Hey daddy in the Big Apple...this one is especially for you. Here is what we've been doing this week:


This is yesterday's morning project - painting pots and planting basil. The basil had to be planted because we germinated the seeds in our kitchen and they were ready for bigger containers. I thought it would be fun to make a project out of it! Here we are before painting. Notice how nice and neat everything is (and how there are 4 distinct colors in the painting tray).






Here is the finished product....sitting in the sun drying.



After the boys were done with the pots, they did some more painting on paper. Logan said his is a "sidewalk"





Aiden painted a bunch of basketballs and I did a firecracker (bottom left)


When art time was over, the boys had a snack up in the "fort"


Here are all the supplies...ready for basil planting.


The watering had to be controlled so as to avoid killing the newly planted basil (the watering can Aiden is using has a big crack in the bottom which helped a lot!)


Uh oh....the water is on....Aiden had to be completely changed after we were done because he, somehow, ended up soaking wet.


Today, Brady had a snack of puffies while his brothers were at summer camp. He tried them yesterday, with rave reviews, for the first time. Here are the puffies in his bowl....ready for eating.


Yum!


He managed to get more of them stuck on his face than in his mouth.


Dude....there's something on your chin.....


I think his feet win though. He kept getting the puffies wet, but not fully in his mouth...then they would drop on the floor and stick to everything.


Aiden and Logan played with water and sand today at camp. They made hats. Aiden's class made visors (I had to laugh because he looks so cute, but it also looks like he's taking side bets on the horse races this afternoon!)



Despite its feminine styling, Logan tells me that this is supposed to be a fisher man's hat. Everyone in the big kids class made them. Pretty!! :):)

Last Friday afternoon, we had Aiden's 2nd birthday party in our back yard.

Theme: Get Messy
Mission: Um.....get messy!!!
Supplies: Spray bottles filled with a watercolor paint, a "craft" table, water tables, a kiddie pool and make-your-own banana splits.


I'm pretty sure everyone had a blast. It was even amusing for most of the parents. Because really....how many days as a mom or dad do you have the chance to say "go ahead and get paint & food all over yourself. There are no rules today...just don't hurt yourself or anyone else".....awesome! The invitations had a monkey on them since Aiden is a crazy climbing monkey of a child. I must call him a goofball quite often because, when Logan saw the invitations, he immediately starting calling Aiden's party the "Monkey Goofball party" and he asked everyday if it was time for the party to start. :)


Here is Aiden on his actual birthday. We are "testing" the banana splits for the party which was the next day. We used three monkey bowls that I bought to hold snacks at the party. Too bad I'm too health conscience to actually fill them ALL the way to the top with banana splits (maybe when the boys are older!!)

Yep...it all LOOKS good....let's see how it tastes! Monkey bowl!!
Here Logan poses as annoying mommy snaps a picture and thinks "can't we get to the eating part yet?"
Typical monkey Aiden....he always stands when he eats.
After dinner, we opened the gifts that Nana and Papa sent. Aiden has no shirt on because it was covered in ice cream (are you surprised?? of course not!!) Here, Logan helps Aiden open his new Winnie the Pooh phone as Aiden tears into package number 2.
Aiden helps Bray play with the new phone.
Poor Aiden, Brady ended up taking over the phone and Logan eventually ran off with the Diego camera :)
It's good to have brothers who are willing to help open your gifts and play with them for you. That night, after the boys went to bed, mommy started getting ready for the party. Here are the bottles of water colors that I bought. I mixed these in spray bottles about 1/2 and 1/2 with water for the kids to spray on sheets, each other and anywhere else in our yard. These are lined up in color order. I got 4 bottles of green....because of you-know-who (green-obsessed Logan of course!)
Spray bottles ready to go!! I had to laugh at the pink ones...wow do they look like pepto bismal or what?!
Here we are in the middle of the party. Logan, MacKenzie and Maddie are standing in the kiddie pool that I kept refilling throughout the party so the kids could spray in it all over again and make it this lovely murky green/brown color.
Here are the art tables (which my neighbor Susan...in the background of this picture, set up for me during naps on the day of the party - go Susan!)Kristina loaned me all of this awesome art stuff (and the spray bottles for the water colors). The kids had a blast painting the table, on coffee filters which were supposed to be turned into flowers, and on themselves. Aiden plays at the art table!!
Shockingly, Aiden wanted to play with the balloons more than the spray bottles which made me think of.... ....this picture which we took LAST YEAR at Aiden's first birthday party! Here he is....loving the balloons. They are just different colors, but they are in the exact same place on the patio (tied to the lights) and someone had to hold him up to play with them (my friend Karen).
Back to 2008....here is the art table transformed into the make-your-own-banana-split station (which actually turned out to be the "have-your-mommy-make-you-a-banana-split" station)

