Sweet New Ride

Mike went out and bought us this Honda Metropolitan scooter today! This is just a pic from a Honda website, but ours is identical. How cute is this thing??

A few weeks ago, I was driving home from work and saw an ad for a moped and it suddenly hit me that we should buy one. This way, I can take the moped to work and leave the van home with Mike so that he and the boys aren't trapped at home. The scooter was very inexpensive and the insurance is about a hundred bucks a year. It gets a hundred miles per gallon, too! Excellent!

This solves many problems for us. I won't be able to take the moped on days with, say, snow or whatever, but I can get a good set of rain gear (or borrow Mike's!) and I will be fine. Mike is excited, too, not just that he gets to have a car during the day but because he had a moped a long time ago and is looking forward to cruising around on our cute new Metro!

Oregon Coast Trip

It's My Party...I'll Get Mad If I Want To!

Here is my sweet, adorable, huggable, kissable baby boy's reaction to the Happy Birthday song at his birthday party.

Gift Excitement

All Keaton Wants For Christmas Is...

...yup, you guessed it: his two front teeth! He lost his other front tooth this morning. The Tooth Fairy now must come to the beach to pick up the tooth! Lol. This makes five baby teeth gone for Keats.

Grumpy Birthday Boy

Pretty funny, huh? ;o)

Pool Party

I'm only going to post the pics right now. I am BEAT from working all day...crazy hospital!! Tomorrow we leave for two nights at the beach so I just wanted to get these on here. I'll talk about Sully's party later on in the week. :o)

Okay...I'm up waaaaayy too early today so I guess I'll fill in the info about the party...

It was fun!

In attendence were: Jamey, Phoebe, Morgan, Nora, and Zanden. Along with them were the grown-ups & wish-they-were-grown-ups: Debbie, Ginger, Jules, Sam, Erin, and Mason.

Plus Mike, Patti, Keats, and Sully....so we had plenty o' people!

There was no form to the party, just pool time followed by eating time followed by present time followed by cake & ice cream time. ;o) The weather was much warmer than I thought it would be so it was a perfect day for a pool party. I found two pools on clearance so we had those two, one partially-popped pool that served as the slide pool, and the slip n' slide. I grilled some pineapple, hot dogs, and burgers, plus there was a tomato/cucumber salad and chips.

The cake was pretty cute. Not bad for my first attempt at getting really fancy (the sandbox cake was soooooo easy and required minimal creativity so I don't count that one!) and I learned some things about cake decorating in the process. Mostly I learned that I bought too much candy! Lol. Mason was kind enough to take a bunch off my hands though. Such a selfless, thoughtful kid, huh? ;o)

For gifts, Sully received a rocket launcher (totally fun!), Star Wars tent (which Keaton has hijacked already), a big red ball (awesome especially since our other big one popped a month ago), two seek n' find books, a bouncy cartoon character (the kittens freak out over this toy!), color/sticker book & crayons, a package of five Matchbox vehicles, and a little electric keyboard. I'll post little videos of how excited he was to open each gift, too.

We did a "practice run" on the gift opening early in the day. You see...Sully gets mad when you choose the song rather than His Controllingness choosing the song. So, I knew he'd get mad when we sang Happy Birthday to him at the party. We bought him two gifts so I decided to let him open one in the morning...after suffering through a rendition of the birthday song.

True to Sullivan Patrick form, he was pissed!! He yelled at us to stop, but we continued. Afterword I told him that we sing and then he gets the good stuff...hoping that he'd remember it later in the day.

(He didn't. Look for video coming soon.)

So the first pic shows him opening a Wonder Pets backpack & lunchbox set. He was thrilled, as you can see.

I baked three cakes so that I could have one extra in case I messed up. I cut the edges off the cake so that it was just the soft, moist cake, and set aside the pieces. When the boys asked for some, I initially thought to say "no way" but realized it really wasn't much worse than having a bagel or something for breakfast: eggs, oil, flour...so I let them go for it. Here's Sully enjoying a very big piece of plain cake.

Keats, hamming it up.

Close-up of the pool occupants. They are mini-Teddy Grahams. Three are sitting in Gummy Lifesavers and two are on little pieces of sour fruit roll. The blue pool water is Jello.

Not exactly as I wanted it to turn out but it sure was fun!

Sharks circling the cake...much like the kids were just before it was serving time!

This is Morgan, my friend Ginger's daughter. Morgan was born exactly six weeks after Sully, so she turns three on August 29th.

Phoebe on the left, Keaton on the right, and Zanden diving into the water. Brave boy!

Phoebs, getting ready to slide into the water.

Keaton and Zanden. Zanden is just two months younger than Keats. They went to preschool together for about a year. I've mentioned Zanden before, but he is the son of Michelle & Sharrie's cousin, Sam.

The birthday boy giving a sweet smile!

Mason & Jamey trying out the slip n' slide.

The crowd playing in the pool.

Daredevil.

Keaton, Jamey, and Zanden. Jamey & Zanden are second-cousins. :o) The three of them played so well together! Actually, all the kids did great and had a fun time.

Once Sully noticed all the big boys sitting on the trampoline he just had to sit with them!

(Notice how good Zanden is at smiling for the camera?? Awesome!)

Morgan, the swimsuit model. Look at the sweet waves in her hair...

Here is Nora playing with the dry-erase board. Nora is the daughter of my friend Jules. Nora turns two in September.

