissue paper into various small pieces:

Then, Mod Podge away!  It's best to apply the Mod Podge on the jar, not the tissue paper. :-) The boys tended to get some holes in the tissue paper because they were heavy with their brush...but I think that just adds to each jar's character.

After you've Mod Podged your pieces to cover the jar, apply a thick coat of Mod Podge over the whole thing.

Hmmm...looks more like a mummy to me.

Once dry, cut some shapes for your jack-o'-lantern face. We used the Cricut with vinyl, but normal cardstock and scissors would work fine, too!

You can cover your jar lid with fabric by cutting a circle slightly bigger than the lid, and then cutting slits around the circle. Apply Mod Podge to the top of the lid and set down onto the fabric. Press fabric around the lid. 

So easy and so fun!  I remember making a Christmas jar at school with tissue paper when I was in kindergarten. My mom still puts it out each year. :-P

Curb Trash to Play Kitchen Treasure #2

This beauty was a pick from the curb right next door to me! :-) It was an old desk and when I spotted it late one night, I knew it would be Play Kitchen #2. I rounded up the boys to help me carry it to our garage.

(Click here to check out the first play kitchen I did, made from an old entertainment center: Curb Trash to Play Kitchen Treasure This blog post remains my most viewed post. Can you believe I did that *before* I was on Pinterest? :-P)

This desk was perfect (sadly, I forgot to take a before picture).  The first play kitchen I did, which we still use in our home, fell apart a bit when Nick plopped it down in our yard (though it was easily repaired!). I also had to rearrange some of the wood on it. But this one...this one! We only cut about 18 inches off the bottom, cut a couple inches off the oven door, and a hole for the sink.

The sink is a stainless steel bowl. The faucet, is a wooden letter "J" from JoAnn's painted silver (silver paint = grrrrrr. It does not stick very well). And the faucet knobs and stove/oven knobs are wooden candlestick holders.

I've had a hard time convincing the boys that we cannot keep this one and that I did this one specifically to sell! :-P They want TWO play kitchens, of course.

These are really fun to put together. My husband does not think it's fun that his garage becomes my workshop. :-P

Sooooo...Play Kitchen #2 is for sale!  It measures about 4' x 2' and is about 43" high.

If you are interested in buying it for $60, leave me a comment on this blog post. If you are unable to leave a comment inside the blog, please leave a comment where I shared the link on Facebook. I will do a random number drawing if there is more than one person interested in purchasing it.

Oh, and make sure you're local to me. I hope someone wants it! :-P
Update - play kitchen is sold to the first neighbor who knocked on my door! Ha

Day at the Museum

Dum Dum did you bring me gum gum? ;-)

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to take Evander to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He has wanted to go to a museum for sooooo long, and we really meant to go this past summer but it didn't happen...until now!

I don't know if you've heard of Museum Day from Smithsonian Magazine?  No?  Well, here!: Museum Day 1,500 museums across the country opened their doors for FREE on Saturday, September 29...as long as you brought your ticket printed off the web site. :-)

Evander was so cute when I told him what we were doing for the day. He said, "I want to bring my notebook," so that he could draw pictures and take notes. When I asked him during the car ride there what he thought he would see at the museum, he said, "Ornithomimus." He said they were a small and fast dinosaur.  I just took his word for it. :-)

We arrived right when the museum opened at 10 a.m. and stayed until it closed at 5 p.m. I could not get my little boy to leave. :-) He was absolutely in his element as we looked at and read about all sorts of things including animals, habitats, artifacts, dinosaurs, rocks, gems, Ohio animals and trees and so much more. He ran from exhibit to exhibit at first because he was so excited...I really had to slow him down!

Here is some of what we did and some of what we saw:

Triceratops

Tyrannosaurus Rex

Snowshoe Hares in the live animal exhibit.

Playing at the discovery center. He promptly organized the plant eaters from the meat eaters and made the sharp-toothed dinos live far away in the mountains.

Digging for fossils.

Who can forget the giant rotating globe from their school days field trip to the museum? It's still there.

No adventure is complete without some climbing.

Giant quartz!

These polished stones are so pretty.

Mommy's emeralds.

So many stones were shaped and polished like eggs. This one looks like the earth, I think!

Mommy's favorite part was looking at all of the pretty gems and stones! These are opals.

We were addicted to...okay, and fought over who got to play...this game--Perplexus!

Watching the zoo keeper feed the raccoons.  Yes, they have raccoons. :-P

Picture isn't of great quality...but I love how this otter startled Evander!

A canoe from the 1500's! 

Having fun together.

The pendulum. 

Climbing on top of the stegosaur after a long, fun day at the museum!