Nothing like pure sugar to make all the kids stop spraying themselves and the swing set (notice Logan drinking the "ice cream soup")
Aiden and AJ are like 2 peas in a pod. Here, they decided to stand up on top of one of the water tables. Right after I took this picture, AJ started waving and yelling "thank you everybody!" like he was performing on a stage.
So....let's rewind to 2007 and Aiden's FIRST birthday party one more time. Here is big brother Logan doing some crazy head-dunking in the ice bucket that formerly contained the juice "boxes" (capri suns) We blamed this behavior on the 2 cupcakes that Grandpa let him have. Now back to 2008 and who is dunking their head this year???? It's Aiden! I guess maybe the cupcakes weren't to blame...maybe it's a gene that only emerges when a Houck boy turns 2!

Ella wins most messy by a landslide!!!! I kept saying that she looked like a purple smurf. Way to commit to the party El!!!
This is the sweetest card Aiden got. It was drawn by his friend MacKenzie. It's Aiden and MacKenzie under a happy sun. She kept asking me if Aiden could open his gifts before she had to go home because she really wanted to show it to him - what a sweetie!
The day after his party, we took the boys to Learning Express for A to pick out his birthday gift from us. This was his "big gift", a marble run set that can be set up several different ways. For some reason, our boys LOVE marbles! We only let them play with this supervised for now because I worry about the marbles on the floor with Brady starting to move around!! (the set came with 50 marbles, but each of the older boys only get to play with 3 at a time. the others are kept in a bag, in the box, way up high on a shelf in the play room). I think these pictures were taken after a trip to the pool....sorry about more topless children :)
This really is a very cool toy!! Daddy and mommy like playing with it too! It's super nice and very cool...I see expansion packs in our immediate future :)

So talk about slacking...now it's been a REALLY long time since my last post. In my defense, two weekends ago was my second "special date" with Brady (aka: plane trip to San Fran for Den's shower). This past weekend was the 4th of July. The run down went like this:


Thursday: B took the day off, but still had several calls to do. I went to the party store and bought a ton of decorations and we decorated the wagon, Logan's bike and Bray's stroller for the bike parade the next day. Our neighbors joined in the crafty fun on our driveway and then we went to Ribfest that night with a bunch of friends (no kids!)


Friday: Neighborhood bike parade (see pictures and reference title of entry), a swim in the pool, dinner with Memaw, Grandpa & the cousins and fireworks at the clubhouse. We made s'mores in our firepit, the boys all played with these rockets memaw bought them, and they set off a ton of smoke-bomb type fireworks (which was hysterical because they would light one and then all of the boys minus Bray would "dance" around the smoke....too funny!) There were, of course, those tiny little poppers involved...the ones that look like very small treat bags and those "fireworks" that shoot out confetti. Logan kept calling the paper "celebrations" as in "look mom...there are celebrations all over the patio!" We had purchased a bunch of glow-in-the-dark stuff and adorned ourselves with that before heading over to the clubhouse for fireworks. I decided that the glow things are the "orange festival shirt" of the night-time event. I could spot Logan wherever he went even though it was dark. Accidental genius! Mental note for next year!!


Saturday: Back to work I guess. Bri did some stuff in the yard during the morning and then we went to a hot air balloon festival that night with friends. We were so jazzed for Aiden to see real hot air balloons "up in skyyyy". He and the other kids totally enjoyed seeing the launch and then most of them (minus Logan and Bray who both couldn't take the noise) jammed out to "Bad Medicine", a Bon Jovi cover band. Aiden was a dancing fool!!


