I mentioned in a previous post that Aiden had purchased a window art set, courtesy of Aunt Sara and Uncle Pete. The kit comes with: what is basically a page protector, 6 sheets of paper with lots of different designs on them, black outliner liquid and about 6 other tubes of colored liquid. You slip your design into the page protector, outline with the black, let it dry for 1/2 an hour, then squeeze in the colors. The whole thing dries over night, then peels off the page to be placed on the window.


The first day we had the kit, the older boys did 2 designs each and they both went with an underwater theme. That night, I free-formed some waves and bubbles for the fish.

Over the next few days, we made lots and lots and lots of window clings. When Aiden asked for hot air balloons, I printed some off of the Internet. They required some adjustments so I shrank/enlarged them with our copier until they were the right size. The rainbow heart pictured below was made by Aiden "for you mommy". Sweet.
Then Aiden, of course, wanted some lizards (and we managed to find some good ones!). Here are two of his creations drying on the counter. The guys had to learn a lot about the overuse of the paint. Several of our designs "drowned" and had to be tossed...mostly because they would never ever dry.
Logan was working a space theme. He made a rocket (this is one I found for him), an astronaut, some planets and stars. I might have helped and made a sun :)

It's hard to see, but we ended up with three different levels of window clings: space, the air and the water. This is NOT the final window. We have a added a few more since I took this picture. I just made a rainbow outline for Aiden today.

Also...Logan liked just making small puddles of the colored paint. One night, I drew black lines around them before they were dry. These turned into "balls" that we put in the water to entertain the sea creatures. Window art is so cool!!

Last Friday was Aiden's actual birthday. After the whole party the week before, I didn't want to do too much, but still wanted to give him a special day. I took the boys to Chuck E Cheese for some games and pizza that morning/afternoon. We all had a great time!

Here, we're sitting right by the prize counter so that's what Aiden is looking at. Brady.....is hungry I guess :)
YEAH!

This is the greatest game for a baby! 1. It's the perfect height 2. All you have to do is hit one of two big buttons to make balls pop up and fly into a bunch of holes. Brady was cracking up! Whenever I lost track of him, I would go straight to the ski-ball machines...he would be there, trying to reach his hands inside the empty ball ramps saying "ball ball!!"

That night, after Brian got home, we let Aiden open his gifts from us. We got him more magnetic tiles which are his FAVORITE (and so now he can build even bigger stuff), a set of balloon powered race cars and helicopters which are super fun and....

....and a big bag of nonsense! This was my favorite gift! I took the boys to Michael's craft store (where there are tons of $1 toys). EVERY time we go to Michael's, Aiden shows me things he wants "for his birthday". So...I just followed behind him grabbing stuff (some of the stuff anyway) that he was pointing out. This bag chock full of toys that last a day and make Aiden one HAPPY kid.

Some of the items included: "magic beans" (the capsules that you put in water to create sponge animals or whatever), a basketball decal that I'll put on his wall, a wooden painted fish, a wooden painted rainbow, Swedish fish and a balloon animal set....funny!

Happy Birthday baby boy!!!!

The night before Aiden's birthday party (which we had this past Friday, the 3rd), Brian and I bought each boy a fish as a special surprise. Logan has wanted a fish since his 3rd birthday (which was fish-themed!) and Aiden has been talking about having one lately as well. I bought three "bowls" and rocks at the craft store then met Brian at PetSmart to pick out three Betta fish. We picked out a green one, a blue one and a red one. (well....the truth is that the green one actually used to live at Memaw and Grandpa's house....but they were sort of tired of taking care of him...so...um....don't tell Logan...)

The really pretty Betta fish are the males of the species and you can't put more than one of them in a bowl or they'll duke it out and fight (or so I've been told). So....we have three new boys for the house: Jaws (Logan's...name influenced by daddy!), Balloonie (Aiden's) and Bish (the way that Brady said "fish" when he first saw his bowl!)

"The boys," as Logan and I have been calling them, were waiting for THE boys on the kitchen table Friday morning. I can safely say that they were a hit all around!!


Brady was SO excited about his fish. He wanted the bowl right next to him during breakfast and kept kissing it. He was good about not putting his fingers in the water too; he would just wave and say, "hi," over and over again. When I took the bowl away, he pitched a fit, pointed at it and yelled "wa-wa wa-wa!!"
After the fish, we let Aiden open a few family presents. Logan gave him a new Wii game, Mommy & Daddy gave him hungry-hungry hippos and he got a really cool magnegtic dress-up guy (sort of like a paper doll concept, but made of wood and for a boy!) from GG and GG-pa.
Here, Logan plays with GG and GGpa's gift, Joey.
Of course I took a TON of pictures this past weekend with Aiden's birthday party and the Fourth of July. More posts to follow soon!

Ok...I super hate it when I accidentally upload my pictures to be aligned to the left. I simply can NOT figure out where to put the type and the preview looks nothing like my actual post (captions are mostly under the pics...until the end of the post where the pictures were actually centered...shrug). Sorry for the ugliness of this post :):)

Well...it's been another week or so since my last post...obviously I have a lot of pictures (camera happy = me)! Last week was a ton of fun, but it did have it's very sad moments. Two of my very good friends are moving away within the next 2 months. I started off my week with a going away party for Kristina (see queen of fun with the mattress surfing) and Kelly (a member of the greatest playgroup Mothers and More has ever known). It was seriously one awesome going away party....a bit of the "laugh so you don't cry" philosophy!

