Transformers Party

Josiah celebrated his birthday with a Transformers Party!  As usual, we celebrated as a family during the early part of the day and the party was later on that same day.  Josiah opened his gifts from us.  The kids all got him a small gift, and we got him a small play pistol, and a pair of rollerblades.  Here he is trying them out for the very first time…

Josiah asked for games for his party so I did some internet searching and came up with a few ideas.  For the first game I hung up a picture of one of the deception transformers (the “bad guys”) with a target on his chest that I made.  I printed out some stars for the kids to pin on the target to try and see who could “kill” him.  My original thought was to print out bullet hole clip art but I thought that might not go over well with other familys so we stuck with the safer stars.  This game was so much fun for the kids!

Then we played “Deception Bowling”, an idea that I found on the internet.  Prior to the party we bought bottles of Gatorade and had the kids drink them.  Once empty I washed them and removed the labels.  Then I printed up coloring pages of deceptions from the internet, had the kids color them, and taped them onto the bottles.  At the party we had the kids take turns bowling, keeping track of everybody’s scores.  This game was also great for the kids, they LOVED it and just wanted to keep playing!

When all the games were over I let the winners from each game pick a prize, and then I let all the kids pick one more prize so that everyone ended up with at least one prize. 

We served dinner for all our guests, Lasagna, a Green Salad, and French Bread.  I set up a table for the kids in the family room.  I had juice boxes for everyone, which I opened prior to the party starting and placed on a tray in the family room.  I also put extra forks and napkins on the kids table, so that anyone who forgot those things was covered.  :-) 

Then it was on to the gifts!  This ended up being a mostly family only party, because of various reasons friends couldn’t come, so the amount of gifts was small and very manageable.  There was a definite theme to his gifts, he got almost all guns!

We finished up the party with cake and ice cream.  I bought cupcake toppers from etsy.  Josiah picked strawberry cupcakes and buttercream frosting, very easy.  I served all the ice cream ahead of time in cupcake liners and froze them, so serving everyone was a breeze!

After all the guests left, Josiah spent the evening with Mark and I, shooting his new guns.  Ha!  On their birthdays we let the kids stay up later than normal, and sleep in our room, such a special treat for them.  Josiah was pretty wiped out from his big day, he only stayed up till 9:30…

This was a great day for him!

Kid Pics

Here are some pictures of the kids from October.  I hardly ever remember to get out the camera and take pictures, I'm so busy, so I appologize for the lack of pictures.  Also, I just realized there are no pictures of Elijah.  I guess he was working on school or reading a book or something when I took these.  ;-)  

Jeremiah and Malachi

The youngest 3: Jeremiah, Micah, and Malachi

My "Babies"  :-)

Josiah and his airplanes.  He's such a ham, he always wants his picture taken!

Emmy and Malachi.  She is so proud of her little brother and loves to hold and take care of him. 

Malachi

Love Malachi's hair in this pic, freshly washed!

And one final picture that Emmy took of me and Malachi.  :-)  Pictures of me with any of my kids are precious to me, since I'm the one normally taking the pictures I'm rarely in them.

Awana Award Night!

This past week was the kids last week of Awana!  All the kids finished their books and got awards.  They were all so proud of themselves!

Emmaline recieved a ribbon and a certificate for completing her book, review book, and multiple other verses!

 Elijah completed 2 books plus 3 review books plus multiple other verses so he received a special award from the commander, she called it the "Wow Award", because he went so far above and beyond what was required!

This was Josiah's last year as a Cubbie, so he received a special certificate, big ribbon, and very own tote bag!

After the awards there was ice cream floats provided to celebrate!  The kids had a blast! 

Store night!

The kids had a wonderful time shopping at the Awana store this past week!  Josiah had just over $50 (Awana bucks) to spend and ended up getting just a few bigger things.  He has had a great time racing his cars on his new Hot Wheels track!

Elijah had almost $130 Awana bucks!  He also ended up with a few bigger things including a book for him to fill in all about himself, which he has had a great time doing!

Emmaline by far had the most money, coming in at nearly $160 bucks, and she had a marvelous time spending it all!  She came home with 4 huge plastic bags full of her stuff!

All the kids also bought Mother's Day gifts for me, but I, of course, won't see those till Mother's Day!  :-)

Next up is Awards night and then Awana will be done for the summer.  It's sort of bittersweet, nice to not have to focus so much on keeping up with verses for all the kids but at the same time they love going so much, and I love to see them enjoying themselves!  We still are not sure what we will be doing for next year, but we'll keep you all posted.

Library

The kids had fun this week turning our living room into a library, including displays, a sign, and a box of books that people could buy, as well as library books to borrow!  We had just gone to the library so we had lots of books on hand to use! :-)

Display Table and sign

Hand lettered sign done by Elijah

The library!  Looks so comfortable and homey!

When I grow up...

