Birthday Sleepover Success!

Well, we survived our first foray into little boy sleepovers!

The kids had a blast. They played a ton of Wii, watched Pokemon movies, played laser tag, and ate a shameful amount of junk food. They say they were up until about 1:30, although they were pretty quiet after about 11. 

In an attempt to keep the little ones out of their hair (because they wanted to be RIGHT in the middle of it all), we set up a mini sleepover in Simon's room and hooked up a little tv to the x-box up there. They had their own popcorn and glowsticks. They were (mostly) content…. it took some convincing that their setup was as cool as Ben's. 

Ben's two little friends, Sujay and Tommy, are such nice kids.  I like them a lot! They've been over separately, but never together. It's a great little trio.  I fed them a pancake breakfast this morning and Tom just left to take them all home. They were still chattering about Pokemon.  

Now… to air out the junior frat house basement. LOL.   

Camp Gymtastic!

Last day of Camp Gym-tastic. My kids love this little camp! :)  Only one of the summer for us!

Water World....

We had SO much fun at my Aunt Gail's pool yesterday with Luke and Faith! And I got to try out my new waterproof iPhone case which, thankfully, works... ;)

Nanee and Pap's Egg Hunt

On Saturday, after naps, we all headed over to Nanee and Pap's for the annual cousins egg hunt. We've come a long way since it was just poor, lonely Ben running around finding eggs while a dozen of us followed him around. It's way more exciting now! ;)

Excuse Ben's Jedi robe... for some reason, it was integral to his wardrobe that day...

Driving Me Up a Wall...

Ben's party was SO much fun. The people at EarthTreks are amazing with the kids and did a fantastic job. Easiest birthday party I've ever thrown. (and SO much quieter than the bouncy places... OMG)

The kids had a blast. We ended up having eleven guests plus Ben and Simon... we lost a couple to a stomach virus that morning, sadly. It was nice that this year, Ben chose his favorite friends instead of just "the entire class". It was clear the kids who came wanted to be there and really liked him. :) That was nice to see.

The group ate 36 bags of Gushers in 30 minutes. I paid for that later when we went out to dinner and Ben and Simon literally were out of their minds with sugar. I've never seen anything quite like it. I'm sure it didn't help that they got into the goodie bags on the way back and ate rock candy and pop rocks without me realizing it. So yeah... sugar high to the max.  Yikes.

The employees at ET were so good with the kids. They made them feel safe (we didn't have a single kid not try to climb). They were really fun and energetic and they played awesome games with them.

Good thing we liked it because Simon has an identical party booked for HIS birthday. LOL.

Anyway, here are few pics. Videos coming soon after I extract them from my phone. :)

Cousins Playdate...

It's so nice to have cousins who live close by. And they live even closer now, which is awesome. Next goal is to get our other sister-in-law to move nearby and basically have a (very spread out) family compound.

Simon and Anastasia are 3-1/2 months apart in age, and did not used to get along as well as they do now. This was mostly due to Simon and his grumpy phase he went through between age 2-4... also that they used to see each other so often at family events that we're pretty sure they saw each other as siblings.

Thankfully, he has mostly grown out of his grumpy phase at this point and, because we're all so much busier these days, there are WAY less full-family events --  so now they are good friends. In fact, Anastasia is one of our favorite people to have over for a playdate because they enjoy each other's company so much these days.

Some recent group playdates have not gone so well for Simon. Oddly, despite his "big and tough" exterior, we have discovered that hanging with groups of boys, especially older ones, is not really his thing. We had a near disaster the other day where we went over to a friend's house and a tackle football game erupted with the older boys. He was SO on the outs of that situation...  probably would have walked home if he knew the way. (tough situation given that I have one son who was SO happy to be there and all about this kind of playing and a third who is happy to be right in the middle of the big boys!)

Anyway, so I asked to borrow my niece after school one day and yesterday, I brought her home from school with the boys. They were SO excited. The two of them immediately disappeared into Simon's room where they built Legos for awhile. Then they moved on to the downstairs and built pillow forts for a solid hour or so. They drew some pictures, cut out some snowflakes and then, after dinner, spent the rest of the time building with magnet blocks.  Peas in a pod.

