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!

Christmas Ornaments 2010

We have a tradition of giving the boys each an ornament every christmas.  This year, Creed was big enough to have an opinion about his ornament and I made the mistake of telling him he could choose it himself.  So you know what we ended up with?  This Beauty!

He was so in love with it, how could I say no.  It makes me smile every time I see it.  Plus, it will make a great story when he gets older.

 It made me more aware that I only have a few years to pick Ollie's ornament on my own so I tried hard to find something special that would really be a keepsake for him.  Larry and I ended up settling on this Jonathan Adler Squirrel ornament because it made us both smile. I have to say I do look forward to seeing what he will choose for himself once he has an opinion on such things.

I want to be the kind of mom who . . .

Well, it's been much too long since I've done one of these posts so let's start the New Year off right!

I want to be the kind of mom who practices random acts of kindness with my kids, like this mom who likes to be an anonymous elf every December and leaves a mix CD of her favorite Christmas songs and $5.00 gift certificates in the public with little notes that say, "Psssst! If you found this, it's yours to keep, no strings attached. Merry Christmas!"
I want to be the kind of mom that makes it fun for my kids to make good choices. I loved this post on Stephmodo, when she and her husband wrote of several coupons for fun treats and experiences and let their kids choose to trade in their Halloween candy for coupons like "Stay up 30 minutes after bedtime", "Hike up the Canyon with Dad" or "Choose a special drink at the grocery store". Probably all things they'd be happy to indulge once in a while anyway, and a great way to provide special one-on-one time. Brilliant!

When I first started working full time, one of my coworkers brought in a huge bowl with all of his kids' Halloween candy, and I felt so sad for his kids, but now that I'm a mom, I'm tempted to do the same thing. This really seems like a great solution to me, and the best part is, it leaves the kids to decide whether or not to give up their candy.
I want to be the kind of mom who creates fun/unusual family traditions that my family will love and my kids will one day want to continue with their own families. I think I've already mentioned my love of surprise balls, so of course, I loved this post about a Grandma who saves up tiny treasures all year and makes a Santa surprise ball for each of her grandkids every Christmas. It makes me want to start stocking up on tiny treasures now (Is there a Cake decorating store in Salt Lake?)
The little kids had surprises like these and the teenagers had things like dollar bills and coins so everyone loves them!

I also loved this post about a mom who puts away all the Christmas ornaments and decorates the tree after the kids are in bed on New Year's Eve so they wake up and run down to find a tree covered in confetti and stuffed with crackers and supplies to have their own early morning New Year's Day party.

I want to be the kind of mom who makes everything in life an adventure. Have you heard of Harriet Russell? She's an illustrator who mailed herself 130 letters over the course of a year with the addresses in puzzle form (anagrams, mirror writing, dot-to-dot, colorblindness tests, even a drawing of a map with no address), and believe it or not, all but ten of them made it back to her. She has a book about them that I can't wait to pick up at the library. I wonder if the same thing would work in the US.

I want to be the kind of mom who makes our house the favorite place for our kids and their friends to hang out. I love this post about a mom who hosts Free Cookie Friday the first Friday of every month and invites all the neighborhood kids and parents to stop by for a cookie on the way home from school. What a great way to become familiar with everyone in the neighborhood.
Plus, let's be honest, those cookies look really delicious!

Creed Gets a New Ornament

We adopted our friends the Erneys' tradition of buying our kids a new ornament that means something to them every year so one day, when they leave home, they will have some happy memories to trim their own tree. This year I found a robot ornament for Creed (and yellow at that).He told me that it was was the best ornament in the whole world ever! so I guess that he likes it.

By the light of the silvery moon

How did I get so behind on blogging?  Sooner or later, I will catch up.

We have an annual tradition of holding a moonlight flashlight Easter egg hunt for grownups the Saturday before Easter, but we were in California so the hunt was off.  Since we planned the trip fairly last moment, I had already stocked up on goodies so two weeks later as I started taking down the Easter decorations, we decided to leave them up and hold an impromptu hunt. It was too late to invite any of our friends with kids who would need babysitters, but luckily we talked Tyler, Lisa, and Danielle into heading over.  We were all still in our church clothes but we had to bundle up a little because it was COLD.  This is after I hid the eggs, but before the hunt started.

