Slime

Parker has been bugging me to make slime for a while now. I finally relented. It’s pretty simple….glue, water, borax and food coloring and it provides minutes of entertainment. Yes, I said minutes. My kids are pretty much always more interested in the process than the result. Oh well. Now he can quit hounding me until the next project he sees on YouTube.

Signs of Spring

The weather last week was pretty nice. The snow melted leaving behind lots and lots of mud. Which ended up in my house.

Up the stairs…..

Down the hall……

Into the bathroom.

Yes. I flipped out. I just stood with my mouth hanging open for a while. I felt like crying. I wasn’t even sure where to begin! I vacuumed first which actually picked up most of it. Then we got out the spray bottle which took up the rest. The little blonde boy is the guilty party. The dark haired big brother was kind enough to help out with the clean-up (primarily because the shooting action of a spray bottle is similar to the shooting action of a gun and he would never turn down the chance to shoot something.)

Welcome back spring….even with all your mud.

Happy Birthday Jack and Abraham!

Jack and Abraham Lincoln are celebrating their birthday today.  It’s Jack’s 7th and Abe’s 202nd.  It was Jack’s request to have an Abe Lincoln birthday theme.  Thank goodness we live in Central Illinois which is home to all things Abe Lincoln! 

Cupcakes for our family party.

My cousin Shawna had this Abe “action figure” and sent it to Jack knowing that he would love it. 

Coloring Abe pages with friends.

Building rafts and log cabins with Lincoln logs (pretzel sticks).   Lunch—everything is better on a stick! 

I came out this morning and found that Jack had set up all this new presents and some old favorites in front of the TV.  He also built a pretzel rod cabin.

Jack and Abraham.

A friend of mine makes our cakes and they taste even better than they look!

My parents have had this Lincoln bust forever and we are borrowing it for the day.

Pin the nose on Abe.  Jack made the first attempt.

Getting ready to blow out seven candles—wearing his new fedora and shades that he wanted so he can do the robot.  What an odd little character.

Rescue Hero

Buddy's keys got locked in his truck (most likely by Jack) so he needed Jack to come to the rescue. Jack was only too happy to oblige. He climbed in the back window.

Rolled over the seat.

Hmmmm.....horsed around for a little while.

And unlocked the door.

He got a big hug from Buddy and was off and running.

We called him a Rescue Hero and he was pretty proud. Love that kid!

Pee Wee Baseball With Jack

Jack's baseball season started out very doubtful. He cried the entire first practice. Travis is the coach so this was a little unexpected. Travis came stomping home that first night and said, "That's it! I'm not coaching him. He cried and held onto my leg the whole time." Welcome to my world. Jack is very unpredictable. I just never know how he is going to react to a situation. The next practice, I went and did everything with him. I ran bases, played outfield, etc. After about 45 minutes, he quit crying and got into it. The next practice, he just cried once or twice. Now he loves it and can't wait to get there. He had his first game last week and he was pretty darn funny.

Hey, batter, batter, SWING! He's either yawning or chattering.

Check out his eyes. They are closed! He got a hit though!

Heading to first base. This kid never runs slowly--unless he's running the bases.

Whew. His first PeeWee hit. We were mighty proud. There is nothing cuter than a tiny little boy in baseball pants!

Jack's Birthday Party

Some pictures from Jack's birthday party. Obviously he had a cowboy party. He is already making plans for his next party. He says it's going to be Backyardigans. I'm certain I can nudge him in a different direction. Above--Bella taking a wack at the pinata.


Above--Jack said "Oh I can't watch this." while watching everyone wack the pinata.

Above--Jack's little heart breaking when he realized that his friend Connor was not sitting right next to him. We were in the middle of singing Happy Birthday when he noticed. He made us stop until Connor moved and then we sang again. I forgot that he had the whole seating arrangment planned out. Oops!

Above--He recovered and blew out his candles.

Above--Cowgirl Stella enjoying the party.

Above--Jack's totally awesome cake made by our friend, Cindy Beck. I don't make birthday cakes when there are people like her out there who can do 100x better than I could. And they taste even better than they look!

I only let Jack invite 4 friends from school because we just don't have much room. The 1st four names he threw out is who we invited. He wanted to invite everyone--in fact, he wondered why everyone wasn't there. That's what happens with a winter birthday. I'm having a lot of guilt because we let Parker invite everyone he wants. Not this year though. I'm cutting him off. I don't know the exact number, but it won't be the usual 15+!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE CASTLE PARTY

The castle party was a success. The most important thing was that Jack had a great time and loved all his "castle" stuff. The first picture is his invitation. You pull the flag out and open the drawbridge and the 2nd picture is what was inside. Trust me when I say that scrapbooking tools made this pretty simple AND I only made 12 of them. The assembly line process works every time! The castle is obviously just an oven box painted with leftover paint from my house. I used an old auto sponge to make the "bricks". I searched high and low for a dragon shirt and couldn't find one so I bought $3.50 t-shirt from Walmart and drew a dragon on it and colored it with fabric markers. The shield is from Dollar Tree and I wired it onto a leftover piece of cardboard which I painted red. I wired it to our front door. The most fabulous cake-maker ever, Cindy Beck, made the castle cake. I brought the castle to her ($3.99 from Gordman's) and told her to do whatever she wanted. Awesome! They all loved the graham cracker drawbridge! Her cakes actually taste even better than they look. Really.

You know what, it does take a fair amount of time and effort to pull off a party like this but look at Jack's face. It's totally worth it!