At dinner, they talked about school and their favorite things and who in their respective classes breaks the rules and doesn't listen. Such a funny conversation. :)

I'm sort of hoping some of Anastasia's independence will rub off on Simon. She does absolutely EVERYTHING for herself... it fascinates me. Is it the difference between girls and boys? Or just personality? Or maybe I'm just a lazy mom... LOL.  I don't know... but yesterday, she went to put her mittens on and I watched her lay them out in front her her and compare hands to mittens to figure out which way they went on. So. cute.  Whatever it is, I'm hoping Simon picks it up! ;)

Anyway, so we had fun... I took her home a little earlier than I was going to because she seemed a little worn out from a case of the sniffles and wasn't as perky and chatty as she usually is. Thought maybe she had had a long day. It was such a nice couple hours though!

The Friend Zone...

I don't know if I have written much here about Ben's friend issues. It's part of a longer story that I'll type out someday... but, at any rate, the short version is that I started noticing last year that Ben seems to think everyone is his friend and that isn't always the case.  I remember we had one kid over who he had been talking about for a few months after starting school. I listened to them play and overheard the kid making fun of Ben to his face and Ben didn't get it. (not like goofy boy stuff either... really mean stuff... I couldn't wait for him to leave! Needless to say, he has not been back.)

Then came Ben's 8th birthday party, where we invited the entire class because it was at a place that let us have 25 kids and Ben insisted he wanted the whole class to come because everyone was his friend. I got to see first-hand the reality... some of those kids were NOT so nice.

It has made me wary of when he comes home talking about any "new friends" or "best friends". He has  already been through one this year who was his "closest friend" who started taking things out of his desk and breaking them on purpose and then turned on Ben even more a month later and started making fun of him.

Thankfully, (I think?) Ben seems to be starting to pick up on when he's being made fun of... it just takes him longer than most and it has to be pretty obvious.

He is starting to be hurt by it, which is sad, but, on the other hand, I'm glad he is learning how to tell when someone isn't actually being kind to him.  There were some really heartbreaking rough patches last year where he stuck with kids I knew were using him as the butt of their jokes simply because he didn't realize what was going on and they thought that was funny.  We call those kids "the turds" now and I try to shoot lasers at them with my eyes whenever I see them.

Fast-forward to a couple months ago. One of Ben's teachers asked me if he had mentioned a little boy he had been talking to a lot. I told her that no, Ben hadn't said anything about him at all. She said  I should ask Ben about him --  that they had some things in common and really seemed to have struck up a friendship that she had been trying to encourage, even to the point of overlooking the fact that neither one of them ever got their morning work done anymore because they were too busy chatting with each other.  She said she thought their friendship was more important. (I love that!)

I was excited, but cautiously so based on our past experience with Ben's other "friends". I started asking him about the other boy and Ben insisted he was his closest friend. In fact, as the weeks went on, I started hearing more and more about him and he started asking to have him over to play.

Again, we've been burned a time or two with playdates, so I started doing some research. (it's a small town, wasn't hard to find people who knew the kid's story) Apparently the family life at his house is less than ideal... like WAY less than ideal. Really awful stuff no kid should have to deal with. Also, I'm told he's a nice kid, but a dare-devil with little supervision.  One mom told me he came to their house once and she found him outside with a golf club hitting balls toward their windows. I was warned by multiple people to NEVER ever under any circumstances let Ben go over to his house and play. Another mom told me he made her younger son cry. I've been told not to get involved with the mom, but also that she's so much of a flake, that won't likely be an issue anyway... she'll forget my name before she's even gotten to her car.

I started to think this was another REALLY bad choice on Ben's part, and actually started assuming the kid was probably not actually nice to him and he was just oblivious again.

Well, I finally met the little boy yesterday when we went to play in a friend's neighborhood where this boy also lives. Turns out I was wrong. Like really, REALLY wrong. He told me Ben is his best friend. He was SO excited to see him.  It was genuine -- and they actually seem to get each other, which is a rare find. Ben introduced him to me as "This is ____! His desk is a black hole just like mine!!" (and the other kid nodded in agreement) LOL!

