Happy Birthday Anna!!

Anna turned four years old today!!  I really thought we would have the new baby before her birthday but our new little guy isn't ready to be born yet...so we had Anna's birthday without baby.  Here is Anna with her 4 shirt and 4 crown from Aunt Angie.  She told everyone who asked about it that her Aunt Angie made it for her.  In the morning we had to go to the hospital for a non-stress test on the baby (he passed!) and then we went to Focus on the Family, an indoor play place.  Anna wanted to have french fries for lunch so we got Happy Meals (a special treat).  It was a fun morning!

I bought a cake for her instead of making one 'cause I didn't know what our baby situation would be when her birthday came.  Here is her cake!  Anna wanted to have homemade pizza and bread sticks for dinner.  We made the dough in the breadmaker and Anna helped me make the pizza.   She wanted cheese and pineapple pizza.  Scott was sorry we didn't throw some pepperoni in there.  :)  The pizza turned out good and we ate it while watching Mary Poppins.

 And then we had cake!

 Here's Anna blowing out the candle!

 The cake was good.

 Matthew had a green frosting cupcake.

 We did a little scavenger hunt for presents.  Matthew helped.  :)

Anna was so cute opening her presents.  She liked everything she got and kept saying these were the presents she was dreaming of.  :)

 Green mouthed Matthew watches Anna open gifts.

 More presents

Grant came to check out some gift opening too.  It was a fun birthday!  Happy 4th Birthday Anna!!  We love you!!

Grant's Baby Quilt

Grant's baby quilt is finally finished!!  My mom is here and she helped me finish it by tying it and finishing the sides.  Thanks mom!  Grant really loves the quilt and will lay down and snuggle in it.  It even got finished before the new baby came - thanks mostly to the baby being very late, but still.  I'm glad it's done.  Now I can I start thinking about a quilt for the new baby.  See Anna's baby quilt HERE and Matthew's HERE.

A Proper Tea Party

We had a tea party birthday for Anna today.  Her real birthday is August 8th, but I thought it might be better to try and have the friend party before the baby comes.  We had the party on a Friday when Scott was at work (so he got off easy on this one) but my mom was in town to help me, so that was nice.

First we decorated princess crowns.  Here are some of the girls working on it.  We also beaded some teapot necklaces.  I was impressed that the little girls could focus on the crafts for so long.  It was definitely a different dynamic than a similarly aged group of boys.

And speaking of boys, Matthew found an alternate use for the connecting spring: mustache!  Matthew was the only boy at this shindig, except Grant, who slept through most of it.

We played pin the cherry on the cupcake, which they seemed to like.  We also played a sort of game of musical cupcakes where the girls jumped from cupcake to cupcake every time we said "Fancy" while reading Fancy Nancy.  We made it a non-elimination event since most of our crowd was pretty young.

Then we had our tea.  It was made up of fruit, cheese and crackers, ritz sandwiches with ham and swiss inside, PB&J and turkey and cheddar sandwiches cut into shapes, cream cheese and jam spirals on tortillas and punch for our "tea."  The kids seemed to like the food...although we had lots of leftovers.  

Here we are at the table getting ready to eat!

Anna was very excited to pretend pour the tea for everyone.  My mom and I did the real pouring which there was a lot of since the tea cups were so small.  It was fun though.

Everyone eating some lunch.

And Anna getting ready to blow out some candles.  We had tiny cupcakes in place of a cake.

Blowing out the candles.

And along with the cupcakes we decorated some cookies.  The cookie decorating was big hit with everyone!  The kids were all so sweet and quiet during most of the party, but after cupcakes and cookies things got a bit more rowdy!  Everyone had fun hitting balloons around for the last few minutes.  All in all I think it was a successful party!

After the party was all over we let Grant have a cupcake.  He really went to town on it!

Happy (early) Birthday to our little Anna!

Anna at T-Ball

Truth be told, I had reservations about Anna playing T-Ball.  I imagined there would be a lot of resistance to going, wearing a uniform, doing what the coach said etc.  Most Saturdays (when we have T-Ball) she will whine and tell me she doesn't want to go to T-Ball, but once we get there she does great.  She jumps right in and participates and does everything the coaches ask.  I have been pleasantly surprised.  Here she is playing pitcher with the coach.  She did a good job fielding the ball and throwing it to first base.  Good job Anna!!

