Who Knew an Apple Could Be So Much Fun!?!

This was the first apple I had given Joshua without cutting it up.  I think he knew he was being a big boy because he was having a lot of fun with it.  Then Sissy decided to start sharing it and somehow it became a game where Joshua was just cracking himself up.  I love watching them play together (when it's nice) because every once in awhile you hear Megan say, "I love you so much Mister!" or "You're so cute Mister!"  I'm sure every Mommy knows what it feels like to hear that.  I love these pictures and Joshua's cute chubby knuckled hands holding that big apple.  There isn't anything that we don't find cute about him!  Well...have I mentioned he has now mastered the child safety locks on the cabinets?  MISTER!!!!

A Fun Day at the Park

I decided to take the kids to the park to practice with the new camera.  You'll notice there aren't many pictures of Megan because she wasn't feeling very cooperative that day.  I did however get some pretty good ones of Mister.  He is such a happy little guy!

Megan's 5th Birthday Party - A Tangled Event!

Rather than going on and on about how behind I am on blogging, I will just move on....

We celebrated Megan's 5th birthday in October and it was quite the event!  She was surrounded by lots of friends and family and had a great time.  She spent the night at my sister's house so that I could focus on the party and have it all ready for her when she arrived.  We had Rapunzel's favorite soup, "Hazelnut Soup", jello boats, sandwiches with rustic aritsan breads, lots of apples that Maximus would have loved and a frying pan full of chocolate chip cookies.  I did spend quite some time with the decorations, that I have to admit were ripped off from a blogger that is way more creative than I.  For that, I thank her.  It turned out great though and we all had so much fun.

 Pascal cupcakes: Green = Happy, Red = Mad, Blue = Sad

 Rapunzel arriving to her party and seeing everything and everyone for the first time.

 Our little baby girl growing up.

 Megan (Rapunzel) had quite the little fan base.  She got a bunch of Tangled dolls and accessories and none of them were alike!

 Favorite card of the day, a singing Rapunzel card.

 Thanking her friends with a curtsy.

 I went over and over in my head about whether I'd be that super amazing mom that spent hours on a homemade creative one of a kind Rapunzel tower cake.  Safeway won.

 Mister getting ready for the lantern show.

 Just like they did for Rapunzel we released lanterns for Megan's birthday.  Upon the advice of that amazing blogger mom, I tied strings to the lanterns so that we didn't cause any accidental fires for our neighbors.  It was a great idea because some burst into flames in mid-flight!

Thank you to everyone who came to her party, for all of her great gifts, and most of all for showing her how loved she is!

Oregon Coast Aquarium

Months ago I bought a Groupon for the Oregon Coast Aquarium.  About a month ago I made some grand plans to go to the coast for the weekend as a family, swim at the hotel pool, go to the aquarium, do some shopping...and then reality hit.  I completely overlooked the fact that it was Josh's drill weekend.  Major bummer because we could have really used that family time.  It has been so busy around here with Josh's hunting, both our work and the kids, having more than 45 minutes with all four of us in the house is hard to come by and pretty sad actually.  I'm becoming very frustrated about it.  Something has got to give.  Anyway, fortunately we were able to get a refund on the hotel and Tami agreed to go with us and take Josh's spot so we just went down for the day on Monday.  The weather held out and didn't rain on us at all really and I think the kids had fun, minus a pretty long car ride.  I've never been to the aquarium, but I do have to say that I'm glad I got the deal on the admission.  I don't think I'd have been happy to pay those prices for what we got.  The kids had fun though, Joshua just hung out and looked around.  After the aquarium, we went to the bayfront and found the sea lions on the dock, had lunch at Mo's and got some candy at the candy store.  After we loaded up in the car, both kids were asleep within 10 minutes or so and we had some silence for about an hour on the way home!  Thank you Tami for coming with us, I know the kids and I all appreciated it and had fun with you!