A Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Ezra! We had a small birthday party today with about 5 boys from our church, which I didn't get any photos of, unfortunately.

But, we did take some photos of the games we played after the fact.
Because of our house purge, we had some huge cardboard pieces lying around waiting to be recycled. So before we hauled them away, we got some good use out of them.

We made a bean bag game, with matchbox cars for prizes (there's a little flap on the bottom), and we made a reversible race track/bunko car game.

The kids had a ton of fun with the cardboard games, and then we ended with a giant balloon pop. Where we tied around 75 balloons to kids ankles and they ran around popping them and retrieving the starburst candy inside.

It was a lot of work for the kids to pop the balloons, because Jonathan and I only blew up the balloons a little (not wanting it to be too easy). They ended up resorting to stabbing their balloons with the sharp edges of their race cars and sitting on them. So they worked off the candy they won!

Then we had cake---a Spiderman DQ cake that looked like it was supposed to look!

It was a pretty fun birthday and a nice end to the week!


Ezra really liked his superhero LEGO! Thanks, Mimi and Papa!
This LEGO car was from one of this friends and he put it together all by himself after the party!
You can see below that we stapled some 1x2's (normally for canvas building) on the back of the cardboard for racing "tracks". The black things are styrofoam like pipe coverings (forget the name) that we found abandoned in the park nearby. We cut them into pieces and glued them to the cardboard, and they worked really well! They are just the right material for bouncing cars all around.

One of those weeks....

Oh boy, I'm glad it's Friday but this week has been a doozy.

We started off our Monday tired, as usual, and with one forever obstinate child who did NOT want to do her Math lesson, and proceeded to make the rest of the day pretty un-fun.

Tuesday our day started off with the dog getting sprayed by a skunk, frantically giving it a disgusting tomato juice bath, only to realize that that is an old wives tale that doesn't really work, giving it a dish-soap, peroxide bath instead, and having one of Jonathan's co-workers arrive to take him to work at 7:30 when I am groggy and in my pajamas and the house smells like skunk.

Also that day, Jonathan was gone until 11:00 at night for work (Career fair in Ames), and we ALL had to load up into the car to pick him up for his late return (at least we didn't have to drive to Ames). Oh...the cat also vomited on the carpet several times on that long, long day.

Wednesday and Thursday more random vomiting here and there, kids all needing baths and haircuts, finger nail and toe nail trimming, and basically a whole grooming service to assist them in basic hygiene.
Trying to shove school in when we can, visit from the supervising teacher which lasted two hours, and a midwife appointment late in the evening.

Then, today is Ezra's birthday and I wanted to make something healthier than our usual yellow/white cakes. So I made a carrot cake, which I tried to turn into something resembling a large Lego, which ended up just looking like a crumbling pile of crap with bird poop and marshmallows on top (Ezra very naively reassured me that it did, in fact, resemble a Lego somewhat).

And for some reason (temporary insanity, all the vomiting of the previous week, maybe sheer exhaustion) all the kids decided to conspire together to ruin Ezra's birthday and fight and pout about the fact that he got a couple presents. Jude and Violet seem to lack any concept of birthdays being a yearly event, and that a year is longer than the time it takes them to ask me if they can have this or that toy or cake.

Then, ALSO today, the city of CR replaced the shut off valve for the water at our rental because it was leaky and it was their responsibility. You would think this would be a good thing....one less thing we have to take care of. Except when they replaced it, they left the water ON (even though Jonathan told them many times we are working on the leaky plumbing and that's why it needs to have a new shut off valve) and it leaked into the house MORE than it was before. Luckily there was no real damage that wasn't there already.

Did I mention that Jonathan sprained his ankle or something and is limping around like an invalid? Oh, and I can't sleep at night unless I take Benadryl which has the fantastic side effects of motherly (pregnant) guilt, and that oh so lovely hung over feeling in the morning????

AND I have at least FOUR weeks left of being so huge I can't see my own feet let alone the zipper on my pants!!!!!!


#UR#@()(#$#@


If you read this far, I'm am so, so very sorry for you. Try to wipe your mind and think happy thoughts. Imagine a lovely beach and pretend this never happened.