Living a Colorful Life

When I asked Creed what kind of birthday party he wanted to have, he said he wanted a party where you throw colored powder all over each other (he saw it in a Regina Spector music video). As luck would have it, just two days after his birthday there was a Holi Festival of Colors at the Hari Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork so we were able to easily make his dream come true.

Larry and I have been to the festival before and it is crazy and fun, but we wouldn't have been able to take Creed without help from Larry Uncle and Aunt who live nearby.  They let us park at their house and shuttled us over to the festival and they watched Ollie, and they let us use their air compressor to clean off afterwards (which was amazing).  

The festival is huge.  This year they had 80,000 people attend so we went as early as possible with our friends Wendy and Joseph and we met up with a few of Larry's cousins just in time for the first color throw (they do it several times a day, but it gets more and more crowded so we were glad to leave as things were getting too crowded).  Creed was so excited.  We went up to the top of the temple to get at good look at the crowd and then we met up with our little group on the edge of the crowd to throw colors.

 We brought goggles for Creed, but he refused to wear them.

 He had the time of his life.

 Ollie thought the colors on everyone were hilarious

 And Creed went home looking like a happy little zombie, and talking about how we HAVE to go every year!

It's so fun celebrating Creed's birthday now that he really gets what a birthday is.  I love seeing him bursting with excitement of the tiniest birthday details.  I wanted him to have a surprise right off the bat so I picked up twelve star-shaped balloons and stuck them all over his room at different heights (a trick I learned from Candice when we decorated with tons of balloons for New Year's Eve)

 Creed was so cute when I woke him up for preschool

 He asked if he could keep the balloons up forever, and when I explained that would not work, he said we should at least do this every year for his birthday because he loved it.  I'm pretty sure he actually woke up before I came in to wake him for preschool and he pretended to be asleep so he wouldn't spoil the surprise.

 HE got the be the helper at preschool which is a pretty big deal.

 My friend Wendy offered to stay with Ollie during his nap so I could take Creed to see a movie.  He chose The Lorax in 3-D and I knew who he'd picked when I told him he could bring a friend.

 When Lydia's mom dropped her off, she joked that Lydia's dad said this was like a chaperoned first date.  It turns out Creed and Lydia took this date seriously.  I looked over during the movie and Creed had lifted up the armrest, slid over, and slipped his arm around Lydia. They watched the whole movie like this

We went to get cupcakes afterward. They sat down while I was paying, and when I tried to join them, Creed whispered, "Ummm, Mom, we're on a real date here so can you just take that extra chair away so we can sit by ourselves?"  Haha!

 Then they walked to the car like this, and he even insisted on walking her to the door when we dropped her off.  How does he even know to do that?

 Larry got home shortly after the movie and it was time for presents.  I picked out a magic set for him.

 He got the Mother Gothel Doll he's been asking about for ages (Seriously, I don't know another kid out there who would beg for that)

 And the thing he wanted more than anything else in the world?  A Rapunzel doll soft enough to cuddle with at night.

 It is his prize possession!

 We slipped a Wii game in there too, and he seems pretty happy about it.

 And then, the Grande Finale: With a little late night help from my dad, we put a pulley up in the living room.  It is without a doubt the most played with item in out house.

 I bought this pulley over a year ago, and we've been waiting for just the right moment to give it to the kids. I just wish I'd thought to spend that year looking for a pretty plastic bucket that wouldn't scratch our wall. So far, it hasn't been a problem though.

I know the whole setup looks a little crazy in our living room, but when it's hoisted up, you don't even notice it in the room, and it's on a hook so we can easily take it down if our kids ever stopped playing with it long enough for us to take a break from it.

As you might expect, we now have a permanent pile of random odds and ends up in the loft. It's amazing what you can find to send up in that bucket.

Larry had plans to take the boys to Mr. Cheese's while I was out that night, but Creed just wanted to stay home and play with his pulley and the swing we surprised him with in the basement so our evil plan to put Chuck E Cheese out of business is working.

Oh boy, we adore this kid!