So...we had one final playgroup with Kelly and her kids on Wednesday. Another sad moment for me! Back when Logan was only 6 months old, I joined this playgroup with other moms and their (one and only!) babies. There were originally 4 of us with three boys and 1 girl, then came Darlene with Kennedy and then Kelly with Caleb (total count: 2 girls, 4 boys). After Kelly joined, she, I and Lisa all had a second boy and Lauren had a second girl. We continued meeting weekly until some of the kids started preschool this past year. We've tried to meet here and there, play when we can, go on park outings etc. I can't even remember if Brady came before or after the official end of our playgroup, but Kelly also had a third baby (a girl) after we had already stopped getting together on a weekly basis. I remember thinking, back when we had our group every week, that I just never wanted it to end. Kids grow up though...and good friends have to move on to different places. Here are some pictures to commemorate and remember the good times:


This is Halloween 2005 with 4 of the original 5 playgroup babies (Logan is the pumpkin!)



That was then....this is now! (5 to 12!)


Logan did a great job holding Brady next to his buddy Caleb, one of Kelly's little boys, who was doing a great job holding his baby sister

Aiden ended up next to Caleb's brother Sammy....those two are little peas in a pod! I didn't get a good picture, but they were grinning at each other and having a blast during the pictures. I found them upstairs hiding together under a blanket when we were trying to pull the whole group together for our photo session :)

The light coming in my windows was horrible, but here are the 6 playgroup mommies and all our babies.

The mommies!!

Friday I took the boys to Prairie Fest for "Wheels Go Round". We went with the neighborhood crew. There were at least 7 or 8 vehicles that the kids could climb in to, honk horns, check out gadgets etc. Here are Logan and Aiden in the garbage truck!

Here are the babies: Jackson, Kate and Brady. Bray was SUCH a good boy that day. It's getting harder and harder to convince him that the stroller is tons of fun (notice the emergency paci is in place....that always helps)

Little kids, big wheel!

Little kids....big scooper!!!

After procuring balloons and fake tattoos, we played with the goats and rabbits. It was....red day for my boys :)

We had to teach Brady to show his open hands to the goats, indicating that he did NOT have food. After they stopped rushing at him, my little animal lover had a blast petting them and running around. I swear that Bray is going to be our kid who, "just really really wants a puppy mommy!"

Saturday night was family night for the neighborhood crew. Logan and I picked up Nana and Papa at the airport, drove home, had a quick re-fresh, packed the car and headed out. The kids all rode a ton of rides. This was the first one they did (and a first for Aiden who was too small last year) - the dragon roller coaster

When they got off the ride, AJ and Aiden rushed over to each other, grabbed hands, and had a conversation that went something like: AJ: "Aiden!! Did you like that?!"

Aiden: "ya!! it was like THIS (jumps) and like this (sways to the side)" AJ: "me too!!" (jumps and waves his arms in he air as Aiden does the same)

then they happily hugged for a while!

Next, the kids all tackled the cars. I got a sweet picture of Logan (in his "just like daddy visor") and Ryan who rode together.

Nana and Papa took the boys on the big Ferris wheel (I was quite happy to stay on the ground...!




Here is Aiden coming down from the big obstacle course / slide thing. His shirt says "100% good, 10% of the time" Hysterical!


While the kids were on the rides, I was trying to scope out an arcade game they could actually play. I found this giant fishing game...a smaller version of the one Aiden loves at home. For $3, you try until you win....and you win a ball (what could be better?!) Aiden and I went first....it took a while until "he" got the hang of it (plus the girl running the booth finally showed us where the fish were the hungriest...aka opened their mouths the most). After Aiden, Logan and I gave it a shot...we got his ball much faster :)

Aiden was hugging his ball as we walked back to our circle of chairs

A few more kids in our group went to play the fishing game after we came back (oops....sorry moms and dads!) They did make for great entertainment while we were there though!

Here is our annual "circle of fun" at Prairie Fest. Papa got all the kids some balloons from the info booth. We all ate, played with some mini beach balls and danced until it got close to dark. Since there were no fireworks this year, we left "early" and invited everyone to come back to our place to make s'mores outside and play with glow-in-the dark stuff

Bray tried a corn dog. He actually liked it despite the face he made

Brian somehow got mistaken for a climbing toy

I think he prevailed though...

Brady found a chair just his size and chillaxed in it for a while.
On Sunday, it was time for Nana and Papa to give Aiden his early birthday present...an actual UP house!! After we saw the movie, Aiden said he wanted a house with lots and lots of balloons on it. Wish granted!

Nana bought a bird house, added shingles, a door, windows etc etc and painted it to look just like the house in the movie! We bought 12 balloons to see if they would lift the house off of the ground...no luck. Another trip to the party store and we had a total of 35 balloons. Brian even cut the bottom out of the house....it was SOOOO close to flying! Bri realized later in the day that the best thing to do was to toss it over the edge of the balcony upstairs and watch it float nicely down to the ground floor....we let them do that a few times with supervision.

Aiden's house was waiting for him under the front stairs when he woke up from his afternoon nap. It took him a while to fully wake up and enjoy this amazing balloon creation, but he LOVED it!

We tried to fly it outside (see video). Aiden even wanted it to sleep in his room that night (and he put all his stretchy worms, frogs and snakes inside the house for their bed time). I for one loved the house, but would probably freak if I woke up and saw it in my room in the middle of the night! I kept mistaking it for a person standing in the living room all afternoon!

Brady has a thing for bottles right now and tries to steal them ALL the time. Brian was trying to enjoy a beer Sunday night, but it's hard when a little one is chasing after you whining. So....he filled his empty bottle with a little water (after it was washed out) and Brady was just so very happy. He climbed up on the fireplace and sat there grinning. Silly baby.