Isaac's birthday

My little guy is THREE! I can hardly believe it! We had a pretty fun day with this little guy!

We started out with birthday pancakes!  He got a Mickey Mouse one (not pictured) but he immediately corrected me and said it was a "Toodles"  And he got an "I" and a "3"   He thought it was a lot of fun.

Then we took him upstairs to the playroom to reveal his big present!  Roy spent almost 3 hours putting this together last night. I found it for an amazing price a few months ago and immediately called my inlaws and asked if they wanted to go in on it with me.  It came with the table and all the pieces you see. And the station makes sounds and lights up!  Isaac has spent every free moment playing with it!

Then Roy took everyone but Claire to Boonville for a Health Fair - where they got to see an ambulance, helicopter, do wheelchair races and get lots of free goodies. They had a good time!   They got home and Isaac took a nap while we decorated the house.

Can you tell Isaac likes trains?? 

Thomas the Train isn't even his favorite train character, but it is the easiest to find in the party stores!

Then we had homemade pizza for dinner

And opened some more presents! This one was from Granny and Grandpa

And this is what it was!  He's been having a lot of fun with it!

Then we had some friends from church come over for cake and ice cream.  The Johnson family has 8 kids and we always have a good time with them. (only 5 came over this time though)  The youngest two are 4 and 2, so Isaac is right between them in age and enjoys playing with both of them.  Also, our neighbors were out taking a walk when we were about to start, so we invited them in as well.

And of course the cake was none other than.....

                                             Thomas! He's the cheeky one!

A little back story to the cake:  one of Roy's colleagues had a bunch of cake pans that she wasn't really using anymore, so she donated them to the library so people could check them out, use them and then return them. Well, Isaac saw that they had a Thomas the Train one, so he requested that for his birthday. I was kinda hoping the colleague would be willing to just make it for me when she heard I was going to give it a try, but nope, she didn't offer - darn!  She did give me some good advice though.  Wilton is the company that made the cake pans and they have very detailed directions to go along with it, so I just followed the directions (making a few mistakes here and there) and this was the result!  I was pretty darn proud of myself!  Blaise wants Spiderman for his birthday, so I'll get to practice some more!

Is it kinda creepy that I cut out his face?

Sugar-rush eyes!

Ugh, make me stop!

Finished off the evening with some baths!

It was a great day with a really great kid!  Isaac is so fun to be around. He likes to call himself "that guy" because there's a boy at church that can never remember his name, so he calls Isaac "that guy".  A few weeks ago we were doing a development screening with him and the screener asked him his name and he said "that guy"! He loves to entertain Claire, but also enjoys having someone to boss around.  He has a really good memory and always surprises me with little details that he remembers (like every time we get off a certain exit in Columbia he remembers that it is where my doctor's office is located - even though we haven't been there in a year!)   He loves to tell stories, play dress up, play with trains, watch The Wiggles (just the one movie that we have upstairs though), Chuggington, Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Garfield.  (yes, he watches a lot of tv - but when I'm getting Claire down for a nap it is the only thing I can trust him to do!)  He loves to be outside - just digging around in the dirt and riding his scooter.  He has NO interest in potty training yet and gets pretty upset if I even bring it up - so we holding off on that for now!  Anyway, he's just a fun little guy and we are so happy to have him in our family!

Claire's 1st Birthday

 Okay, so I have been horrible at doing any updates - and all the changes Blogger made are not gonna help things!  But I want to at least document Claire's birthday!  My next goal is to get her birth story documented!

"Hi! It's my birthday party!"

Claire's birthday was on April 28th, but were planning to attend the Kansas City Temple open house that day, so we were going to celebrate on Sunday the 29th. Well, Friday afternoon (the 27th) I remember that Roy had to attend a school function on Sunday, so we decided we better do Claire's birthday that night!  I ran next door and asked our neighbor if she'd like to come celebrate with us. My kids all love her (and her dogs!) but Claire was nervous to have her in the house I guess! You can see in the pictures that she is eying her across the table suspiciously!

