A Birthday PS.

With lungs that full....
he could have blown out all 32 of my candles at once!

pps. next up, Sam's hockey arena birthday cake...I hope;)

Another Year

This sparkly green- eyed boy with the beautiful long eyelashes celebrated his 6th birthday today.

Upon her arrival upstairs this morning, Leah informed Sam he wasn't really 6 yet and proceeded to drill me with, "what is his actual birth time?"

After school some very special people came to help him celebrate his birthday. One being Opa, Sam's great grandfather, who always writes his cards to, "Sam the man".

Aunty Shelly couldn't stay long but long enough to share her cupcake with her oldest nephew.

The biggest cousins all sitting cool chowing down their cupcakes.

There were more special visitors but time does not permit me to share them all.

After supper - an assortment of gift bags and wrapping paper, a line up, closed eyes and a whole bunch of anticipation on both sides!

He's a precious boy. We thank God for the 6 years He's lent Sam to us. We praise Him for Sam's healthy body and mind and we pray for much wisdom to raise Sam in His ways.

Stinky

This is the boy who the second day into riding a two-wheeler, begged me to set up the jump.
He assured me he could handle it and with his cap set backwards like that I almost was ready to believe him. (for the record I did not put his hat on or suggest it's placement - I'm pretty sure he just thought all cool bike riders wear their caps backwards and he was confident enough to think he fit right in!)
It blows my mind that for a boy who fights change tooth and nail ie. training wheels to two wheels, the minute he finally caves and tries out something new he dives in head first. (which reminds me I should find the pictures of him doing flips into the pool... yup, that coming from the same kid who only 5 weeks earlier screamed his head off when I tried to help him into the pool at swimming lessons.)
He wanted to show me he was so grown up now he could even lift his bike!

But I think it was a little unexpectedly heavy :)

Was busy making supper and ignoring the giggling from the 3 boys a couple of rooms over.

Went to get my sweater when I was done, only to find one of those boys scrambling to remove a pair of my nylons as my footsteps got closer and closer to him!

breakfast quips

Mom, while patiently feeding a very non -compliant Cody his cereal finally says, "Cody, open your beak!"

To which Cody peevishly replies, "Mom, only duck-zis have beaks, I have a mouth!"

Just like Curious George

Just liked the famed bit of curiosity these two use all four "hands" for their puppet shows. I'm not too surprised there's resemblance :)

A visit, some phone calls, a delicious sub lunch, facebook comments and a fab BBQ supper with friends/family from home, Wisconsin and New Zealand made for a very special birthday. Thanks to all of you who made this day a special one for me!
Hopefully we'll get some pictures from Aunty Leanne's camera so we can share some day.

Out running again.

Today started the era of something new or actually renewed at our place.

I forgot to take a camera along (TOO bad) but Cam has finally decided he CAN and sincerely ENJOYS riding a bike without training wheels. (Is there a scientific explanation for the reason he decided he would learn on the hottest days of our summer? "Run faster, Mom, it's fun going fast!" as I huffed up and down the driveway trying to keep him from leaving half his skin on the pavement.)

The implications....

Nearly 3 years ago the twins joined our little family and seeing as Cam was nearly a baby himself, I was out of options for going for a walk. Well, I tried using the caboose but that was a little awkward and not really made for fast trotting. I also put three kids on a double wide stroller - two on the bottom and one on the top. Worked getting from the home to park to home again but again, not really cut out for anything more than strolling along at a leisurely pace.

But today? Today Cam decided he was comfortable and confident enough to handle the sidewalks and path and so we went for a walk. This was the kind of walk that I had to hustle along to make sure I was close enough to dive for him if he suddenly veered to the right and headed for the road. Sure enough, before long Cam was zipping along and I was jogging to keep up.

Jogging and huffing.

It was exciting for me. After 3 years of hard use the used stroller isn't exactly a breeze to push but to actually be out running again.... was wonderful indeed. Who knows, maybe by the time I have to help Cara and Cody learn to ride 2 wheelers I might be able to run the driveway back and forth in 30 degree weather without breaking a sweat. Maybe. :)

Ps. I ran barefoot (because I was silly enough to leave the house in flip flops) but barefoot running feels so good!

first day

we waved them off (cheerfully, we were SO excited to see the bus)

Then we went inside, got dressed, brushed our teeth and went to play. It wasn't long before Mom noticed Cara's initial game of groceries had gotten rather rambunctious and the shoppers in this store needed a LOT of groceries. Once we had emptied the pantry we set up a band .
Everyone had a few sticks and all were singing and keeping rhythm to our own tune. Mom left us be even though we saw her cringing when she saw things like cookies and marshmellows at the bottom of the stack. We were allowed to play uninterrupted until Mom started hearing the occasional giggle. The minute the giggles got more frequent she came running. We think she expected to see us jumping on the pancake mix bag totally psyched about the clouds we were making.

THANKFULLY, it was nothing like that. Only a full bag of pullups getting whipped about. Even so, Mom said we'd had enough fun and we had to bring everything back to the pantry.

Technically we brought it back, we just didn't bring it in. We went for one more dose of fun pretending to be hot shot engineers building cool towers.

Lots of fun for a first long morning. By lunch time we were really missing Sam and Leah. Especially Cam!

This afternoon...

Cody: Mom can you help me take off my shirt? Mans don't wear shirts.

They are just getting into that age of saying the most precious and precocious things.

This is after Cam, Cody, Tyler AND Cara all spent the morning running around the school bare backed for a few hours while I worked the other day. There were a few people who startled at the sight of all those boys with their nicely tanned backs but when they caught a glimpse of Cara's stark white torso.... well, they came to check with me to see if I was aware. As usual, I had to take all the credit.

The one had come to me with only a long sleeved shirt on. He was hot and so I allowed him to go shirtless. What can I say, every other kid who hasn't yet spent time under the tutelage of the adults that were walking around insisted they were cooking hot and needed their shirts off. Including my dear little daughter. And you know, she wasn't one bit worried about it.