 Here she is in line to bat (she is second in line here with her pink mitt).

 Anna waving and waiting to bat.

 Here's Anna at bat.  She does a good job hitting the ball off the tee.

And she always does a great job running the bases.  Sometimes kids that age get confused about where or when to run, or they try to run after the ball after hitting it, but Anna knows all about base running.  Hooray!  Here she is running into home.  So Anna has been doing great at T-Ball.  I thought she would have an even better time playing soccer in the fall, but she has already told me she doesn't want to play soccer.  :(

Matthew likes T-Ball also and does a good job.  His T-Ball team is a bit more competitive than Anna's, but he 's still enjoying it and having a good time.  And Matthew says he wants to play soccer in the fall, which I was also unsure about since he has not enjoyed playing soccer in the past.  So we'll see how it goes.  :)

About Mr. Grant

A video of Grant telling us a story that only he can understand.

He does this a lot.

Grant is just over 15 months old.  When the new baby comes (in a few weeks) Grant will be about 16 months old.  He is full of energy and loves running around screaming with his brother and sister (not my favorite thing, but at least he's happy).  He also likes to wrestle with them and I'll often hear cries for help from the older kids like, "Help, Grant's sitting on my head!"  He's not afraid to jump right in there with them.  He's giggly and wiggly, likes dancing to music and is happy most of the time.

Here's Grant wanting to bowl just like the big kids

He doesn't look too happy here.

He wants to do everything the older kids do.  I have to force my two older ones to wash hands after going to the bathroom sometimes but when I do, Grant is right there waiting in line for his turn to wash hands.  He's so small I have to lift him up to wash, but he understands when I say "go dry your hands on the towel" afterward.  If the bigger kids go outside to play, Grant will make a beeline to his shoe bin (he knows shoes are required to go outside).  Usually he comes back with one of Matthew's shoes instead of two of his own, but he's trying. 

I've been putting him down to nap in the baby swing lately 'cause he can just swing and go to sleep without having to take him upstairs and leave the other kids unattended.  Now when he gets really tired or grumpy he'll walk over to his swing and fuss and jabber to get in.  I've never seen a kid that age ask to take a nap.  Also if he has a dirty diaper and I don't notice right away, he'll bring me a diaper and the container of wipes and jabber at me.  He likes being clean!

He also jabbers A LOT.  He talks and talks and has been doing it for a while.  He doesn't make much sense.  He can sort of say "All done" and "Down" and things like "Mama" "Dada" and "night night" but the rest is gibberish, squeals and screams.  This kid screams A LOT. I think he's influenced by his sister.  :(  When she stamps her foot and screams (as in the start of a tantrum) Grant will do the same thing.  Again, not my favorite behavior.  So he doesn't talk that much yet.  I thought he would have more words by now since he jabbers so much, but he does understand a lot.  Most things I ask him to do, he can do.  He spit some cheese on the floor the other day and I asked him to please go throw it away in the trash, and he went right away and did it.

Grant also thinks he needs to do what the big boys do.  When Matthew plays Legos at the big table, Grant tries hard to climb up on a chair to watch him.  He will then offer him random Lego pieces to help him build.  When we go to Matthew's T-Ball games and practices, Grant wants to run out on the field with all the big kids and collect balls and bats.   He likes playing with cars and "vrooming" them across the floor or letting them drive down our Little People garage.

So Grant is still our little guy, but growing bigger each day.  I can't believe he is going to be a big brother in just a couple weeks.

Here's Grant "asking" to get in his swing for a nap.

He knows when he needs a rest.

I like to go bowling

We spent the afternoon bowling a few days ago with some friends.  This was before Scott left town.  Here's Anna.  She inadvertently matched with her bowling ball.  She picked her own outfit, as she almost always does.  This is a mumu we got in Okinawa.  It finally fits her.  She could just barely carry that 6 lb ball but she was having lots of fun.