I watched them play for awhile and I can rattle off only a couple other kids I have ever seen Ben interact like this with. (one is the friend we had gone to visit... one is his friend from his old school... can't think of any we've met since he started at the new school....) I could have cried.

So... despite this kid's really weird and totally not ideal home situation and the fact that I'll have to supervise playdates REALLY closely to make sure he doesn't jump off my deck, run with knives, or climb onto the roof or something, I think I owe it to both Ben (and to him, possibly even more so) to try to make their friendship work.

I think they might be a friend to each other that both of them have needed? Maybe? Maybe not? But I hope...

I think back to some of the friends I played with growing up. Some didn't have the greatest home lives either and I know my house was a place of safety and stability for them. We ended up going our separate ways as adults, but we still keep in touch they still tell me they have good memories of when we were younger and happy memories of coming to my house. So maybe we can be the same for this kiddo... and maybe Ben will finally have a close and true friend to share the rest of elementary school with... (and maybe middle school and high school, but I'm not thinking that far ahead yet. :)

Would it be nice and so much easier if he made a "best friend" with parents who we had some things in common with? Absolutely. Not gonna lie. But this is what we were given to work with, so we'll see how it goes... and I think it could be something really good, I do!

I keep trying to end this post with a quote... because I knew I had some fitting ones that sort of sum up my thoughts on this situation. I've gone back and forth and finally settled on this one from one of my favorite authors --

"My personal belief is that God looks through Her rolodex when She has a certain kind of desperate person in Her care, and assigns that person to some screwed-up soul like you or me, and makes it hard for us to ignore that person's suffering, so we show up even when it is extremely inconvenient or just awful to be there."  -- Anne Lamott

Telling Tales Outside of School...

We're just going to go ahead and call this a series. LOL.  There is way too much good material coming out of my Thursdays.  Again, Zach and Adam's mom, you asked for it.

So my little Thursday friends came home with us this past week instead of me taking them home. Their mom had a doctor's appointment and asked if that would be okay, to which I said a most enthusiastic YES. Our neighborhood is oddly deserted and anytime we can mix it up with some new kids around here, we welcome it, plus the boys had been asking for a couple weeks if Zach and Adam could come play. Perfect!

The next week was a series of back and forth emails that went something like:
"Are you sure?"
"Yes I'm sure."
"Are you REALLY sure?"
"Yep. Really sure."
"I just remembered they will be all sugared up from their Valentine's Day parties... are you SURE you're sure?"

I get it though. When people invite more than one of my boys over at a time, I always wonder if they *really* know what they are getting themselves into.  One at a time, Ben and Simon (Jonathan is excluded here) are really well behaved. Put them together though, throw in a little ADHD, a healthy dose of sugar, and sibling dynamics and the result can be unpredictable, to say the least.

The majority of the boys' friends come in pairs though, so I did, in fact, have some idea what I had signed up for and I had a talk with Ben and Simon beforehand about the ground rules, the biggest of which was "NO big brother vs. little brothers games!" (those never end well)

Moms of all boys really and truly have the best senses of humor, as is evidenced by the fact that Ben came home on Wednesday with a ziplock bag survival kit from the teacher. Inside, was a valentine's cookie, a Red Bull and a pack of Tylenol with a note that said "Good luck".   LOL!

Fast forward to Thursday...

I grabbed Ben and Simon from parent pickup, walked down to the classroom to find the other two. No kids in sight there, but a teacher pointed me to the computer lab where I successfully located child #1. He piled on his coat and backpack and then gestured toward a gigantic, three-tier Valentine's box on the table. "That's mine too."

*cough* Turns out, someone's mom is bit of a valentine's box overachiever. (can't complain though, seeing as how she made Ben's too since I knew nothing about these boxes until two days before... )  But, I digress...

I surveyed my situation  -- Jonathan face-planted in the hallway, angry about not being allowed in the computer lab,  Ben's valentine box in one hand, and this giant box before me -- and pondered my options. "Um... do you think you can carry it, buddy?"

"I can't. It's too big!"

Luckily, my sherpa skills are finally honed, so I managed to snag it with my free arm, along with Ben's box and then through what I can only chalk up to divine intervention, convinced Jonathan to put himself back together and follow me.