He's Gonna Party Like a Rock Star

Long story short, Creed is on a 24 hour adventure going solo with my parents to see The Little Mermaid at Tuacahn in Southern Utah.  I was supposed to go along and stay at my uncle's house with Ollie so my parents really only had to take Creed to see the play and then we'd all stay the rest of the week to play.  There was a change of plans and they graciously (and maybe a little reluctantly) agreed to take Creed and bring him back the next day.

Creed's been couped up in the house all week with a cold and he was so EXCITED to go!

 I took this picture of him while we waited in the driveway for my parents to pick him up.  He asked me if I knew what he was thinking when I took the picture, and he explained, "I was thinking, New York, I'm on my way!"

 My mom has been sending me pictures of their adventures and he looks like he is having the time of his life.  He called me after the play to tell me, "Mom, the play was a million billion good!"

I can't wait to hear all about it this afternoon.

Preschool Soccer

So Creed joined his first soccer team this year.  He was pretty excited about the new shoes that he said helped him run super fast.

 Four-year-old soccer is one of the most entertaining sports around.  They are so terrible it is funny. At any given time there may be extra players on the field or kids stopping to practice summersaults or pulling crackers out of their pocket to have a snack.  Several times in every game you'll see the coach ask all the players to point in the direction they are supposed to go because they regularly score goals in the wrong goal.

We loved cheering for Creed.  My parents made it to almost every game and Larry's parents came to help out at the two games that I missed so he had quite the cheering section.

He's so big he was about a head taller than the rest of the team.

His favorite Gal Pal from our neighborhood, Lydia was on his team so most of the games he'd prefer to sit on the sidelines snacking with her.

  He was so thrilled to get his medal at the end of the game last night.  He's been dying to have a medal or a trophy and that's about the only thing that motivated him to sign up for soccer so Larry had a plan to run out and buy him a trophy if they didn't get anything because he would have been crushed.  Luckily, he was all smiles and he's been wearing his medal all day today.

On Parenting Quirky Little People

These little people sure have minds of their own.  As a parent, I think it's my responsibility to try to make them healthy and strong in both body and mind so they can be themselves and live their own dreams.  I'll admit that sometimes it's really hard to help them be themselves instead of who I want them to be.  Case and point:

 Creed wants to become a figure skater.

It's certainly not what I have in mind for his future, but I want him to be happy, and who am I to squelch something that he may be amazing at or he may fall in love with (even if a little part of me is really hoping this is just a phase)? He has been constantly begging for ice skating lessons since he was two and our neighbors told him about their lessons.  I insisted that he was much too little at the time, you can't start lessons until you are three.  At three I told him it was really hard and asked if we could put it off a little longer.  I was afraid I would pay for six weeks and then he would hate the first lesson, and I would have to drag him there every week or waste the money.

Well, this summer, as I was registering him for soccer this fall, I noticed the summer session for ice skating was just starting at a nearby rink, and he would only have one other child in his class.  I figured, if this was really what he wanted to do, this would be the best opportunity for him to start.

He was thrilled.  His instructor asked him if he wanted to learn to skate so he could be a hockey player and he gave her a weird look and explained, "No, I wanted to be a figure skater!"  I think she fell instantly in love.

He got out on the ice and fell and fell and fell and when the lesson ended, you couldn't wipe the grin off of his face. Our whole family has been there at times supporting him.

 Larry took him to the last lesson of the session. When Creed cried at the end because he didn't want his lessons to be over, Larry signed him up for the next session.

 He was so excited to get back on the ice this week.  They skipped him up a few levels so he's in a class with two girls who are nine and eleven. And since I'm there for 45 minutes every week, I'm taking lessons at the same time too because I might as well get a little exercise out of it.  While I don't think I have to love everything that he loves, it's nice to give it a try to be supportive too.

 So we made it a date that ended with Creed's restaurant pick

 and my favorite neighborhood ice cream shop.

So every week we head to ice skating, and quite regularly we get weird looks when Creed talks about being a figure skater, but truthfully, I wouldn't have it any other way.  I think the fact that he's having fun doing what he wants to do, even if it's not the popular choice, is the best lesson he can learn. And seeing how happy he is doing something I wouldn't have chosen for him is one of the best parenting lessons that I've learned so far.