Brylee's Birthday

Brylee has been looking forward to her first friends birthday party since Tucker had his a year ago! Seriously! With her birthday being December 21 and most of her friends belonging to a student families, no one was here near her birthday. Well, while I was working on things for a bridal shower she reminded me that she needed to have her birthday party with friends. She was set on it being an 'art' party like Tucker had last year and that she wanted the same cake. Well I realized that I had to throw her party that weekend (5 days away) if I was going to do it because I had the bridal shower the weekend after, and then Tucker's birthday the weekend after that! So we invited the friends knowing that some sort of craft would be involved. Come Wednesday I was able to get her to agree to a pirate theme and have everyone decorate treasure boxes. 

Here are friends at the table gluing jewels and coloring their treasure boxes (candy boxes from JoAnns)

Everyone got to decorate their own pirate hat and they all sat while I read "Pirate Pete's Talk Like a Pirate" to everyone. 

After the story we needed to go on a treasure hunt but first we had to find the pieces of the treasure map amongst all the cannon fire from the enemy. 

In this first video Tucker helps me realize that the wooden chair needed to be moved to make popping the cannon balls (balloons) safer, poor kid. Thankfully, it only hurt for a moment and he went back to popping more ballons.

I eventually had to hold a pen to the balloons while the kids tried to sit on them and pop them because some of them just don't displace the air well enough

And then they headed out the door for the hunt. Tucker was the leader and it was a little hard for the 3 and 4 year olds to understand exactly what the they were doing but they were all glad to find the treasure. 

Inside the treasure box was REAL money. The children each got a turn to hunt for the money among all the beans with a blindfold on. It turned out to be rather tricky. The bigger kids tried to go too fast and dropped tons of pennies while sifting through the beans. Brylee seemed to get it pretty well and made out with 10 pennies :)

Then we all ate pizza...

and ate cake. This is a treasure chest cake and looks the coolest from the front :)

Finally she got presents. I'm thinking after this party we will tell kids to just come have fun and not bring presents because really my kids don't need more stuff. (I let them bring Brylee presents because she has seen her brothers get presents and was kind of expecting it for her first party, hopefully Gunnar will have a different view when he turns 4 in a year and a half)

The Zoo!

Since I didn't have any pictures from the last time we went to the zoo in November (as a result of losing the camera) I took the kids again. I thought the free zoo day was the 3rd Wednesday of the month but it is really the 4th! So we showed up to an almost empty parking lot. I decided that we should just pay to go through since we drove to get there and would be spending a fair amount of money in gas if we drove home and then back to the zoo again a week later. When we went to pay we even got their discounted winter rates so it really wasn't too bad! It was so nice to have the zoo to ourselves! No one got lost :)

Here is Hunter having climbed on the wall next to the entrance

Here is Tucker with the Giraffes

The Zebras were at it again and the children had fun watching them 

Hunter also successfully climbed into the Lion drinking fountain's mouth

We got to see the male lions today instead of the females and they were active and making sounds. Brylee was not too fond of it and tried to hide behind the stroller.

Brylee is at the stage of making silly faces for the camera so here she is on the trunk of an elephant statue.

How many kids can fit on the back of the rhinoceros. 

Here are my little eaglets :)

The Sea Otter cage was being cleaned this time around so the kids didn't get to see them jumping and playing. This was a favorite stop last time we were here but they enjoyed the otter statue nonetheless.

Brylee was getting a ride from the sea otter. 

And Tucker is giving him a hug.

Polar bears are so much fun!

Everyone wanted their own pictures with the tigers

And our final stop was the atrium (I think that is what it is called). It was nice that there were not lots of other kids around making it hard to see all the spiders, frogs, snakes, lizards, etc. The children really wanted me to video everything!

This was Tucker's favorite bird. He loved the brilliant yellow color. The bird however did not want to be photographed. Every time I pulled the camera out he would hide in the crack and clean out his house!

It was so fun to go and see all the animals. Most of them were active in the morning having just eaten or still eating as we walked around. It was also super enjoyable to not have tons of people so that the children could just explore without me stressing out. We ate our lunch inside the sea lion and harbor seal exhibit where it was warm, which was only possible because hardly anyone else was there. The children were able to watch the sea lions be fed and perform a few tricks for the zoo keepers too. I am debating whether or not I want to take them to the zoo again the last week of February for another free day or not...

January, is it over yet?

January sure has seemed like a really long month! The children really enjoyed their time off from school. Last year Tucker wanted to go back to school the day after Christmas and I had to convince him that we were going to do fun things. This year Tucker didn't even want to think about school during his break :)

The children spent many days or most of any given day in their pajamas

Connor got to have his first taste of baby food. We started him on bananas because that is what we had around the house. He has since tasted rice cereal and squash. After those I came back to bananas again and he now can't seem to get enough of them! This video is for those that want to see his first tastes. There is no real obligation to watch it ;)

I wanted to get a picture of tucker missing three teeth but it is amazingly hard to do

Of course Gunnar needed in on the action, not understanding what was going on he held on to his chin too!

And Brylee too of course, except you get to see her tongue

We only ever received snow on Christmas and the day after around here this season. It has been very strange. My children still remember the fantastic snow hill we had in our circle 2 seasons ago. Tucker took it upon himself to start building one this year. He asked me for help and since I like shoveling snow I opted to help him build his own snow hill instead of shovel around the entire circle. Thankfully Bro. Craig our neighbor has also been desiring lots of snow this season and he gladly helped build the hill after coming out with his daughter and their sled. The hill was small but perfect and satisfying for our children. They were able to enjoy it for a couple of days before it got too worn out and eventually destroyed.