"Where's Adam?"

"Dunno."

 Have I ever mentioned that eight-year-old boys, in general, are like, ZERO help most of the time?

I ran into Ben's teacher who had been watching the scene from a distance, as the teachers on Thursdays tend to do, as it is obviously THE best comedy show EVER.

"I think Adam's down the other hallway and, by the way, here are a couple bags for Michelle!"

I thanked her and hung the bags from my one free pinky finger.

Anyway, so down the hall we went... Ben, Simon, Zach, Jonathan, me, the valentine's boxes and several gift bags. The entire way, Simon kept badgering me for FunDip, which, from the looks of the green ring around his mouth, he had gotten his first taste of that day.

We found Adam with his teacher, who quickly became my hero because she convinced Zach he could, in fact, carry his valentine's box after all.

While we were walking out of school, Simon, for some God only knows reason, decided to tell us all the story of the time he zipped up his boy bits in his footie jammies. Good times. Zach turned around and said, "WHY is he talking about zipping up his wee?" Before I could answer, Adam piped up with his own similar story. As I walked on ahead, the conversation behind me mercifully turned to 3D DS games.

This. Is. My. Life.

It's craziness, complete and utter insanity, truly... but these are the times I realize I am so happy and comfortable in this place... as the mom of little boys. They are the best. Yes, they are crazy and loud sometimes and they think the word "poop" is the funniest thing ever... but I love it.... talk to me again when I have a 13-year-old and I may be in a different state-of-mind..

The boys made plans all the way back to the house and we had no sooner pulled into the driveway, then they disappeared in a flash, leaving only a pile of abandoned backpacks in their wake.

To be continued... ;)

The Chase....

One of Ben's teachers has been out sick for quite awhile (probably will be out the rest of the year... cry....) so I've been driving her two little boys home from school one day a week.  I pick up Ben and Simon from school every day anyway, so I figured grabbing an extra two and taking a ride would be no big thing. (And it's not.  Once you have three boys, adding an extra couple here and there is kind of a non-event.) But it IS interesting, to say the least,  and watching other peoples' reactions to my little parade every Thursday is probably the funniest part.

At pickup time, I wait in line with Jonathan to get my boys (which is a daily challenge in itself) then we go back down the hall to get the other two, who are either in the computer lab or one of the classrooms.

Here's a fairly accurate visual of how I spend the next ten minutes or so.

The first time I picked them up,  I found her two in the classroom. Ben and Simon, realizing the mom-to-child ratio was even less in my favor than usual, seized the opportunity, immediately dropped their coats and backpacks and took off to play.

Order quickly broke down and I panicked.  "No no! We're leaving! Put your coats back on!!" I should have kept a better poker face. Children, like dogs, can sense fear a mile away.

Simon dumped out a box of toy clocks in the front of the room.  Jonathan gleefully ran in circles, screeching. The bigger ones completely ignored my pleas to get their stuff together and instead, talked MarioKart strategy. 

Zach, the older of two boys, had his coat but not his backpack. We found that and started toward the door. At this point and I also had Simon.... but had lost Ben. Adam, the younger one,  was all the way across the classroom playing with the globe and had no coat OR backpack.

I decided to take the one at a time approach and went to give Adam his stuff and herd him toward the door, turned around and Simon was behind me with no bag, ready to play again. Got those two together, turned around, Ben and Zach had dropped their backpacks and were in the other corner of the classroom.  Somewhere in there, Zach informed me that his brother gets carsick when he plays DS in the car, which had been my main selling point to entice them all to follow me.  He also handed me a note from the nurse to give to his mom that said Adam had been running a temperature earlier.

Meanwhile, Jonathan ran amok, pulling things out of kids' desks while I focused on the big boys.  Ben, whose winter coat is that stupid kind with two layers that come apart, had gotten himself all tangled up, his backpack was nowhere to be found. Adam kept going back to the far corner to look at something near his mom's desk, Simon kept dropping his tote bag to follow him and Zach stood next to me watching it all go down. I did several laps around the classroom trying to get them at least all into the same corner. "Come on guys, your mom's waiting! Let's go! We have the DS's in the car! And a movie! And juice boxes! JUICE BOXES! And DS!!!"