Sunday: We went to the pool in the morning and then ran errands in the afternoon for Aiden's upcoming 2nd birthday party!


And now, without further ado, here are about a bazillion pictures from the weekend.......




This is Logan at the starting line for the neighborhood bike parade. We pulled up and every one's bikes were waiting behind this line. L thought he should just get right on up front and stay on his bike until someone told him to go. All the other kids were running around, but our little guy has focus (ya...right)
AJ and his scooter...ready to roll (or where they?? stay tuned for more details)
Brady was happily pushed along in his stroller for the parade. I had a name tag right next to his head until he reached up, grabbed it and turned it into a high-fiber snack (in other words, I took it away from him when he started chewing on it). We managed to convince Logan to move his bike back into the crowd at the starting line with all of his neighborhood friends (as opposed to right up in front). He still didn't want to get off of it though.
Aiden...waiting in line holding his precious 4th of July balloon.
A view of some of the riders getting ready to head out. We are at the neighborhood clubhouse in the parking lot.
So, phase one of the parade went from the clubhouse and down the street to the main housing area. Ryan here ditched the scooter after he couldn't keep up with the bigger kids and jumped in our wagon with Aiden. At this point, Logan is WAY up ahead with the kids on bikes, Brian is trying to keep up with him (unsuccessfully) while pushing Brady and I'm hauling Aiden (now Aiden and Ryan)
During phase 2 of the parade, we move from the main street into the houses. At this point in the parade, the kids were supposed to go down one street and make a big circle around and back to the clubhouse. This picture was taken at the beginning & end of that big circle....a journey that none of these little boys made. Brian took Brady around and Logan rode his bike. We learned from a neighbor who managed to stay close to Logan that he actually didn't know that he was supposed to continue looping around and was heading his bike towards home. The 2 older girls in our group (both 4 years old), got so far ahead of everyone that one dad (the same one who sent Logan back around the circle instead of towards home) was sent to find them. During this time, AJ got tired of his scooter and jumped into the wagon with Aiden and Ryan.
Mr. Jeff takes a turn hauling the three boys in the wagon
hu?? Here, AJ takes over the wagon duty, but where did Aiden go? Why is a 2 year old hauling another 2 year old? We kept asking him if he wanted help, but he wanted to do it. You should have seen him....just plugging away pulling Ryan in the wagon. He made it quite a way too!! Ah ha! Aiden (pictured here on daddy's shoulders heading back to the clubhouse) ditched the wagon for a ride with a better view. Logan rides beside daddy and I now have Brady in the stroller.
There she is! Here is Ella...one of the older girls who went so fast she was actually missing for a portion of the parade. I think some of the kids actually thought this event was a race.
There they go again! Ella and MacKenzie speed away...no wonder they were lost! (by the way....did THEY know they were lost? Most likely not)
Sweet Brady decided it was nap time...oh to be pushed around and sleep whenever you want. I think that's my dream life :)
Ah...the real goal of the race - donuts. I did shove bananas in their faces between yummy chocolatey bites, but who am I kidding...I had a couple myself! By the way, blogspot spell checker denies the existence of the word chocolatey...wha?! Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary begs to differ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chocolatey !!!
Here we are in the afternoon playing with these cool rocket launchers that Memaw got all of the boys. I didn't know if L & A would be able to do them, but oh they caught right on. I'm thinking it's some sort of male gene...right up there with never getting lost and laughing when someone else burps or passes gas.
Brady plays on the floor inside the house....far away from the rockets and their launchers (launchers in this case meaning young boys ranging in age from 2 to 12. You're a smart boy Brady!)
S'mores.....notice how everyone is eating theirs and I'm still roasting. It's an art people...and it takes TIME to get the sh'mello juuuuust right.
Aiden didn't go for the chocolate so much as the marshmallow. I call that his "little devil face".
Here, Logan and Ella hold hands as we walk into the grounds for 'Eyes to the Skies' (the balloon festival we went to almost purely for Aiden's sake...although good times were had by all as the next pictures will illustrate)