Birthday Boy

What happens when Dallin's Birthday, Easter and Grandma Crapo's visit all fall on the same weekend?

It makes for one really fun, very busy weekend!

Dallin turned 4 this year. We threw him a pizza birthday party, because he looooves pizza.

I made the invitations, but I didn't use my Cricut this time, only scissors and paper punches.

To start the party off, the children got to decorate and make their own paper chef hats. 

And I made an apron for each child to wear and take home as a party favor.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of all the aprons before the party, so you don't get to see the cute "girl" ones I made.

The aprons were a fast easy sewing project. I mostly based them off this tutorial HERE.

Super easy chef hat tutorial HERE.

Then everyone got to make their own pizzas. Mckay took over as "master chef" and showed all the kids how to roll out the dough and build a pizza with the toppings of their choice.

 It was kind of a mad house with 28 people (adults and kids) all in our kitchen making pizzas at the same time. I may have bitten off more than I could chew when planning this party. Thank goodness I had Mckay and my mom to help me out. They never once looked at me and told me I was crazy for thinking we could handle this, they just jumped right in and helped from beginning to end. I have a great husband and mom.

 To go with the pizza theme, a friend made a "pizza" cake for me.

The inside was just a regular cake and all the decoration is frosting (no real olives or cheese). Doesn't it look AMAZING?! It was pretty tasty too.

I made some paper bunting for the wall with the colors of the Italian flag, as well as some paper pizza slices for the walls throughout the house.

And I made a playlist of Italian pizzeria type music which really added to the atmosphere. (Here's a link to the playlist if you're really interested.) 

 Dallin isn't a fan of cake and rather than trying to force him to eat cake unsuccessfully for a 4th year in a row, I got him a donut to eat instead.

 And it's a good thing I got him his own "cake" because with all his hard work blowing the candles out at that downward angle, some drool escaped his mouth and put one of the candles out.

 You can see some of the drool in this picture. Cool/gross.

Dallin got lots of fun new toys from his friends, including lots of puzzles, which he is thrilled about.

The next day he opened his big present from Grandma Crapo. 

 I'm not sure if all of this love was for the big box or the Spongebob wrapping paper on it.

 He got a sand/water table to play with outside. 

He is going to have a blast with this once it finally gets warm enough to play outside again.

As if all of this weren't enough birthday fun, Dallin is in a birthday card club for kids with Williams Syndrome. He got tons of birthday cards from buddies all across the country (and even Australia!).

Many of the cards had stickers in them.

He's a sucker for stickers.

 He was so happy to open all the cards.

Even though it's a little blurry, I love this picture. "Yay for cards!"

Yay for birthdays!

Yay for handsome four year old boys!

Spring Break

Last week was Dallin's spring break from school. It started with a really warm Saturday and we actually got to go outside and enjoy the sun for a bit. Really, it was barely over 50 degrees, but when it's been freezing cold for so long, 50 feels warm.

 My boys are so artistic... and so good at writing each other's names.

 Then it snowed all day Sunday and into Monday. When we ventured back out into the world on Monday, this is what we saw:

 The boys could barely climb over the snow drift to play. They were grabbing fist fulls of snow and throwing it to the side to clear the pathway. I applaud their helpfulness, but a shovel was much faster.

Compare this snowy landscape to the warm Saturday only days before. And then a few days later it got warm again and all that snow was gone by the next Saturday. This is crazy spring weather!

It took quite a long time to shovel the driveway. I had to do it in shifts. I thought I'd be a cool, fun mom and shovel a maze in the snow for the boys to go through. 

 They walked in it for about 30 seconds. I guess they felt trapped and couldn't find an exit (I made several) because Connor started crying and Dallin began tunneling out the side wall.

This is what happens when I try to do fun things.

Snow days and Sick days

We've had several sick people in the house for the past few weeks. Mckay has been sick all of this week, and last week Dallin was miserably sick for several days. We couldn't get him to eat anything, which really doesn't help his already petite frame. He spent all day sleeping; sometimes on the couch, sometimes on the floor.

Connor missed having his buddy to play with and would lay by Dallin occasionally to poke his nose.

We had a lot of snow fall last week too. This happened on a day when Dallin was feeling a little better so we  jumped at the opportunity to play outside.

Connor was in heaven. He could have stayed out there all day, even with freezing finger and toes.

Rather than tread his own path through the snow, Dallin followed around in Connor's footsteps.

Then I showed the boys how to make a snow ball.

Now armed and dangerous, Dallin started chasing Connor.

So I tried a more peaceful activity and we built a snowman.

 And Connor destroyed a snowman.

 Dallin with our rebuilt and dressed up snowman. 

This snow storm was bad enough to cancel school and we didn't leave the house for a few days. We're glad we got have fun playing in the snow and take a short break from being sick.

Animals on the Farm

Dallin's prechool class had a field trip last week. The nearby high school was hosting "The ABC's of FFA." Several preschool classes in the area were invited to come learn about farming from the high school students. Connor and I got to join the class.

Dallin got to sit on a tractor.

And they got to play in a large sandbox.

 I think they would have stayed at the sandbox all day.

 The highlight of the trip was seeing all the animals. There were horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, donkeys, llamas, alpacas, and more.

Dallin was so excited that he got to hold a rabbit.