Nothing. OMG. My own kids had completely jumped ship and formed an alliance with the other two and I was now definitely on the losing side of this battle.

This dance continued until one of the teachers came along and used that voice that makes kids all do what they're supposed to do. Note to self: Figure out how to do that.

We've done this three? four times now and it has gotten a little bit easier each time, but it still makes me laugh. I think the most humorous thing about the whole scene now is Jonathan bringing up the caboose, yelling out all their names in Jonathanese. "Ben!!!" "'Imon!" "Am!" "Zach!""STOP runniiiiiiiiing!!!!"

There are lots of stories to tell about this little adventure, which the teacher, who now has the link to my blog, declared I must be too chicken to put on here since I hadn't written anything yet.

Challenge ACCEPTED!

Oh just you wait, MC...  just. you. wait.  ;)

Old Friends! :)

The boys were invited to the birthday party for one of our friends from the old neighborhood yesterday. It's hard to believe that our second-borns are all turning SIX. The funny thing is that I was picking out a card earlier for the birthday boy and I grabbed a "You're Turning THREE!" card initially before I realized that no... it's the third-borns who are all turning three this year. Simon and HIS little #2 buddies are all turning six. OMG. Where has the time gone?

It's always so great to get the old gang together. The kids pick up right where they left off at the Christmas party. It's a fun bunch!

These three are a trip!

Playdate Gone Bad....

Yesterday was weird.

Backstory --
There is a little guy Simon is buddies with from preschool. I love the kid, I do. He's very sweet and he and Simon get along fantastically. They like the same things -- Legos, Skylanders, Star Wars, swordfights. They enjoy playing said things together and they never, ever fight (well, except for pretend fighting with swords)

Oh, and potty humor... they both appreciate a good dose of it. This is mostly David's influence, as we are NOT a potty humor family.... but, much to my chagrin,  when David and his potty talk came into our lives, Simon realized the funny he had been missing out on. I cringe when they sing the "butt song" or the "poop and pee song" they made up and then have a talk with Simon when we are away from David about how we don't talk like that.  He seems to get that it's only something he gets to do when he's around David so... for now, I take the good with the bad and hope they never end up at the same elementary school. Thankfully, David's affinity for SpongeBob hasn't rubbed off on Simon at all because I simply can not allow that awful character/show in my home.  I have to draw the line somewhere!

Anyway, their friendship amuses me because at first glance they seem like an unlikely duo. Simon is this solid, blonde, curly-haired five-year-old, going on eight in many ways, both because he is tall and because of his older brother's influence.  David is nearly Jonathan's size with shockingly orange hair, the tiniest, cutest thing you ever did see because he was a preemie,  and he won't be five until fall.

Nevertheless, the two of them are peas in a pod.  I liken it to Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwartzenager in the movie Twins.

ALL schoolyear long they have wanted to have a playdate at one of their houses and they have taken swimming lessons together for going on 24 weeks now.  We had gone to playgrounds and whatnot... but the house playdate, that's the bigtime.

FINALLY, I caved.  It was supposed to be nice, so I invited David, his mom and big sister over to play on the water slide... also I figured the more the merrier; so invited my niece and nephew, sister-in-law, good friend Beth and her two boys.

Then the weather started looking iffy and I had a panic attack about nine kids from 1-8 running rampant all over the house. I wasn't as worried about anyone else's kids... but something about having friends over flips the "lose your mind" switch on my own kids and they do things they would never think of doing... like throw things at the ceiling fan to see how far they will travel. Or fill up squirt toys and soak the bathroom. Or have the mother of all lightsaber battles that ultimately ends with someone getting injured. Oh and the dumping... what is it about having lots of kids over that causes them to seek out and dump toys, not to play with them, mind you... but just for the sheer thrill of dumping?

Yeah. So I nixed the giant playdate and instead just told David's mom I'd bring him home from swimming to play with Simon for a few hours and then bring him home.

Of COURSE it didn't rain. Figures. But that's beside the point now...

Ben and David's older sister, who is seven, ended up getting a last-minute swim session spot prior to the little boys', so I had to take everyone to lessons, which meant no extra car seat for David.