Larry made me promise to post this closeup so you can see how awesome my outfit truly was.
And here are our hunters, ready to go!
The rules were simple.  Everyone was assigned a color of egg to find (13 each) and there were four golden eggs that anyone could find and redeem for a bigger treat.  This year was the best hunt so far because I found the coolest nesting eggs that stacked together in groups of four so I had a lot of different sizes to hide.  

I also hid 10 Cascarones (hollowed out real eggs filled with confetti) and if you found one and smashed it on someone, you got to steal one of the eggs in their basket.  It made the hunt really exciting.

Tyler ended up with most of the gold eggs, but he shared with everyone.
We spent the rest of the night talking and enjoying our spoils.

It always ends up being way more fun than we expect (And we expect to be pretty fun).  I highly recommend holding a moonlight flashlight Easter egg hunt of your own!

Note to self: next year, plan ahead so we can invite more people and make sure to have plenty of flashlights on hand.

Holbrook Kitefest

Speaking of freeloading, we spent the weekend watching our church's General Conference on TV at Lisa's parents' home.  The weekend was full of good food and new friends and kite flying. Lisa's family is serious when it comes to kite flying.  Even all of the tiny kids have their own kites. Since Lisa and Tyler gave Creed a kite for his birthday, we were able to join in on the fun between sessions of conference.

Doesn't this look like a seriously fun group?

Too bad we turned our backs for a moment while we were sorting out our kite and turned around to discover this.

At least he told me that he thought it tasted yucky.

Valentine Exchange 2009

I really needed something to look forward to during this dreary weather so I decided to throw a Valentine exchange, basically just like the one that I threw last year in Ohio only with a whole new set of friends.  I love exchanging Valentine's.  I miss picking out a Valentine and addressing them to each person in my class, but I figure there's no reason that I can't do that now, right?

There were 14 guests so I told everyone to bring 13 valentines to exchange, and the valentine's could be as simple or as ornate as they wanted, the purpose was really just to have an excuse to get together and introduce some of my friends to each other.  I kept the food really simple since I was sure the Valentines would include some sweet treats.  

I picked up Italian Soda in shades of pink and red (because I'm the sort of person who selects drinks by color, but flavors like blood orange and strawberry pomegranate also sounded good)
I made sugar cookies and left them for the guest to decorate and take home.
Vanilla, cream cheese, and strawberry frosting.

Lots of sprinkles
And of course a lot of heart shaped candy
This picture is from later in the party when things had been rearranged, but I had to show off that I finally got around to hanging some of the letterpress frame mats that I designed for Sycamore Street Press.  Eva brought a bunch of them to me when she was in town for Christmas and I've been debating about what to frame.  About an hour before the party I decided I couldn't stand the awkward space on this wall in our dining room so I printed out some Valentine themed prints of children's book characters (since I love children's literature so much) and Larry brought up the table that was behind our couch in the basement.


Hearts were everywhere.  I even hung heart ornaments in all the windows.
We did the exchange speed date style so you had three minutes to swap with one person and tell them about your Valentine and then when the timer went off, you moved to the next person.  As usual, I didn't get photos of everyone, but here are some of my friends with their valentines.

Whitney with Yo Gabba Gabba valentines.  I laughed when she said she tried to buy New Kids of the Block valentines on Ebay, but didn't win the auction.
Melissa had mini spa treatment for everyone.  She made a lavender milk bath treatment and gave out chocolates to each while you soak.
My mom gave out these cute candy filled hearts and put earrings that she made on the name tags.
Elisa made really cute chocolate mice (and Creed might have eaten two this morning for breakfast).
Melinda made salsa and handed them out with chips.
Annie made CDs of her favorite romantic songs.
Wendy made chocolate covered pretzels and heart barrettes made from felt.
Liz gave out white chocolate because that's her favorite treat.
And Marnie handed out heart ornaments with one of her favorite quotes.
Faith made really cute Valentines bracelets and Lisa made little terracotta hearts that came with a little bottle of perfume to soak them in so you can put them in your drawers and they will smell good.

Thank you to my mom for the pretty tulips and for helping me set up and thank you to everyone who came.  It was so fun to visit with everyone.  I'll post pictures of the valentines that I made next.