Thoughts
Posts tagged birthday
Birthday Booty
Feb 3rd
Let me tell you a about a little something that I fell in love with at Christmas and again this past weekend. Settlers of Catan is the board games of all board games. T got the original board game for Christmas from one of his brothers. We spent hours playing it at Christmas with his family. Then this past weekend for his birthday he got the player expansion and the Cities and Knights Expansion from that same generous brother (and no, it wasn’t the brother that spanked M).
This game takes a good long while to play (think Monopoly) and even a longer time to read all the instructions and understand how to play – but boy is it fun! If you have a weekend evening to kill and a few friends who love to play boards games, buy a bag of chips and a couple of 6 packs of beer and Settlers of Catan.
Oh and in case you are curious, the large box wrapped in unseasonal Christmas paper was my gift to my husband. I am such a good wife that I got him a mini fridge to put next to his computer. So this way when he is killing aliens or saving the world from zombies, he won’t have to run upstairs while regenerating to get a drink or snack. Now all he has to do is reach over and grab his sustenance to refuel himself. The world is safer because of my birthday gift to T, not many wives can say that!
Have my cake and eat it two
Jul 29th
My 26th birthday cake in all its store bought glory. In my families defense, it is hard to whip up a cake when you are on the road and this extra chocolaty cake was a scrumptious stand in. The picture has a weird red glow because I brought my old camera with and the low light setting isn’t very good on it. In a moment of photography genius I thought, why not turn on the flash and then cover it with my finger to filter the light a bit. The result of my creativity is shown above, a cake that looks like it could be featured in a bloody cheaply made horror flick. The receiver of the cake in said movie would most likely be a voluptuous blonde teen with a low cut shirt that shows off her cleavage while blowing out the candles. In real life, the cake was shared between my parents, my sister and I with heaping scoops on vanilla ice cream while watching reruns of Friends. The cake was so good, I treated myself to a second piece later that night. Yum.
A Patriotic 4th
Jul 4th
This morning we packed up the diaper bag with 2 changes of clothes, extra diapers, snacks and spf and headed to the MN Zoo. The zoo has been advertising their new African exhibit all summer and we have been wanting to check it out.
Giraffe at MN Zoo's African exhibt.
P and Me checking out the Giraffes
My family was in town for an early birthday celebration for M’s 3rd birthday. Besides over gifting with more tractors toys than any little boy would ever need, they treated us to a trip to the Zoo. I say treat us to a trip to the zoo because it isn’t a cheap trip. Luckily M doesn’t turn 3 until next week (not that I am above lying to get a cheaper price) because the rate for kids 3-12 is 10 bucks! Adults, which the MN Zoo considers anyone from 13-64 (which is ridiculous for a 13 year old to be considered an adult) is $16! The only consolation to the steep prices are that 2 and under are free.
It is always a mixed blessing when we go on outings with additional family. On the one hand it is nice to have the extra set(s) of hand to help juggle the kids and all their crap. On the other hand we have to take into consideration everything they want to do and see and try and get our very spirited toddlers to go along with it without to much of a melt down. And there is always the icing on the cake, being judged for our parenting techniques — more on this another time.
Today was another GMD for the most part. I felt like I let the boys have their freedom yet was still able to keep control of them.
P with his nose to the glass watching the dolphins.
M was really good. He is at such a fun age. He is now able to really take in most of everything different outings have to offer. He loved checking out the different animals. He had more patience this go around to actually look for the animals that were farther back from the fences.
M searching for the bears
Bear sleeping in a hole
The most difficult part with M today was that he wanted to walk everywhere himself. This created a problem when we tried to go anywhere at a speed faster than a turtle. EVERYTHING caught his attention. I wanted to scream! He was moving so so so slow. And of course he slowed down even more as the morning turned into almost-lunchtime-meltdown-time for P. We ended up having to split into two groups the tortoises and the hares. I lead the hares speed walking P in the stroller so he would screech so loud that monkeys would try and jump the cage to mate with him. P can scream like no one’s business. I am not kidding. He hits a decibel that competes with any wild creature mating or under attack. Where was I? Oh yes, as we wheeled around the zoo at break neck speeds, T and M and the other tortoises crawled their way to the finish line, the food court.
We took one look at the prices at the food court and headed for the van. Lunch at Mickey D’s here we come.
We finished our morning with T shouting 7 orders into the drive through microphone at McDonalds.
The boys, of course, were so over tired they wouldn’t nap so our solution was to stuff them with cake and icecream. Hoping the sugar would carry them through to bed time.
I out did my self with M’s cake this year. In keeping with the theme of tractors and his new sandbox, I made a cake in the shape of a John Deere tractor with the loader bucket filled with sand (brown sugar). I am still patting myself on the back for this one. My best good mom moment of the week was being able to pull off this cake.
M took one look at it and said, “Oh! Thanks Mom!” It melted my heart and made all the food coloring and icing worth it.
From the front porch we waived buh bye to the family as they drove off and sighed a content sigh of relief. It is great to have my family in town but even better to say buh bye.
We helped the economy by buying (and the grandparents over buying) birthday gifts for M, spending way to much on a tickets to a state zoo, ate lunch at McDonalds and if that isn’t patriotic enough T and I are closing out the day with take out Chinese and watching a Netflix. How more American can you get on our Nations 233rd birthday?!