This meant David's mom had to drop David off at our house for the playdate instead of us bringing him home.

This meant David's sister came in and didn't want to leave.

Annnnd this is abou where things started to go awry.

First off, Ben totally highjacked the playdate. David, being four and having only a big sister who is nasty to him, thought Ben was the coolest and only wanted to play what Ben wanted to play. David's sister, who apparently at seven is already boy crazy, thought Ben was "So cute!!! He's SOooooo cute, mom!!!" so she played with them too.

Simon was left playing alone in his room. Very sad.

Also, see aforementioned tidbit about the "lose your mind" switch and my kids during playdates. Ben, who is generally my most well-behaved child, was caught throwing things at Simon's ceiling fan, jumping on furniture, throwing things from his bookshelf (?!?!) and initiating a sword fight that ended up making Simon cry not once, but three times.

Simon also attacked David's sister with a sword because she played with his castle.

After this, David's sister asked to watch Sponge Bob.

I pretended the tv didn't work.

Also? The Terminix guy showed up while they were there and told me we probably have termites in the garage.

The other kids' mom is sweet as she can be and we actually had a nice conversation. However,  after an hour and a half of the insanity, and the crying, I really just needed them to leave. Thankfully, she said she had some errands to run and I said I actually had to hit the grocery store anyway so they were gone by the two-hour mark.

Simon was really disappointed David hadn't wanted to play Legos. Ben, on the other hand, thought the playdate was AWESOME.

Hrm... that was not how that was supposed to go.

Oh and where was Jonathan during all this? NOT napping. And where there are big kids, Jonathan needs to be RIGHT in the middle... which, of course, he couldn't because they were downstairs and outside and up and down and in and out. So, there was that.

Next time, for sure, I need to have a friend over for Ben or ship Ben out to a friend's house, probably the latter. I almost emailed one of his school friends. Should have listened to my gut instinct on that.

So that was our yesterday. I hope today is a little less exciting!!!

Birthday Party!

The birthday party was a success. There were only three minor injuries, a kid who was kicked in the leg, a head bump for one of the girls, and another kid who freaked me out with "so-and-so kicked me in the face and now my tooth is loose!"... everyone was fine though, thankfully.

The kids all seemed to have a blast and it was neat to see most of Ben's class all together. I don't get to volunteer at all this year because of Jonathan, so I am only now just figuring out who they all are. Nice class though, for the most part... although the kid who is from Ben's preschool class who I found unsavory when he was four, is still a troublemaker. He was responsible for two of three injuries and they were not accidents. Note to self: he does NOT get invited to any future parties.

Also to be noted -- the crowd ate an entire 22 oz. barrel of cheeseballs...

I found out rather recently that Ben has a little thing for one of the girls in his class. I knew her name, but not which child she was until I visited his class during library a couple weeks ago. Here's the amusing part... she kind of looks like she could be his fraternal twin sister. I got lots of pictures yesterday... I actually wanted to see if he asks me for a copy when he sees them. ;) Evil mommy, I am. (also, from the videos below... it appears the feeling is mutual)

He left with the most giant trashbag haul of presents ever... downside for me of having invited so many kids... major upside for Ben! He has been very systematically choosing one thing at a time, writing a thank you note for it and then playing with it. It's mostly Lego sets, so lots of quiet building has been going on around here since yesterday afternoon. ;) YAY! The most interesting and unusual present came from his classmate Nivi, who gave him a beginning Harmonica set. There was a duplicate Lego building set that he gave to Simon without hesitation, and he was thrilled with this, of course!

Here are a few pics and some video from the big day! :)

Happy Belated Easter!

Sorry for the blogging break! I was on such a good streak too and then the plague hit our house for the second time in a month.

UGH. Gotta love that there were TWO different stomach viruses circulating and we caught both of them in the span of two weeks. Even Tom was hit by this last one and ended up passing out one night which resulted in me calling 911 and him taking a ride in an ambulance. (he's fine... turns out, he has a nerve thing his mom has and his pass-out trigger i the onset of a fever/illness ... this explains a lot and glad to finally have an explanation for his weird quirk!!)

