Birthday Party Pictures

Junior's birthday party with his little friends went well. He had a lot of fun. Here he is with the "Pin-the-Banana-on-the-Monkey" game we made.

We also had a monkey cake.
And here is his car cake from last Saturday.

Getting ready for a birthday party

I have spent the weekend getting ready for Junior's birthday party. He is going to have his first kid party this year with his friends, as well as a family party Saturday. We made some invitations for his party. The theme is "Go Bananas" and I just happened to find the perfect blank cards (yellow and brown) in a bargain pack at Michael's. I guess yellow and brown are not the hot colors right now! And the perfect stickers too. I printed the cards on the computer, very plain. Then I put these little stickers on them. They turned out too cute!


They don't have the brown border. I just put that on here because it doesn't look right without the border. But all the invitations were either light brown or yellow paper.

I made cake yesterday. He found the perfect cake pan at Michael's. It is a 3D car. He is the funniest thing. He grabbed the cake pan and started hugging it and jumping up and down. At home he had told me he either wanted a guitar or a car. Well, Grandma Mary has the guitar pan and she always offers for me to borrow any of her pans I want. So I was just going to ask her for the guitar pan and that would be it. But of course he saw this car pan and loved it so much, what else could I do? So he will have a 3D car cake. He'll probably want the guitar cake later on, but this year it will be a car.

And for his kid party, we got a bear face cake pan that you can make into a monkey. So he will have that. I was going to do cupcakes, but then I decided that the monkey cake would be almost as easy as making a bunch of cupcakes which the kids would just lick the icing off of anyway.

I made icing all day today. A lot of icing, chocolate and plain. I am tired. I am going to listen to Swingin' Down the Lane and Riverwalk Jazz. Then I'll watch my BritComs and go to bed!

Baby birds

Our baby birds have hatched. Wish I could share a picture, but I can barely see them myself. I walked by the birdhouse yesterday evening and they were peeping away. I could see their little beaks pointing upward. I could see maybe 3 or 4, it was too dark to tell. I ran to get Peanut, but when we got back the mama bird had been there to feed them and she was flying away. So they were quiet instead of crying. And the mama and daddy bird were up in the tree just as mad as they could be. So we left pretty quickly.

I have tried to see them a couple more times, but the mama and daddy are very close by and they get really mad, so I try not to stay more than a few seconds. We'll be watching them for a couple of weeks to see when they leave the nest.

Our books arrived in the mail. Peanut was pretty excited. We will go ahead and start on math and handwriting next week, and then work our way into the rest. There is a lot...I have to remember that this is a year's worth of work!

Thursday

Today was the last day of the Bible study I've been going to on Thursday morning. It was a really good one. We read Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free by Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

See if any of these hit home: "I can't help the way I am." "I should not have to live with unfulfilled longings." "I don't have time to do everything I am supposed to do." How about, "I can't help the way I respond when my hormones are out of whack." These are just some of the lies we need to hold up to the truth of God's Word.

Todd stayed home an extra day last weekend. Junior has still not gotten over that. He has missed his dad so much this week. He usually gets up 5 minutes after Dad leaves for work, then he asks when is Dad going to be home. I have been letting him call Dad at work during the day. It is pretty funny. He dials the number with me helping him and then waits on the line for Todd to answer. Today the conversation was:

T: Hello?
J: Dad? Um, well, um, um, um...mama said I couldn't...I wanted to drive my bike out into the parking lot...I wanted to drive my bike out into the parking lot from the driveway and mama said NOOOO! (starts to cry)
T: Son, you have to obey mama. She doesn't want you to get hit by a car.
J: (less forceful)Well, um, um, um...I wanted to go out in the parking lot and mama won't let me.
T: She doesn't want you to get hurt. You do what mama says.
J: I could get in a wreck and get hurt...but, but, okay.
T: Alright, you be good. Okay?
J: Okay.

(The "parking lot" is our cul-de-sac. He thinks he should be able to ride around out there anytime he wants.)

"ancient" history

I had an interesting discussing with the kids the other day. We stopped to eat at McDonald's at Walmart. A lot of the time they are decorated with the "50s theme", so we are sitting there and Junior pointed to the wall and asked about the "wheels." They are kind of 3-D cartoon records, just a decoration. So I was trying to explain to these kids what records are. Very sad. I finally told them that they are like CD's only bigger. I think Peanut has seen them at her grandparent's house, but she's never heard one.

Then we started talking about how things were in the "olden-time" days when Mama was a little girl. They cannot comprehend that we did not have VCRs or tapes to watch on TV. Peanut was sad when I told her that a Christmas show like Charlie Brown or Rudolph only came on once a year and if you missed it that was just too bad and maybe you would get to watch it next year.

It is hard for them to understand the timeline of these things too. Like Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny have been around longer than Grandpa Jelly. But Veggie Tales have been around just a little longer than Peanut. This was truly shocking news.

I remember when I was in grade school, there was this "push" to get kids interested in computers. There was always something in Weekly Reader or in your science book that was about how wonderful computers were. Why, you could add and multiply and divide! Maybe someday you could play games like tic-tac-toe and checkers!