Connor's favorite was the donkey. He laughed every time the donkey's lips brushed his hand.

Connor has a thing for noses right now (particularly nostrils) so he loved the very large nostrils on the donkey.

Dallin got to plant a tomato seed and bring the pot home to water it and take care of it. It just looks like a pot of dirt right now so he's not that excited about it. Being the lone tomato eater in this house, I'm determined to have that plant grow and bear tomatoes.

Be my Valentine

Dallin got to pass out Valentines in his preschool class, so I made some for him to take to school (using my Cricut :) ).

While I was at it, I figured I'd make some for my piano students and a few other people as well. Pretty soon I was gluing small, intricate shapes on 30 cards.

 This took longer than I expected. 

The back of the card was simple.

I love how they turned out, but I think next year I'll just buy a box of Valentines for Dallin.

For the valentines I was planning to give to my piano students, I attached a piece of chocolate candy to them. And I was dumb enough to leave them out on the kitchen table.

 Connor got to one of them.

 He shoved the whole chocolate in his mouth, foil wrapper and all.

This is him signing "please," asking for more candy.

For our Valentine's Day dinner, I made fondue, same as last year. I made a chocolate silk pie for dessert, which tasted like chocolate flavored butter... in a pie shell. I'm on the lookout for a better recipe.

Dallin loves to help me in the kitchen, especially when I'm making bread dough, pie dough, biscuit dough.... He likes to eat the dough. This time I saved some pie dough scraps just for him. When there were no more dough scraps, he began eating the flour off the counter.

When Dallin sees the picture of himself on the right, he laughs and says, "Slilly!" (i.e. silly)

Happy Valentines Day from our SLILLY family.

February, so far

We've reached the "blah" part of the year. The fun holidays are over and it's always cold and snowy outside, so we're stuck inside all day. The boys have been sleeping in longer though, which has been nice.

Connor has learned how to push the kitchen chairs around and climb up on them to reach anything he wants, which has made my life 10 times more difficult. Even worse, is that when he combines a kitchen chair with a bar stool, it gives him two steps up and he can get on top of the counter and reach the things I moved out of his reach. 

I'm not sure how he climbed onto the bar stool in this situation. He has a small stool nearby, but not high enough to get his short body on the bar stool, and the closest kitchen chair is knocked over. Maybe he did some Jackie Chan maneuver and jumped off the kitchen chair as it was tipping over. 

Also I hope the messy, cluttered house in this picture makes you feel better about the cleanliness of your house. I did at least move the dirty diaper on the floor out of the shot before taking the picture. You're welcome.

***

 We have managed to get out of the house a few times. We went ice skating at the local outdoor rink. We each wore about 4 layers of clothes and it was a warmer night (about 30 degree F) so we didn't freeze.

Dallin and Connor have never been ice skating before. They both did alright on the ice, as long as you were always holding their hands. Dallin managed to take a few steps on the ice by himself!

A friend from church was also there skating and gave Dallin some good skating tips.

Coonor was tired and ready for bed in this picture, but he did have fun getting out of the house for a bit.

They didn't have skates small enough for the boys, but they did have blades you could strap onto the shoes they were already wearing. You can see Dallin's in this picture. And these had 2 row of blades (instead of the normal one blade on a skate) giving the kids more stability on the ice. We thought they were awesome.

 The local Children's Science Museum in Lafayette had a free day to celebrate it's grand reopening. It's a very small facility but it's the best we have in town unless you want to drive to Indianapolis.

 And when your kids are young like ours, they are content to sit in one room and play with the little kids toys for hours anyway.

I showed Connor how to listen to the "ocean" in a seashell and he thought it was so cool!

He carried the shells around for a bit listening to them.

***

This is what happens when Mckay is in charge of bathing Connor.

Connor walked around the house for a while with the towel around his waist. It was so cute.

***

The back of our house looks out across a field to the road. The city bus Mckay takes to and from school drops him off on this road by our neighborhood. If I tell Dallin that his Dad will be home on the bus soon, he'll watch out the window for the bus. 

And when the bus stops and Mckay walks off, Dallin starts banging on the window very excitedly. Daddy coming home from work is the best part of the day.

Home Decor

Dallin brings artwork home from preschool nearly every day. Our refrigerator has reached surface area capacity and there is not space for even one more pipe cleaner, pom pom, or paper plate craft. So I made something that could hang in his room to display his artwork.

It was pretty simple, I mostly copied this tutorial. I painted two long pieces of wood and glued clips to the board.

The hardest part was getting them hung up on the wall. The boards sat in Dallin's closet for a few months waiting for a Saturday when a certain man of the house could hang them up for me. (When I hang things up, they don't look level.... because they aren't.)

I cut some letters with my Cricut :) and pinned them over the boards. Easy!

While we had a hammer and nails out, we hung up some pictures in our front room.

I know, we've been in this house for over 18 months and still haven't hung up all our pictures!? I have trouble deciding how I want to hang things and I don't like extra holes in the wall, so pictures usually sit for a while until I can make a decision.

I like the shape of the pictures. And I like that I can finally look at the walls and tell who lives here.

And while I'm posting about my creative endeavors, I'll share this card that Dallin helped me make for a birthday party he went to.

It was his first big kid birthday party at someone else's house without us there with him. I hear he played nice and participated, even with it being a My Little Pony themed party.