“I try and fail miserably at blogging my child’s entire life”. But pathetically true none-the-less :)

True to form, this post is only…um…12 days late, but whatever! Logan turned 8 on the 9th and it.was.epic. No big party this year (phew!) We had a family dinner on Friday the 8th with food per Logan’s request (“a big steak”) and cake as well. On his actual birthday, we went to lunch with Memaw and Grandpa and then Brian took Logan and his friend Will to a 6:30pm Chicago Fire soccer game. Aiden, Brady and I hung at the house (Aiden had a quick birthday party) and watched the game on TV. It was pretty cold outside, but they had a blast despite a Fire loss.

Gifts included: a new lacrosse stick, the number “22” sewn onto his soccer bag and on to a jacket he had already owns for outdoor soccer, a new SIZE 4 soccer ball from his brothers, money towards a lacrosse goal for the backyard and extra cash that he ended up spending at his school’s book fair (mom & grams, he picked out a book called Elements, which is what it sounds like – a beautiful book with a page dedicated to each element of the periodic table and it’s uses, plus the Scholastic Records book for 2013…both nice and informative!) He also picked up a sweet Fire jersey at the game and a pennant to hang in his room. So awesome!

Big 8-year-olds eat big steaks! Logan asked me to send this picture to my friend Anne…thought she would get a kick out of it (coincidentally, she’s his new soccer coach…so maybe he wanted her to see him bulking up for the team!)

Ok…I might have just picked out a ready-made cake, but it was SO yum – no one cared that it didn’t have a theme to it ;)

Happy happy birthday to my gorgeous 8-year old (belated, yes…always belated!)

Two days into Spring and it’s FREEZING outside (28 degrees as I type this)! The boys are obviously ready for a little bit of the warm weather. Aiden made a big tissue-paper butterfly at school yesterday and was inspired to make a “nature scene” using a big box I got while shopping at Costco two days ago. Logan and I helped him while poor Brady napped on the couch after coming home from school with a fever (and apparently an upset tummy as I just had to clean up the kitchen floor…and a bit of the dog…and give him a shower <—Brady, not the dog, she got a kitchen-sink bath)

This box is pretty big. It took 4 pieces of blue paper to cover the “back” for the sky. Aiden did the butterflies tonight. The lady bug was a doodle he did at school. Logan did the flowers…in rainbow, just to make Aiden smile. I contributed with ideas on placement and hanging the butterflies from the top. Here’s to warmer weather sometime soon!!!

I seriously can’t believe I never posted this, but I was looking at all the pictures on my phone yesterday (of which there are MANY) and I stumbled across the ones we took from The Wilderness indoor water park during Christmas Break. Basically, it happened like this: we had Christmas part 1 with just us and local family on Brian’s side, then we had my family in for Christmas part 2, then 2 days later we hosted the neighborhood for New Year’s Eve. Around 2am on January 1st, while getting ready for bed, all hyped up by the night’s fun events, I suggested to Brian that we run away as a family to Wisconsin and enjoy some water park fun. The next morning, we decided to do it. The boys actually packed for themselves based on a list I wrote and had Logan “execute” with them while Brian and I: cleaned the house, threw food in a cooler and packed the car. We were out of the house by 1ish I think…which was pretty impressive! We had checked availability at the hotel before we left, but we didn’t actually book our room until we started the drive. We spent the next few days hanging out at the hotel, playing in the water, playing laser tag, doing a ropes course (well…some of us) and just enjoying a little family time.

Here are all the (awful and blurry) pictures I took on my phone. The one thing we forgot as we ran out of the house was our camera!!

On the way there, we stopped for gas and I grabbed these giant Twizzler ropes for the kids. They were like beyond thrilled with them and have been asking to find them again ever since.

It bought at least 1/2 an hour of car entertainment!

This is the ropes course. It starts one level (floor) above the arcade area. All five of us got in harnesses which attach to a track above each rope crossing. Three of us didn’t care for the whole thing after about 10 minutes. Brady wanted to turn back immediately and I was all too happy to take him to play elsewhere. Brian (still in full Christmas beard as you can see) and baby monkey Aiden had a blast. The course goes up 3-4 more levels – yikes!!  

I took this picture from below the first level so I think they are maybe 3 up. Look at those crazy people!

Here is Brady playing in this awesome climbing and ball shooting area. He used his money to buy the scuba mask he has on. He took it everywhere with him the first night he bought it…and then we couldn’t find it when we went to the water park the next morning! It was pretty sad!

 

This is one of three giant water-park rooms at the resort. This was the wave pool room and the ceiling actually lets sunlight in. I had to buy some sunscreen because my face started to get a bit red!

Brady had quite the tough morning without his scuba mask. Apparently we bought the very last one in the entire resort…because I checked every store they had!

Awwww sweetie! We also retraced our steps from the night before with no luck.

Brian sitting wave-pool side 

nothing like a good self portrait

Logan was the only one tall enough for this crazy slide in what I’ll call “room 2”. Brian took him there while I waited with the other boys at the wave pool. Most of the rides took about 10 minutes to get through so when they were gone for over an hour, we started stalking the end of the slide and snapped a couple blurry pics of them as they came down.

So…ya, that all happened over 2 months ago, but whatever. I have more pics on my phone from January and February so those will follow shortly!

Last night around 10:45, the phone rang at the house with an automated message letting us that school was being cancelled for today due to forecasted snow from Winter Storm Rocky. I’m such a dork that I immediately got all excited, made the boys a big sign that I sat up on the couch and started planning a little snow-day fun. My friend from down the street was also simultaneously writing me via facebook and I told her I thought all the nearby kids should come over in PJs for pancakes and a movie party. So that’s what we did! Oh and by the way, not a flake of snow was on the ground when we got up, but that certainly changed during the course of the day!!

This is the sign that Logan and Aiden made. Logan loves doing “bubble letters” and Aiden loves drawing stars…and snowflakes “asterisks”. Sadly, our friend Sam was sick this morning so we made a second, get-well-soon, bubble letter poster that everyone signed.

Here we are getting the pancakes ready for everyone to come over. Brady is my super-awesome batter helper – he stirs and stirs until nary a lump is left! We first tried to make snowflake shapes, but those turned out like crazy squid-looking things. We tried stars too, but those looked like flowers. I always put the batter in a squeeze bottle and, well, circles are the way to go!

They mostly watched the movie. We actually did make it to the end, but i was a bit heavy-handed on the noise and running-around level. A couple of the girls were really interested in seeing the whole thing and the boys were…um…being boys :) 

I sent the whole crew home around 12 and started the shoveling for the day. I don’t know the total accumulation, but I did the driveway twice and the back porch 4 times (little Kona came in twice with snowballs all on her tummy so I was extra diligent about clearing a path for her bathroom needs. I gave her a bath at one point and then had to blow her dry a second time…plus I found a couple poopies upstairs…she was anti snow-bathroom, but totally pro snow-playtime) The boys played outside building forts and shoveling around, friends returned for more outside and inside playing and then we sat around watching recorded episodes of the Amazing Race followed by yet another living room “floor picnic” of pizza. All in all, a great snow day!!