Leon and Michael's Birthday and Other Fun

Last night as I was making dinner, I felt totally relaxed. I love just puttering around in the kitchen, and I realized I was so ready for the weekend to start so I could enjoy some downtime. And then it hit me that it was Sunday night. Doh! Thank goodness this is a short week with a long weekend. As a bonus, the boys only had school today and Ree only has school through Tuesday, so I have fewer lunches and snacks to make and fewer kids to get out the door. I love my morning time with them, and I generally enjoy the lunch making, but I will give thanks for the break.

The reason I was looking for some downtime was it was another crazy week. It was a really fun week, but it was busy. In addition to the usual chaos that is our household, my parents were visiting and all three big kids had field trips last Wednesday. Ree went to a plantation as part of her class's study of pioneer life, and the boys went to fire station. It should be noted that the boys asked many questions on the field trip, including Leon asking dispatch if they had games on their computers. Somehow it seems fitting that the only pic I have to share on here of the boys' field trip is Leon stopping, dropping, and rolling.

The boys' birthday was Friday. It's hard to believe they are five. (On a side note, it's just about as cold as it was when they were born. Although I am a four seasons girl, I did really enjoyed the random 70 degree days last week! I was not a fan of walking to the rec center on campus this afternoon when it was 39 degrees at 1pm)

The boys had a great birthday complete with lots of celebrating. First, they got to celebrate at school. Their school celebration is simple, yet meaningful. They each took a turn holding a globe and walking around a candle to show the Earth going around the sun for each year they've been alive. (For visuals, check out last year's celebration, and yes, a lot of it looks remarkably similar to this year.)

 Friday night went to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner with my parents. It was the first time we've gone since their birthday last year, and everyone had a lot of fun.

Michael playing a fishing video game.

Leon convinced a boy who was about eight-year-old to play air hockey with him.

Grown ups can play too.

After that, we came home and opened presents from family and had ice cream sundaes, which are a tradition for the family party.

The birthday celebration continued on Sunday with a party with friends from preschool. I know all the other kids get to have cool parties and have bouncy castles and go roller skating, but we kept it low-key and had an old-fashioned at-home party at my parents' house. (And we had fun. Dang it!)

I may have had a little too much fun making swirly frosting with sprinkles on their cupcakes. We eventually also added Angry Birds cupcake toppers.

My kids believe all you need for a party is streamers and balloons. I can so work with that.

Playing some Angry Birds while they waited for guests.

Pin the tail on the Angry Bird.

One of my favorite party games as a kid was Find the Treasure in a Box. You take the prize and wrap it in a series of boxes. You play music, and when it stops, that kid gets to open the box, hoping to find something other than another box. I busted out that game and managed to keep eight preschoolers entertained for 10 minutes. Success!

There is a much bigger table behind them, but the kids opted to squeeze in together at the little table to eat cupcakes. Also, every boy at the party was in a striped shirt. Impressive.

All together, it was a very, very good birthday. And a very good week.

I Miss Sleep

It's been eight or nine months since I really slept, and it's starting to get to me. Okay, that's a serious understatement. I've been pretty evil for awhile now, and I'm not a fan of the new me. I miss sleep. I was never really a sleep devotee, but never sleeping five or six hours and constantly getting woken up at night? Yikes.

The problem seems to be the kids won't go to bed at night. And they pop up all night, one after the other, like a house full of whack-a-moles. Then they get up early. Reaalllly early.  A couple of Sundays ago Mike said to me, "We've already been up for two hours, and the sun is still sleeping. That's funny!" Yes. Haha, Mike. Haha.

We managed to hit a new low this weekend. On Saturday, we didn't even sleep until 5:00. Natalia decided to get up for the day at 4:49 a.m. And, of course, she had to wake up her brothers at that hour, too, so they wouldn't miss out on any "fun." So Saturday we had to get a little creative just to keep everyone awake and in one piece. It ended up being creative-use-of-toys in the backyard day. Thankfully, Wednesday morning's snow

(earliest snow on record for Wilmington!) was long gone.

I started by dragging out the kiddie pool, and filling it with plastic balls. A super ghetto DIY ball pit. The three stooges had lots of fun.

And, yes, they were playing outside in their pajamas. I'd blame it on sleep deprivation, but if they are going in the backyard and we know they will get messy, they usually play in their p.j.s and get dressed for the day when they come back inside the house. Less laundry that way.

Leon then took over in the creativity department. First he went into the garage and got into the infant kick-and-crawl tunnel. He put it at the top of the slide to make an obstacle course.

Then we got out a bucket of water to play with in the sandbox. (It was in the 70s!) Leon found some chairs and decided it would make a great place to soak his feet. (And, of course, he and Natalia fought over who got to sit and their makeshift pedicure stand.)

They actually played outside for over an hour, and miraculously, no one was seriously injured. Not bad for operating on (seemingly) no sleep.

Home!

We took a day off today. Well, not "off" in the sipping margaritas on the beach way but "off" as in I didn't go anywhere today. And it was SO nice. We used to have one car-less day almost every weekend, but we haven't been able to stay home all day in a long time.

Today's non-adventure happened due to a variety of factors. First, and most importantly, the Bengals had a Thursday night game this week. I had been toying with the idea of a pajama day today all week, but then yesterday morning, after spotting the insane prices of vegetables at Harris Teeter, I decided I would make a run to Trader Joe's this morning (there was definitely not time to go yesterday) to get more affordable veggies. Then I decided I really didn't want to to do that, but I still needed some ingredients for dinner tonight. So Ree and I bravely stopped at a grocery store last night, on our way home from a costume party. You get some funny looks when you are shopping for bell peppers  at 9pm on a Saturday night dressed as a gypsy two days after Halloween. This morning I realized I forgot to return two DVDs to the library that were due yesterday. I realized I had two options. I could quick run them to the library before it opened today (hence avoiding fines) or I could suck it up and pay. Suck it up I did, even though it killed my inner child who long ago learned the importance of always following the rules. I wasn't going anywhere.

Being my annoying Type A self, I had a long list of what I planned to accomplish today. I got through, eh, maybe a third of the list. But I also got to do lots of things not on the list. I sat on the floor with the kids looking at toy catalogs while they made their Christmas and birthday wish lists. I got pictures from the last month uploaded to the computer and sorted. And I ate well. Really well. And not just Halloween candy, although there was quite a bit of that consumed. On Thursday, our Produce Box came with the first sweet potatoes of the year, and I knew I had to have some baked sweet potato fries. (This is such a great recipe. The boys and I always end up finishing the entire batch at once. It works well with a half recipe using 1.5 grocery store sweet potatoes or about 3 farmers' market sized sweet potatoes.) We didn't really have anything to go with them, so I made a Mediterranean soup with chickpeas and tomatoes. Amazingly, the kids all ate it. Dinner was good too. Steak fajitas with mushrooms, a rainbow of peppers (my late night grocery shopping was not in vain), red onion, and grape tomatoes. We also ate the last corn on the cob of the season from our Produce Box.

So maybe it wasn't a day off in the traditional sense. But it was still a great day.