She was also very supportive of Matthew's bowling.  Matthew sometimes used the ramp to roll it down and sometimes did it all himself.

 Grant was excited to be there.

He so wanted to be a part of it all...as he always does these days.  Matthew was nice enough to let him bowl a frame using the ramp.  Grant loved it!

Here's Anna focusing.  She was smart about using the ramp and would adjust which way it was pointing based on what pins she had left.  I think she bowled a spare at one point!

 Here she is hefting it up on the ramp.

 And watching it go!

 She was having a good time!

 Matthew getting ready to bowl.

And the reason for the get together was to celebrate our little friend, Luke Keller's birthday party.  He is turning 4!

Luke is the son of Scott's college buddy who is also stationed here in Colorado Springs, but only for another month or so.  We had a lot of fun hanging out with them. Happy Birthday Luke!!  Thanks for all the bowling fun.

Fire and Rain

It's been a crazy summer so far in Colorado Springs.  When we came back from our vacation in Oregon the weather was nearly 100 degrees and stayed that way for weeks with no rain, unusual for Colorado Springs summer.  As we drove back into town we passed a few wildfires but Colorado Springs was all clear.  About a week later the Waldo Canyon fire started, just outside of Colorado Springs.  Here is our first view of it from our window on Saturday June 23rd.  We didn't know what was going on at this point.

 On that same Saturday - the first views of the fire.

These pictures aren't very good but these were taken a few days later on June 26 when the fire came down the front side of the mountains into Colorado Springs and burned over 300 homes.  You can't see anything really - my pictures aren't great, but it looked like lava flowing down the mountain.  Real scary.  This was on the west side of Colorado Springs (up by the mountains and on the west side of interstate 25).  We live on the east side of 25 about 7 or 8 miles from the homes that got burned.

 June 26

More of June 26

The weather conditions were really bad for nearly two weeks.  Hot, dry and windy.

Then we finally got some rain and cooler temps.

On July 6 we got some rain...some good rain.  Here are the kids checking it out.  The firefighters made a lot of headway on the fire containment once the weather changed.  

 Then on Sunday, July 8 we got more rain.  A downpour of epic proportions and some hail to make up for the dry weather we had so far.  Unfortunately it rained so hard water started pouring from one of our window wells into our basement guest room.

Here is the wet carpet area (under the table there too) after we moved all the boxes and things away.

Luckily this happened on the day before Scott had to leave for his deployment training - he had to go in the basement a lot to get his gear together that day.  He had been down in the basement earlier in the day and all was well.  When he went down after all the rain he noticed the wet carpet.  If it had been another day I don't know how long it would have been til I went down there and noticed the flooding.  We don't go down in that room much.

Here you can see some sand on the inside of the window well

 So we moved all the boxes off the very wet carpet.  Some stuff was damaged, but it seems like nothing too crucial so far.  Scott dug out the window well on the outside which had filled with sand causing water to come in at the window, so hopefully we won't have that problem again...although I'll be watching it every time it rains.  We used towels and wet vac to get up a lot of water but the carpet is still wet.

 One of the wet boxes after we moved it.

 Scott vacuuming the wet carpet.  It was amazing how much water came up in that vacuum.

 Boxes and storage stuff I moved into the hallway.

The next morning we took Scott to the airport super early so we've be battling the wet carpet on our own for a while.  The kids helped me sop up more water with towels and we started running a fan in there.  The smallish fan we had seemed to be doing nothing so Monday I went to Walmart and bought two big cheap box fans.  I also vacuumed some more with the wet vac and sopped up the carpet with more towels.  After running the big fans for about 24 hours (by Tuesday afternoon) I started to notice the carpet getting drier and smelling less.  I'm hoping this means we can save the carpet and it won't be ruined.   In any case, we are happy for the rain (the fire is now 100% contained) and happy that we noticed the flooding sooner rather than later.  If I didn't notice the flooding til Monday morning after Scott was gone or later in the week and found everything wet and moldy down there I think I would have been pretty discouraged.  Now I think we have a fighting chance of getting things back to normal.  We'll see how it goes.