"Why is Annette in  my house??"

Claire loves strawberries and she loves whipped cream, so I thought this would be the perfect cake! She was in heaven!

She thought the new stroller was for her! She was really mad when we tried to put the new doll in it!

The next day we went to KC to see the temple.

She got this cute outfit from my parents and wore it to church the next day.

I had two videos I wanted to post too, but I can't get them to load, so I'll try again later.   Claire went to the doctor on Wednesday for her one year check up and she weighed 20lbs 2 ounces and was 30 1/2 inches long.  As you can see her hair is still super light (and has reddish tints) and her skin is still pale - it's gonna be a fun summer with this girl! I never had to worry about the other kids so much!

Claire is such a fun addition to our family.  The other kids are always going on about what a sweet baby she is - but she is feisty too! Her latest thing is to climb the stairs anytime she wants a change of scenery.  She gets mad if anyone is up there playing without her! She also loves to be outside.  She's a good napper but not so great sleeping at night. She still nurses all day and all night long - which is fine with me for now - ask me again a a month or two!  She still sucks her thumb a lot - mostly when she is nervous or tired. She's not very friendly with anyone outside of our family.  Everyone at church wants to hold her or play with her but she doesn't really want anything to do with them.  Isaac was the same way and he's just starting to come out of his shell -so I'm not worried about it.  Hopefully she'll be friendly with her grandparents when she sees them this summer.   Oh, and I should add that Claire started taking a few steps here and there when she was about 9 1/2 months old - but didn't start walking consistently till she was about 10 1/2 months old. Our slowest walker- but we love her anyway!

Here Comes Santa Claus

Go here to read about my thoughts on Santa. No, we don't do Santa in our house, but we still take our kids to visit Santa - especially since Bass Pro does free photos :) This year every single child sat on his lap with NO crying! Amazing!

St Louis

(I'm never going to get caught-up, so I am moving on and maybe someday I'll go back and fill in missing posts)

We went to St Louis Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week. We had a great, super cheap hotel room right down the street from the museum we wanted to go to. It had an indoor pool and indoor playground - which was really great because the weather was horrible.

On Monday we got to St Louis at around 3, so we went to the mall to get some dinner and then just hung out in the hotel and the kids went swimming.

Tuesday morning we got up and went to the Magic House Children's museum. I was so excited, because while planning our trip I got a coupon in the mail (yay for one free admission!) for this museum and it was advertising their newest exhibit - Magic Treehouse! Rae LOVES the Magic Treehouse books, so she was super excited. The museum was really amazing. We got there right as it opened, so we got to enjoy about an hour before it got super crowded. It is usually only open in the afternoons, but since it was Thanksgiving week they opened early. PLUS, it was a rainy day, so it was super crowded by 10:30. But it is a huge museum, so if it was too crowded in one area we just moved on to the next place. We all had a lot of fun. We could have stayed longer but everyone was getting hungry by 12:30. I couldn't believe the kids lasted that long without whining that they were hungry.

Back to the hotel for some quiet time. After naps we went to a few stores and out to eat at Denny's (woo hoo for "kids eat free" nights!)

The next morning we got up and packed and headed out the door, wanting to get to the zoo as soon as it opened. The zoo is free but they have a few things that cost money. The Children's Zoo is one of those things, but during the first hour that the zoo is open you can get into the Children's zoo for free. We knew there was a nice indoor area with animals that we could hang out in while we waited for the weather to warm up. I had checked the forecast over and over again and the sun was SUPPOSED to come out and it was supposed to get up to the 50s. Unfortunately, it never really warmed up. The kids were pretty miserable and whiny the entire trip. Not many animals were out because it was so cold, so that was disappointing. After a couple of hours we gave up and headed out. It reminded me a lot of this trip

I was so sure this goat was going to fall. I guess they know what they are doing though :)

Claire wasn't interested in the butterflies.

On the way home we stopped at Costco for our quarterly cheese stock-up!