These are Sullivan's very favorite book-books. They are "seek & find for toddlers" and are big board books with hidden pictures. He knows them all by heart (yes, even the two he just received for his birthday) but that doesn't stop him from doing them over & over & over again.

Aunt Debbie really got into the job of helping Sully with his gifts! Love the expression on her face. I can never help the boys with their presents because I am the one taking the pictures! Aunt Dobbie (how Sully pronounced it at first) was nice enough to hold back the swarm of kids while Sully tore open his loot.

Phoebe & Ginger. Phoebs has gorgeous eyes, huh?

I found some neato Crayola window crayons and let Erin decorate all the windows downstairs. This creation was done by Debbie, then Erin added her stuff, and Mason filled in the bottom part.

Sending Two Out With A Bang

Sully pretty much sent age two away just like he brought it in: MESSILY!!!

I made some homemade whipped cream today and gave him some in a bowl of fresh blueberries. He was SO mad at me for putting the berries in there...he wanted to eat the cream by itself! So, being very handy as he is, he simply put aside the spoon and pulled out all the berries. Licking the bowl entertained him for a good five minutes...cleaning up the mess entertained me for at least fifteen minutes. ;o)

Good to the last drop!!

Sully's New Bed

I bought Sullivan's new birthday bed at IKEA today. It is adorable!

Soccer Shots

Caught a few pics tonight at soccer. Keats did really well. He's much too focused on winning, in my humble opinion, but he does a good job.

I think these top two pics perfectly showcase Keaton's personality. He falls exactly in between the two pics as far as his personality goes: he's one part lean, mean sports/rockstar machine, one part goofy five-year-old boy who loves to use the word poop in sentences ;o)

Run, Forrest!!!

So, last week Daddy-o promised Keats that he would buy him some Gatorade before practice tonight. Words to the effect of "Gatorade will make you run faster, score more goals, acheive new heights in sports" were passed between the two, and there was absolutely no way Keaton was going to let Daddy forget about the 'ade.

We stopped at the store on the way to practice and Mike discovered that all the 'ades have high fructose corn syrup in them. So he shopped around and found this stuff that has no sugar in it. He brought it to the car and told the boys it was a "new kind of Gatorade." They were thrilled, of course, and none-the-wiser.

The problem was that it was really, really hot tonight at practice, and this stuff was carbonated. The coach has the kids chug water every ten minutes or so. Keats would run over and chug some of this soda and just about burst from all the bubbles. Next time we will have to search for something else about which to lie to our children.

Mike took Sully to walk across the footbridge during practice. Here they are returning at long last.

Sully is so funny. A drink, his soccer ball, and TWO Hidden Pictures magazines. Lol.

This is probably the very last picture where Sully will look at all babylike to me...

...and I love this pic but had to change it to B&W because for some reason his teeth were gross yellow-orange in this shot.

Oh, he wanted to play with Keaton's team soooooooooo much!

Here, I was trying to get the color of his eyes in the sunshine. As good as I could get...

Well, I don't have any pics to post...or anything interesting to write, really. We haven't been doing a whole lot of anything. I was "grounded" last week so didn't get out much, plus Keats has had Safety Town from 9-1130 every day so that limits what we can do.

Today, while Keats was in class, Sully and I went to the store to buy the makings of his birthday cake. I bought about 96 pounds of candy, in all shapes, colors, and sizes, plus three boxes of cake mix, two jars of frosting, and three big packs of blue Jello. My thought is to create a swimming pool cake since the only relative theme the party has is splashing in the water out back. I bought extra cake mix in case I mess up. (Highly likely.) The blue Jello will be mixed with Knox gelatin to make it firm and then I'll fill up a "pool" that I've scraped out of the top of the cake. This is the plan, anyway. I bought candies to cover the outside of the cake so I suppose I can cover up any boo-boos with candy. ;o)

I can't believe Sullivan is already turning three! I really, really tried to pay attention to his babyhood but it managed to scream right past me in a blur of sleepless nights, diaper changes, and trips to the pediatrician. *sigh* We are giving Sullivan an electric keyboard for his birthday. I almost bought a mini drum set...just like a real set only on a smaller scale so the boys could actually play it, but I just couldn't do it. I know they'd love it and that music is supposed to be so good for their brains...but it would bother my brain too much to have to listen to it! The keyboard has volume control so I know I can handle it. And Sully will love to play lots of music, I'm sure. ;o) I also found a Wonder Pets backpack (little, tiny toddler-sized) that came with a free, matching lunch box. He'll be very very excited for those things.

We're just having a barbeque. Hopefully the sun will shine because I plan to have the little pools ready to go and the slip n' slide going. Today is overcast, yesterday we had rain & thunder like mad...you just never know what you're going to get around here. At least for Keaton & I, the December kids, we ALWAYS know to expect it to be bad weather. ;o)

Keats is enjoying Safety Town. On Friday the police department came to talk with them and today it was the fire department. I posted this on Facebook already but Keaton had a funny take on the intructions for if he were to catch on fire. He thinks it is "stop, rock & roll" rather than stop, drop, and roll. He'll even show you the right moves...but still calls it stop, rock, and roll. LOL. Funny kid. Rock & roll on the brain.

Sully just now decided no nap for the day so I must be these boys out of here to play. Indoor playpark, here we come!