Cade's 5th Birthday

I can't believe that my little bean is 5!!  This boy literally keeps us laughing around here.  He has a heart of gold, hilarious sense of humor and the attention span of a flea!  Sweet Cade!!

Ahhh, I guess that I should start with the birthday party that wasn't!  Angie and I had planned months ago to do a joint roller skating party with Cade and Arden.  Cade told me from the beginning that he didn't want to to go skating.  I should have listened to him!  However, he had never been skating, so I figured that if he went, he would change his mind.  So, I took off one afternoon to take Cade and Carson skating.  Disaster.  Neither one of them will be olympic speed skaters, and I can say that with 100% certainty!  Cade couldn't stay up right, Carson was crying....awful.  About an hour into this, Cade says, "Can you just call of my friends and tell them to come bowling instead?".  Broke my heart!  So, I got on the phone that afternoon and cancelled the skating party and booked the bowling party.

Luckily, Main Event had an opening the weekend before and we were able to go ahead and book that.  The boys had a blast bowling.  Here is the birthday boy!

And Cannon bowling with Poppy.

Dylan had a blast!!

After an hour or so of that, we moved on to the party room for pizza and cake.

A picture of the Star Wars Cake...guess who picked this one out all by himself?

All of his friends came and celebrated with him!  He had a blast!

After the pizza and cake, it was game time!  All of the kids got a game card to use on the 2 billion games they have there.  I think that might have been the biggest hit of the party!  Cade obviously enjoyed himself...he is a video game junky!!

Cannon was a handful, as usual.

Carson got to invite a friend, and guess who he picked?  His BFF, Jack!  They have so much fun together and are really good boys!

Cade, being Cade.

Ahh, and skee ball!  My personal fave!

Cade had asked weeks before if Ryan could come spend the night after his party.  Luckily, when we moved party weekends, that worked out!  He was so thrilled to have his pal come over for the night.  A couple of pics of them jumping off of the playhouse, what else?

Here he is on his real birthday!!  His birthday fell during the week, so I let him play hooky from school.  Unfortunately, I had to go into work for a bit that day.  He was thrilled to come along with me and had a blast at my office.  He actually behaved himself pretty much too!!  We left there around 11, picked up Carson, grabbed lunch and headed to see Toy Story 3 at the theater.  For dinner, he wanted to cook pizza for us.  He is so into cooking lately!  If I am in the kitchen, he's right there with me, asking for a job.

He also requested that we make brownies for his birthday.  So, we made brownies!

Remember that little issue we have about not being able to blow out our own candles in this family?  Notice Cade blocking Cannon's mouth. (Yes, Cannon is naked.  He was working on potty training and insisted on being totally naked at home....whatever works, right?).

Success!

And, the big gift!  A new, big boy bike!!  He had pretty much out grown his other one and needed one a size up.  He's becoming a pro on it!  If the weather would get cooler, we could get those training wheels off!!  He needs a little more practice still though.

Happy Birthday, big 5 Year old!!  We love you to pieces!!

Grammy's Birthday

Mom's birthday was on July 12th.  It fell during the week and just a couple of days before Jill, Ryan and Koen had to leave.  Since we all had to work that day, Matt just picked up dinner at Buca de Beppo on his way home and we took the easy route!  Great food and wine......no clean up!!  The boys all dined shirts off..more on that in a second.

Jill had these matching shirts made for all of the boys.  I had camo ones made for them last summer, so we tried to duplicate it again this summer.  The pictures went about as well this time as they did last time.  A year later, no improvement on the cooperation!  This is the best picture of the four of them.

This one, well..Cade's face is priceless!  He's loving this.

They are kind of facing the camera here:

Fight!  Always a physical altercation with this crew...

Almost good of the big boys

Have I mentioned how awesome Cannon's eyes are?

Jill even tried to jump in and help...it didn't work!

We decided to give up and have cake instead!!  Grammy and the boys!

Remember what I said about blowing out your own candles...it isn't going to happen!

Happy Birthday, Grammy!!  So glad that we were all in one place to celebrate with you!!

Family Pictures - July 2010

Since we only see Jill, Ryan and Koen once a year, at best, I thought that it would be great for us to have some pictures taken of all of us.  So, we braved the heat and had a photographer come out to Mom's house to take some pictures of the family.  Any of you with young kids know that taking group pictures is anything but fun!!  We were all sweating and miserable by the end.  However, we got some great pictures that I will cherish forever!!  Enjoy!  Just click on the picture and it should take you to the slide show link.

Family Pictures - July 2010

July 4th

We really had a low key July 4th this year. It fell on a Sunday, so the big Woodlands parade was on the Saturday before.  We decided to skip it this time around....it was hot!  They boys were into for about 20 minutes last year, and well, we were just lazy this time!  Plus, Jill and Ryan were here and we were trying to hang out with them as much as possible.  On the 4th, we had everyone over to our house and just grilled and hung out.  Carson and I found some blue and red hair gel the week before and it was a big hit!  Check out my crazy man with his faux hawk.

