Adam's Birthday

Apparently I'm doing things backwards today. Alex's birthday actually came first, but I figured out what pictures I want to use for Adam's first so here you go...

Adam turned 4 this year. It's still hard to believe sometimes that my BABY is 4. On the other hand it's fun to see him grow up. I really love watching him learn new things. He's been a counting fiend lately and can almost make it to 20, though sometimes 14 gets left out... He starts preschool in the fall. He's excited now, but he's still shy so here's hoping he'll like it.

Adam had been telling me for MONTHS that he wanted monkey cupcakes for his birthday just like last year. I had all the ingredients to decorate them. Unfortunately, about a week before his birthday he decided he did not want monkey cupcakes so after searching through some cake ideas he decided on a panda cake. As you can see, my work would NEVER be featured in a Betty Crocker cookbook and no bakery in their right mind would hire me. Alas, my 4-year-old LOVED it so life was good. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who notices that the panda has an abnormally large head. Not sure how that happened since I made two 9 inch round cakes. Oh well. Maybe real pandas do have very large heads??

He does have cute eyes though.

Cute pic of Adam with his itchy allergy eyes. He always starts pulling on his eyelids when they itch. Spring was not kind to him...

And this is the AFTER pic. Unfortunately, the cake was kind of gross. It sounded so good from the Betty Crocker cake book. It had Hershey syrup in the batter and everything. Never experiment with a new recipe for your kid's birthday...

We really just had a family party and watched The Gruffalo that Adam selected from Redbox. It was very cute. I think we ate chicken nuggets or hotdogs. I can't remember now 2 months later. (Yet another reason to blog as life happens, right?? Don't hold your breath.) He also got some Star Wars action figures and a Star Wars Legos set. He still plays with them, which is a good sign...

Sledding

Many years there's not much snow around here at Christmas even though it is Colorado... This year we had enough to go sledding a few days after Christmas. It was so fun.

This is poor cold Mary sitting in the van. She had fun for a while though.

Finally...

Since summer is pretty much here maybe it's high time I did a blog post about Christmas... Maybe during the long hot summer that I'm sure is coming I can look back at this and remember that it hasn't always been hot...

I don't remember if Mary or Alex gave Adam this wonderful Dollar Tree present, but the face is just PRICELESS. Alas, the gun was not. It's already broken.

Gotta love the random way Blogger uploads pictures as this should come at the end. Oh well. That's us having a blast with Just Dance on the Wii. Aren't we cute??

Alex's priceless Dollar Tree gun...

When you're a mom and you make a GROSS miscalculation when present shopping this is the face you get. I thought all the kids might have fun with super hero capes. They love watching Sky High after all. BOY was I super wrong... Needless to say, Alex now has 2 capes and Mary has 0.

At least Adam loved his.

This is the face you have 10-15 minutes after the horror present was opened... Christmas Eve was not her favorite night. (At least she didn't break her collarbone like last year though.)

 Luckily Santa was smarter than I was...

Aunt Dani came to visit. I'm pretty sure this talking Transformer helmet was her FAVORITE toy... It sounds just like Optimus Prime.

The kids had a great time buying gifts for Dani. Doesn't she look awesome with her reindeer headband?

This one's just cute.

Easter Eggs!

We had some fun coloring Easter Eggs on Thursday!

While it looks like Doug and Mary are both being careful to color half the egg, they both dropped the whole egg into the cup eventually... It was definitely not on purpose... Thankfully both were planning to put darker colors on the other side so we could salvage the whole thing...

We're not exactly artists in this family, so this is the best it got...

Maybe there's hope for us. At Walmart's clearance sale today I found a set that supposedly you can put faces on. We'll see how that goes, although it's not like anyone will remember that I said I bought it a year from now so if they don't turn out I just don't have to say anything at all.

Well time to get the kids from school. Maybe today I'll have time to put up Christmas and the boys' birthdays, but you shouldn't hold your breath.

It's Official...

I'm OLD and CRANKY...

It's true.

I've been trying to deny it, but really it's probably been coming on for a while now.

What brought me to this realization? No, my birthday wasn't this week. That was way back in December, and it wasn't even one of the BIG decade birthdays. I've got a couple more years before that. (Of course if my older sister keeps turning 39 I may never hit 40 either. I mean, who wants to be older than their older sister.)

So what brought me to this realization was...

Friday night Doug and I went to see Hunger Games. We were excited to see it. I mean we LOVED the book and its sequels. Plus everyone kept saying how closely it follows the book. That's always good, right? It was even supposed to be better than Harry Potter, which is good. I really stopped liking those movies at about #3 and haven't even seen the last few of them.

But Hunger Games was different... That's what "everyone" said, right? So in prep I even read the book this week before we went.

So excited and yet so disappointed...

I found myself calculating all the differences from the book while watching the movie. I won't even attempt to outline them, but seriously they threw in the riot in that doesn't actually show up until the 2nd book? We can't just have District 11 send Katniss a loaf of bread??? I really liked that part in the book. I could go on and on, but I'll spare you.

Worse still... I spent most of the movie feeling nauseated and dizzy. Nope, it wasn't the stomach flu. It wasn't food poisoning from the meal we'd enjoyed at Subway before the movie...

I find myself wondering if Hollywood only hires camera men/women who have ADD or if the editors just have ADD themselves. If not ADD, are they all just suffering from a bad sugar high??? Seriously, can't the camera just sit still once in a while? Does it really have to jump to a new point of view every 2 seconds?? Before my eyes can even adjust they're moving on again. Wait, did I say moving on? That makes it sound like it could potentially be a smooth transition. Really it's more like the camera was mounted on the back of a kangaroo.

However, it seems I'm the only person with these complaints. Everyone else talks about how great the movie was, which leads me to believe...

I'm just OLD and CRANKY... Sigh...

Technology...

Sometimes technology makes your life easier. Sometimes it's just a big pain in the neck...

Unfortunately, today is not one of the make my life easier days.

Today I'm fighting with my scanner. For some reason it doesn't like my 2010 tax return.

I know what you're thinking... Why would someone want to scan their 2010 tax return??

Well, no one WANTS to, but sometimes you HAVE to.

Like when you're trying to refinance your mortgage and you're self employed so you can't just fax a couple paystubs for them to verify your income. You've got to fax the whole dumb tax return for the last 2 years... So annoying.

So now instead of using my handy document feeder to scan it all without touching the scanner again I'm sitting here doing it manually page by page by page by page by page (well you get it)... The document feeder just wants to crush up about every other page.

I suppose if I'm forced to find a silver lining, at least my 2011 return scanned easily...

Now let's just hope it's all been worth it and we actually qualify to refinance. Otherwise I'll have to be mad at the whole mortgage/banking industry, and let's just say lately I'm not a huge fan of theirs.

In other news, my 3-year-old decided to heed my advice just now and ask for a snack in a polite voice instead of whining or yelling...

P.S. While typing this blog entry I had to get up about 5 times to add a new page to the scanner...

Merry Christmas!

To spread the good cheer from the season here's Alex singing the songs from his school concert. I left the video camera at home that night, but it's easier to hear him anyway. As you'll see, distractions still occur, even without a crowd of people standing up in front of me to wave to their kids and grandkids as would typically happen at a school concert.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas, especially Mom and Dad in Mexico and the Flakes in Russia. We miss you all and hope you have a wonderful Christmas.