Caged animals

On Saturday it was a beautiful first day of spring and I really needed to get out. I have felt like a caged animal all winter and the kids are getting a little crazy being inside as well. We decided it was a good day to visit the zoo. I used to love seeing the otters more than any other animal, but the tigers are easily my favorite now. The white tiger was sitting right on top of the observation room you can walk over to. It's amazing seeing tigers so close. When we came back out of the tunnel we noticed one of the other tigers had left his perch high on top of a rock. We were surprised to see him right in our face when we looked to our right. It was a fun day at the zoo. We saw a couple of babies already and the animals were quite active with the cool temperatures. I think we will be going to the zoo again on Saturday as they are having an Easter egg hunt. The kids are looking forward to that.

Pictures!

I had to go back and take some pictures because I guess I was too busy before the party to do it. Usually I take pictures of everything and suddenly the party was over and I realized I hadn't taken many pictures. I wish these were all my ideas, but I found them all online. There was a lot more great ideas. A lot of kids are having Lego parties! There were some really fun ideas based on Lego sets like the Agents sets, which is Rion's favorite. Maybe next year.

Here's the invitations the kids got. I had some mailing labels that I trimmed a little then applied them to a stack of Duplo blocks. The kids had to put the blocks together to get the message.

These gift bags were 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree. I used some cardstock I had on hand to make the circles and glued them on the bags. Now they are Lego block gift bags!

I think I forgot to mention the cake in the first post! I made three cakes. The knobs of the Lego bricks are the bottoms of cupcakes that cut off and set on the cake and then frosted over them. So yeah, I made three cakes plus cupcakes. It's one of those things you would only do for your kids!

I also wanted to do this: http://chezbeeperbebe.blogspot.com/2010/02/make-this-paratrooper-softie-tutorial.html , but that would have been a little too ambitious. Plus I just ran out of time. I made a couple for Rion and he really liked them. I still have enough supplies for a good size army so one of these days I'll get around to it.

In the gift bags the kids got: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39303906 and http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39053170

Auntie's donut shop

On Wednesday I had to stop at one of the bakery outlets to get my rye bread for our St. Patrick's Day Patty Melts. The outlet is known to my kids as "Auntie's donut shop" because their Aunt Vicki works there. And when she is there she has to buy the kids a treat. And they know the routine: grab a basket and pick out a few individual treats. Then they lug their baskets up to the counter and Auntie Vicki gets each kid their own bag to carry out. And she often adds a chocolate milk to the bag because we all know that the best thing to wash chocolate down with is more chocolate. We really don't need any more chocolate or sugar in the house, but I'm pretty sure this will be one of the little things the kids will always remember so big deal if we have way too many donuts in our house.

Neighbors

I often talk about moving out of town to a little bigger house, a place with some land and someplace with more privacy. But in reality it would be really hard to leave the place we are at now. I love our old drafty house, but more importantly we have the best neighbors. Thankfully we've never really had any problems with any of them. Instead we have had neighborhood block parties and on summer evenings it's not uncommon to gather in one neighbor's driveway and have a beer and share some laughs. We couldn't ask for better neighbors and sadly we lost one of them suddenly last week. At the funeral it was said several times how giving and caring Cherie was. We were on the receiving end of her kindness many times. She also loved it when the kids came over to play with the dog. She usually had a treat for the kids too. We would see Cherie most times in her garden as the kids played in our backyard. Until the funeral I didn't know she had planted the flowers around the Virgin Mary statue outside of St. Mary's Church. Here's a picture I had taken last June of those flowers. We will miss her very much.