We are all FINALLY, dare I say, well, save for some pretty bad seasonal allergies and got better in time to actually celebrate Easter. We even made it to church at the last minute which wasn't looking good for us on Saturday because, although I had recovered at that point, I was still just dragging.

I didn't take many pics because things were just too chaotic and I was almost always holding Jonathan or preventing him from hurting himself in some way. But I did get some of our egg hunt with the cousins at Nanee and Pap's yesterday.

The kids had a blast. Jonathan inspected his cousin Alek thoroughly, including yanking on his little tuft of hair and trying to gnaw on his toes. Simon and Anastasia didn't kill each other. And everyone left with full tummies and a basket full of eggs.


We definitely missed the other branch of the family and our newest niece/cousin, Audim. Hopefully they'll be up and around and ready to join us for the next family gathering.

Super Simon's Super Party....

Simon is going to his friend's superhero birthday party today. He's SO excited. All the kids are wearing superhero costumes too, which ALREADY makes this party a winner in Simon's eyes. He's been agonizing all week over which costume he'll wear. Right now, he's going back and forth between Mr. Incredible and Buzz Lightyear. Also, this meant I had to bring all of our costumes down from the attic, so I just sucked it up and made room in their closet to hang them all up again.

Simon is in dress-up HEAVEN.

Anyway, so the party is just for the younger siblings. (his friend has a brother Ben's age and almost all of our neighborhood friends have a similar sibling age setup) I think this is awesome... and a great thing for Simon to have his own friends and things that are JUST for him that Ben can't do. I hope there is more of this in the near future for him.

Ben, on the other hand, thinks it's completely unfair and has declared that he wants to quit basketball (which falls during the party which he can't go to anyway) because of it. LOL! It's kind of amusing to see the tables turned where Simon is allowed to do something Ben CAN'T do.

So he and Tom are going out for lunch together and then to basketball, which means it's just going to be Jonathan and me for two whole hours this afternoon, which is always kind of fun. I think we're going to run to the grocery store and then just lay on the floor together and play. (exciting, I know!) ;)

Also, YAY for the beginnings of drop-off birthday parties! THanks, neighbor Jill!!! :o)

First Day of Camp...

Forgot to take a pic in front of the house, which I'm kicking myself for because I have a picture of me at the same age on MY first day of camp on the front steps of our old apartment.


Anyway, here are Ben and Ryan (my friend Jen's little boy) all situated with their group. They settled in quickly and I can already tell they are going to like the male senior counselor for their group. WHen I left they were in a heated discussion of who was more powerful, Batman or Superman. LOL.


Ran into lots of people we knew while we were there, including a mom from Simon's preschool class whose oldest little boy was probably assigned to Ben and Ryan's group, though I didn't stay to find out... also ran into Becky! (Hi, Becky!!!)

Farewell Bash!

Last night, we had a little block party in honor of the Collins family, who are moving this week. (cry) Everyone had a blast! My kids were even up until the unheard of (for them) hour of 10p.m!!!

We are all going to miss them TONS but know they will come back to visit plenty since they are not moving very far. :)

There was a vat of lemonade which Simon thought was just coolest because he could dispense it himself. Here he is with his 20th cup of lemonade. After that, he wet his pants three times over the course of an hour, at which point, we gave up and put him in a Pullup because the lemonade just kept on flowing...


My favorite picture, out of about 25 takes, of all the kiddoes, minus three -- one didn't want her picture taken, one family couldn't make it, and one was in bed at this point. Notice Simon has yet another cup of lemonade.


The three little brothers: Rube, Quinn and Simon. They are some of the toughest little dudes you will ever meet thanks to having big brothers. Seriously, no one crosses these kids... and BOY can they fight amongst themselves!


But they also love hanging out together...


Sophia and John a.k.a. The Bickersons


The husbands, minus one, who will need to be photoshopped in later. ;)


The big thing this year is to climb the big tree in the common area. Elise, John and Sophia have all conquered it. (this is Elise and John). Ben wants SO badly to climb it too, but he needs a couple more inches on him yet...


Quinn and Simon bobbing for Doritoes. I don't even want to estimate how many chips my children ate between them last night...


The late-night glowstick dance party... BOY did they have a blast. Video coming of this later. ;)