Here is Tucker taking a turn down the hill

Here is one of Brylee's attempts

And here is Hunter :)

Connor is almost always sporting a bib these days because he is a slobber monster! He generally has a bib on top of his shirt which is worn over his onsie and he loses his layers as they soak up all his drool so that by the end of the day he is only wearing his onsie which is generally soaked and he is ready for his pajamas at night!

Connor also learned how to sit up this month. He loves having this new position to explore the world around him and has led to much more happy time on the floor and less time in my arms :) Gunnar was very excited about the camera being out and really wanted a video of his Zebra so when your view is blocked by something black and white know that is Gunnar :) I sure do love my children!

Here is Hunter with the blanket that I made him for Christmas, the picture doesn't really do it justice. His was the most frustrating one to sew out of all of them and I also expected him to be the biggest critic. Thankfully, he was super happy with what I made for him!

And in case you were wondering he can still fit in a hampwe

We skyped with Bryant's parents so they could watch all the children open the gifts that they sent. It was fun to be able to share the moment with them (and with some of the kid's cousins since Grandma and Grandpa were babysitting) Gunar was super excited to receive his own bike and when I asked him, "what do you say?" expecting him to say thank you he looked at his bike, pointed, and excited exclaimed "MY BIKE!!!" the following morning his first question to me was "build my bike?" Thankfully, it was super easy to put together. The tires were already inflated and put on the wheels!

Here is a video of Gunnar on HIS bike 

Hunter also received money to put toward the purchase of a "big boy" bike, one with a kickstand. the smallest bike with a kickstand is 20 in which is a little too big for him. Personally, I didn't want him to outgrow another bike so quickly but I also didn't want to to regress because the bike was too big so I let him decide what to do. He opted for the 20 in so he could have a kickstand. He insisted that we go to Toys R Us first believing them to have the bike he wanted and not trusting me that they would be above his price range. He ultimately got one from Wal-Mart, which came already assembled! It took him a few times of falling to learn how to catch himself, since he can't touch the ground while on the bike and it took some practice to learn how to get it started on his own but he figured it all out in only 2 days!

Here is a video of an afternoon in the sun with Brylee and Hunter riding their bikes. The camera is wobbly because I am holding Connor and trying to do things with this new camera. I like how I can zoom while recording with this camera, that is a feature I didn't have with my last one :)

Here is Gunnar hanging out in Connor's exersaucer

Not the best lighting for a picture but you can kind of see how Connor is almost as big as Brylee!

Connor began scooting backward this month which has led to some interesting problems for him :)

This is a picture taken by Brylee (along with about 50 more of random things around the house) while I was pretending I wasn't a mom for about a half hour. It's good to know it only took 6 shots to capture this beautiful face :)

Connor got his first tooth last week! It sure did make him happy and helped him sleep better for two nights to have it through. He is now working on his second bottom tooth. Hopefully, we will get another couple days of reprieve before his top teeth start cutting their way through.

Brylee got to have her 4th birthday party with friends yesterday, I'm throwing a bridal shower for my neighbor this coming Saturday, the following weekend is Tucker's birthday and then we get to go on vacation a week later. All this mingled with volunteering in Tucker's class and Hunter's class once each every week, watching someone else's child twice a week, worrying (and likely over stressing) about the measles 'outbreak' that happened just up the road this month, and everything else that just comes with normal life has kept this month feeling super full and there is still 1 week left! I eagerly look forward to being done with the bridal shower and am grateful that Tucker is not having a friend birthday party this year!

New Years Eve

This is the first year that my children have had any desire to stay up for the new year. I consider myself lucky to have made it 6 years with children and not had them want to stay awake so I gave in this year, mostly. I did not want to deal with RIDICULOUSLY over tired children and I remember my mother setting the clocks ahead for the "little" kids so I gave in slightly. I successfully set the clocks forward two hours throughout the day without being noticed. changing our large kitchen clock was always the trickiest!

We have some friends with children that asked if we had any new years plans so they came over to enjoy the East Coast new year with us.

I also purchased a new camera from best buy because not having a real camera (and only pictures from Bryant's or my phone) was very frustrating, plus Best Buy had them on sale. Now I have an even better camera than the one I lost (it was 5+ years old) for under $100. I now have 10x zoom instead of 4x and I have HD video capabilities :P

Here are some pictures of the evening

Malisa with Connor, he even smiled for the camera.

Around "11" (really 9pm) Tucker went and got his blanket and pillow and started relaxing on the couch, he passed out by 9:30 and eventually took himself to his room to sleep.

Here are our friends. I enjoy this family because our children generally get along and we as a adults can just sit and chat or relax or play games and have fun doing it.

After ringing in the new year it was melt down central as tired children were told to get ready for bed without getting any additional sugar. I realized how grateful I am that Tucker was able to recognize that his body was tired and put himself to bed rather than try to stay up all night long. I was also glad to have all the children in bed by 10:30 pm! Bryant and I soon followed, although I think we were still awake talking in bed at midnight and were able to bring in the new year. I think this is probably the first time we have stayed up for the new year since being married. It is funny how things change when you get married and then have kids. Without kids, I'd probably be some old lazy person who rarely did anything fun or exciting, or maybe not, who knows.

Sledding

We borrowed our neighbor's sled again this year and went sledding the Saturday after Christmas. We even met up with one of our friends :)

Here are a couple of our sledding excursions. Everyone had a great time and was sad when Connor woke up and started making pooping sounds that had to end our fun because I forgot the wet wipes expecting him to sleep for 1.5 hours at least. Silly me