Happy Birthday Rion

When I asked Rion what he wanted to do for his birthday party he said he wanted a party at home. I asked him a few times to make sure he didn't want it at Snoopers, gymnastics, swimming or some other place the kids are always talking about having a birthday party at. Each time he kept saying he wanted it at home. When I asked him about a theme he decided on a Lego theme. It was so much fun working with a Lego theme. I got so many fun ideas online. For invitations I put together 5 Duplo blocks (I scored a bag full for free at a thrift store!) and attached a large label. Then I wrote the details on the label, used my Xacto knife to cut around the blocks, and disassembled the blocks. Then the kids had to put the blocks together to get the birthday details. The party colors were red, yellow and blue. I love Dollar Tree and most of the supplies came from there. Tablecloths, plates, napkins, forks, etc all in the primary colors, plus some square buckets in the same colors that I filled with Legos for the kids to play with. I found some cool games to play, but the kids spent a lot of time building with Legos so we didn't play any games. Plus some of the kids had three birthday parties to go to that day so sitting around watching some SpongeBob was ok with them too. For treat bags I bought plain red and yellow gift bags from Dollar tree. Then I cut out circles from card stock and glued them on the bags so they looked like a Lego block. Inside the bags were the normal gift bag items, plus a couple of fun things I found on Etsy, Lego soap and Lego crayons. I think the party went well. It was nice not to have to go anywhere. We didn't have to load anything up and we didn't have to worry about having to leave a rented space at a certain time. It was nice hanging out at home. Rion really liked his party so that's the most important thing.

The great debate

Yesterday was Rion's birthday so he pretty much got to choose what we did. He wanted to see Alice in Wonderland so we went to the matinee. I really wanted candy, but I hate buying it at the theatres so we stopped off at Dollar Tree before heading to the movie. Fred told the boys that when we get to the theatre they shouldn't say anything about the candy in mommy's purse. Of course they asked why not and Fred explained that you're not suppose to bring food into the theatres. And what happens if they see you bring it in was the next question. Fred told them they would throw us out. And thus began the big debate about bringing candy into the theatres. Torii who breaks every rule any chance he gets said "bringing candy in the theatres is against the rules" and therefore we shouldn't do it. Among his other concerns: "If they throw us out do they take our candy or do we get to keep it?" and "What if they just throw mommy out?". I kept telling them we wouldn't get thrown out, but how do you justify breaking the rules to your kids? I told them candy was too expensive at the theatres, but they didn't care. "Everybody does it" didn't fly either and I'm sure I will regret that one the next time Torii uses because I know he will. "I do it all the time" didn't sound good either. Torii was incredibly concerned about getting kicked out so we didn't bring the candy in. When we got to our seats the first thing out of Rion's mouth was "where's the candy?" I told them I wasn't buying any candy at the theatres, not that it mattered since I barely brought enough cash along for the tickets, popcorn and pop. I nearly fell over when the ticket person told me the total. $8.50 each for a 3-D matinee! Anyway, the kids liked the movie and enjoyed the 3-D. When we got back out to the car we opened up our candy for a post movie treat. As Rion took a handful of my Snowcaps he said, "Hey mom, it says 'great with popcorn'"! "I know, I know," I replied. And the debate continues....

Birthdays galore

This Saturday the kids have two birthday parties to go to. I was actually going to have Rion's birthday on Saturday too, but after we got the two invites I had to postpone until next weekend. Oh well. At least I hadn't written out the invitations yet. So last weekend, Torii, Cordelia and I made a trip to Target for presents and some treats for us as well. Torii's Bakugan game for the Wii was on sale so I bought that for him and I finally bought a sewing machine for myself. Then we headed to the toy department to look for presents. Torii picked out some Barbie Cinderella dolls for his friend, Cordelia picked out some Sesame Street toys for our neighbor and they both found a present for Rion too. So with our cart full of "wants" instead of "needs" we headed to the checkout. And there in front of us was another family from church. I can't imagine what they thought of our purchases. I was wishing they were behind us so they could clearly hear me tell the cashier I needed a lot of gift receipts. Seriously I'm not spoiling my children! Most of this stuff isn't even for us! Oh well. It doesn't really matter what they think, but it is funny.