Star Wars Birthday Party

For David's 7th birthday he asked for a Star Wars party. 

Chris and I love planning and throwing our kids birthday parties, and we try to make them into great memory makers for our family. 

David decided that he only wanted a smaller group of kids this year, which turned out to be a good thing for us since we decided the theme would be "Jedi Training" with everyone getting a "lightsaber".

Every "Padawan" (Jedi-in-training) gets hungry after a hard training session. So, of course we had some Star Wars snacks.

Chris had the kids doing different Jedi training. They had to fly an X-Wing and shoot the death star before they could learn to control the force. They were given a makeshift X-Wing built with the leftover duct tape and a two banana boxes. Then they learned to move things with the force (a balloon tied to some dental floss pulley).

Lightsaber training: First the kids worked at keeping a balloon in the air, which was a bit of a trick because of an unexpected breeze. After that, they learned some basic moves, and then got to practice on each other before defeating a dark Jedi (thanks Travis)

For a birthday cake, we decided to go out of our normal comfort zone and do an Ice Cream cake, Han Solo in Carbonite. The outside was chocolate melts mixed to grey, and cookies and cream inside.

 I think it is safe to say that David was happy with his cake, and his whole birthday party.

Star Wars Birthday Party

Summer Movies

This summer will be the third year we have taken our kids to the theatre for a summer movie.

It is such a great memory for us all. The kids still talk about their first time at the movie theatre when we saw the movie Toy Story 3, and then last year when we saw Brave.

Today we saw Despicable Me 2. The kids love the first "Despicable Me" and have watched it multiple time over the years.

One of Jaclyn's favorite parts in the first movie is when the youngest girl Agnes gets a new unicorn and while hugging it says "its so fluffy I'm gonna die". 

Last Christmas my brother and sister-in-law gave Jaclyn a extra large pink unicorn. After she saw it she immediately said "its so fluffy I'm gonna die". She has been sleeping with her unicorn every night since Christmas.

 

Here she is holding her big unicorn and her little one that David got her holding them at a sleepover at Gramma and Grandads. 

We along with David and Jaclyn are looking forward to watching a summer theatre movie together for many summers to come.

Summer Movies

Bubbles and Games

It was such a beautiful day today that the kids and I decided to take advantage of it and spent some time playing outside. We played with bubbles a beach ball and some games. 

The kids loved playing different games together. They played What Time is it Mr Wolf, Go-Go Stop, and by Davids request Freeze Tag.

It was such a beautiful and fun afternoon. The kids and I are looking forward to spending more and more time outside this spring.

Bubbles and Games

Fall

Here are a few pictures of the kids as they played outside this afternoon. The leaves were out and they had a great time jumping in them, covering each other and hiding.

Fall

My Rock Stars

For months we have had our Rock Band Wii game in our living room corner and both of the kids have been wanting to play with it. So on the day that we set up the game for them to play they were so excited. They each picked an instrument, David the guitar and Jaclyn on drums. Once they started playing they became comfortable with the game, really getting into the music and the "proper" Rock and Roll stance. 

We set it up so that no matter how good or bad you played the game would play through the song.

The music that they both loved to play the most was 70's rock, which made me smile after all that's one of my favorite genres of music.

Pictures taken April 9, 2012

Both claim to be rock stars, and now they can get an early start on their music careers, even if it is the Wii version of it.

My Rock Stars

Art Wall

Today the kids and I decided that we needed a mellow Saturday hanging out in our pajamas. One of our activities was coloring. Both David and Jaclyn love to color and do crafts so this ends up being a regular activity around our house.

As the pile of finished projects and coloring pages has continued to get higher I decided that it was time that we have a craft wall.

Both the kids loved helping me design our craft wall and picking out their favorite pictures to display. Our craft wall ended up spreading to cover our freezer as well. The kids are looking forward to rotating the pictures as new ones are finished and are ready for display.

Art Wall

sick kids + fevers = lots of sleep

Yesturday afternoon both of my kids came down with fevers. At 5:20pm they started to ask about going to bed and they were both in bed by 5:30pm last night. Then this morning they didn't get out of bed until 11:30am. Thats 18 hours of sleep.
Now they both did wake several times thoughout the night and morning for a drink of water or to use the bathroom but for the most part they were sleeping. You know your kids are sick and need their rest when they sleep like that.
This afternoon was spent laying on the couch watching movies or reading books. Poor kids.
I felt bad when two of the neighbor families came by and asked if we would join them at the park. Both of my kids were sad they we couldn't but then said "mom, I like the park but were to sick to leave the couch, maybe next time". This statement made me smile, they are so sensible even when their sick.

sick kids + fevers = lots of sleep

So Sweet

They hug each other often and this is just one of the times I was able to catch it on film.

So Sweet