For Awana the kids dressed up as what they want to be when they're grown up!  Elijah dressed up as a farmer, Emmaline dressed as a Mom, and Josiah dressed up as an airplane pilot.  They had so much fun putting their outfits together!

Here is a picture of them all together.  Micah just had to get in on the picture, even though he probably has no idea what he wants to do when he's grown up!  (Jeremiah missed out because he was asleep.)

Emmaline just had to have long orange hair to be a Mom, not sure quite what that says about me!  ;-)

Water Gun Birthday!

For Josiah's birthday we celebrated with a water gun party! 

Josiah asked for a gun party, but we decided on a water gun party because we don't have enough of the nerf type guns to go around, it would be too expensive to buy more, and a logistical nightmare to have each kid bring their own! 

We ended up doing the party on a Sunday afternoon, although in the future we are going to be transitioning birthdays to weekday nights or afternoons, for various reasons, mostly related to the large number of birthday parties with friends/family that we know.  Anyhow, back to the subject.  Josiah turned 5 this year so we allowed him to invite friends.  He only ended up inviting a few and only one of the families could come, so it was a small party, with just my family, Marks, and 1 other family.

We started out the party with a coloring activity, bookmarks.  They were not gun themed.  :-)  After that we did a water gun game in the garage because, wouldn't you know it, it was only around 50 degrees outside and we couldn't be doing water games when it was so cold.  We had set up army men on a table covered with a plastic tablecloth and filled all the water guns the day before.  Each of the kids got to choose a gun, then all the kids lined up around the table and shot over the army men.  They had a blast!  Then we refilled the guns to do another game, but it turned into a water gun fight.  The kids also enjoyed that!

After the games we had cake and ice cream.  I made chocolate and white cupcakes, frosted the white ones with blue (for water, you know), and the chocolate ones white with guns piped on them.  I wasn't real pleased with them but wasn't sure what else to do.  We also had a vegie platter and a fruit tray, standard for our parties. 

Finally, we finished with opening all the gifts.  Always a favorite with the kids!  :-) Then it was time for everyone to go home.  It was one of our best parties yet!

Easter 2012

                       Here the kids are, all dressed up and ready to go to church!  So cute!!!

Kids

It's been awhile since I took pics of the kids, and this past week I was able to take some.  So, here are some current shots of the kids.

Wall Art...

Josiah decided to draw a lovely picture in beautiful blue crayon...all over my bedroom wall!  The policy in our house is "if you make the mess, you clean it up" (when age appropriate of course).  So, Josiah has spent every afternoon scrubbing away at his drawing with a magic eraser and still has a long way to go.  Here's his progress so far...it was a LARGE drawing!

As you can tell, he is not too thrilled about cleaning it all off.  Maybe this will teach him not to draw on the walls in the future!

Black Eye!

Josiah has a nack for doing the darndest things!  This week it was running into the patio table out back and giving himself a black eye!  (Not sure how, since the tabletop is actually shorter than him, but that's what he said happened!) 

When he first came in I though he had poked out his eye, but after cleaning it up a bit I could see that it was just this cut under the eye.  Praise the Lord he didn't hit another 1/8th inch up, or we would have had a major crisis on our hands!

Josiah's Birthday

Are you ready for lots of pictures?  Yes?  Okay, here they are!

We started out the birthday with breakfast, donuts and milk, Yum!  Despite the look on his face Josiah did enjoy them...

 Josiah got dressed as quickly as possible, then sat in the living room waiting for us to finish up the dishes so he could open his GIFTS from us.  He was more than somewhat excited.  :-)

 

This is just what I wanted...

Then came . . . Party time!!! Here is a picture of his cake.  I made it.  It was supposed to be a fighter jet but somehow when I put it together it looked more like a regualar plane so I just went with it.  It was one of my easier cakes to make, only requiring about an hour and a half.  It helped that I wasn't picky at all this time, who cares if the frosting isn't smooth?!?

 

And then the fun part, blowing out the candles and EATING!

 

Then came more gifts... for those of you wondering, we like to give the gifts from us before the birthday party.  That way the kids have a chance to enjoy them before everyone else comes over.

Silliness

One evening we were waiting for company to come and the kids asked me to take some pictures of them.  They were in a silly mood...

Kid Pics

These are some random pictures of the kids that I took this week.  They are not the greatest pictures but...I love to take pictures of the kids to share so here they are!

Emmaline, so serious, at least for this picture. 

 

Here, Jeremiah clowns around in typical "Jeremiahish" fashion.  He is really quite silly...

 

Josiah, fixing his airplane.  He loves to fix things!

Micah, swinging out back.  (Or being swung?  Whatever is the correct way to say that he was being pushed in the swing.  :-) )

 

Josiah on the swingset.  Look at me, Mom!

Elijah with a lego project that he built.  It is fun to see what he comes up with.  This is supposed to be a zebra, I'm not sure that I see it...!