All three boys with fancy hair!  It didn't do much in Cade's surfer hair.

We then all headed up to watch the fireworks show at Augusta Pines.  That is the true honey hole for fireworks!!  There is no traffic, you pull right up into the parking lot, they have seats for you, and we even took in our own drinks.  How fantastic is that??  The Woodlands really puts on a great July 4th deal, but it requires much planning and much traffic to get in and out of there for the big show.  Our boys don't know the difference at this point, so Augusta Pines is the place to be for now!!

Here are the kids enjoying the show.

Jill and Carson.

All in all, a really tame 4th, but I sure enjoyed it!!

June in a nutshell!

Okay, I am not really sure what we did all of June!  I sure don't have any pictures to show for it.  Jill, Ryan and Koen all came in at the end of the month.  I am not really sure what we did for the first half!  Carson did football camp up at The Woodlands high school with two of his buddies from Kindergarten.  The head coach of the high school puts on the camp and these little guys thought that they were hot stuff!  I don't seem to have any pictures of that.  He also did YMCA camp in June.  The new Y in Creekside had an awesome camp for kids.  They have tee-pee's, tree houses, zip lines and all sorts of outdoor fun.  Guess what...no pictures of that either!

What I DO have pictures of is the ultimate white trash entertainment!  WATER SPRINKLERS!  Matt and I painted the kitchen a few months ago and needed just a few minutes to finish up and clean up.  We put the boys outside, but popsicles only last for so long.  SOOOO, I had the brilliant idea of turning on the sprinklers.  They loved it!!  They loved it even more because they were all fully clothed and thought that the sprinklers just happened to come on and they were in Heaven.  Little did they know, it was part of our master plan to buy some extra time!!

Anyway, when Jill and Ryan were here, one evening, we opted for the same cheap entertainment.  From the look on Koen's face, you'd think that they don't do this back at home in Germany!

Cannon, always with his Elmo ice pack.  Any little fall or bump requires this thing!

Really, Cade?

Good, cheap fun, I tell ya!

Speaking of Cade, he's a character.  He does this hysterical robot dance...I think that is what was going on here.

Always up to something!  I believe that this was the night that he referred to Poppy as a "silly old man!".  And this wasn't the first time that he has said that to Poppy.

I have no clue here.

Captain traffic!  Entertaining for adults, and kids!

One last June photo....Cannon and a disastrous snow cone feast!  There is a snow cone "stand" (I call it a trailer, but who am I to judge?) not too far from here and we went there A LOT over the summer.  The boys loved it...and we have the stains to prove it!!

The Special Tooth

This is so weird and crazy, that it deserves it own post.  Back around the end of January, we were watching football playoff games and Carson was laying in my lap.  I happened to notice a tooth poking through in the top of his mouth, right behind his two front baby teeth.  I freaked!!  I was so afraid that it was one of his permanent teeth coming in at the wrong spot, before the others even fell out.  Needless to say, we were at the dentist's office the next day.  I said that I freaked, right?  He has the straightest, most perfect baby teeth!  I KNOW that it is vain, but I was worried that they were going to have to start pulling!!  Ahhh, alas, after many x-rays, we discovered that it was just an extra tooth.  Not a baby tooth, not a permanent tooth, but a very special extra tooth!  Dr. Comeaux suggested that we let it come down a little bit more to make it easier to extract.  Well, come June, it was down enough for me!  It was in danger of sticking out past the baby teeth, so it was time for it go!  Not to mention, it was sharp!!
Carson was SUCH a trooper that day.  We went in, he got a couple of shots to numb it up and he even passed on the laughing gas.  Who does that???  Anyway, he is a tough kid.  Much tougher than me...I was feeling like I might faint.

And here is the famous tooth.  It looks like a shark tooth!!  HUGE.

Dr. Comeaux sent us home with the tooth, in this awesome case that doubles as a ring!  He wore this tooth all day, and showed EVERYONE.  At one point, it fell out in the suburban.  Matt and I were tearing it apart trying to find it.  Matt finally did.  Carson was on the verge of a major meltdown!!

The big boy, recovering nicely!  We took it easy for a couple of days and he got to eat a lot of ice cream, pudding and jello.  He was back to eating like a line backer in no time!

Maybe it was justified.  Dr. Comeaux emailed the tooth fairy and told her about it and also was kind enough to ask her to leave extra $$ for it!  Ha!  Carson wrote the tooth fairy a letter asking her if he could keep the tooth.  Here is the letter ( I can't figure out how to put a PDF on here, so I just took a picture of it):

That ice cream cone looking thing at the bottom is his drawing of the tooth.  Ha!  Well, it worked, the tooth fairy left him $14 and the tooth.  He was a happy camper!!