W. made it to his birthday!

Every year it seems so unfair to W. that his birthday falls 12 days after his younger sister’s. But at least it comes! He wanted an Indiana Jones theme like his brother but not a cake — cupcakes. We did our best to make a cupcake temple of doom!

At the very last second before we called him in Dad and I realized we forgot to blow up balloons. And of course there had to be balloons! We blew up 20 balloons in about 2 minutes. We would have been faster but we were laughing too hard!!

We learned our lesson from A.’s birthday and put the streamers on the doorway instead of hanging on the chandelier directly above a lit birthday cake.

Happy birthday, sweet boy!!

Try a new smoothie combo today

I love smoothies. I can throw just about anything in the blender with a couple of frozen banana pieces and some yogurt and the kids will drink it down like it’s chocolate milk! This morning, however, I was out of yogurt. And milk. (yes, it’s grocery day in the B. household!) My sweet husband always tells me that I don’t need yogurt or milk to make a good smoothie. I always protest. But today I was forced to try it his way.

Here’s what we came up with:

• 1/2 frozen banana (all we had left — usually we put 4 frozen banana halves in our smoothies)
• 2 frozen pear halves (thanks to my best friend’s overabundant pear tree in Georgia)
• About a cup of frozen triple berry blend (blend of blueberries, raspberries and blackberries from Sams)
• 5 frozen figs
• 2 handfuls of muscadines (6 year old girl sized handfuls)
• 4 dates
• About a cup of 100% pineapple juice
• 1 tsp of flax seed oil (no one noticed me sneak this in. muh ha ha ha)

Everyone loved it and gulped it down. A. said it tasted a little like sour pineapple but he drank it anyway.  Basically I just opened my freezer and started throwing in whatever I could find.

Sometimes I’m afraid to just wing it and I like to try actual smoothie recipes. I found some great ones here.

If you have some great combos that your family loves, please share in the comments!

5 Kids, 4 Animals, and Me

This past Saturday was our church’s 2nd annual Blessing of the Animals. I debated all week on which animals I was going to venture to take. The cat would be miserable I decided. The rabbit would go to the bathroom everywhere. The dog just isn’t calm enough plus she needed a bath and I certainly didn’t have time to bathe the dog!! The hamster could probably make it.

Of course when it came down do it I couldn’t leave anyone at home. The dog is such a pretty thing. The cat would survive and if we were taking everyone else we couldn’t leave the poor rabbit home alone!

So off we went to the Blessing of the Animals. 5 kids, 4 animals and me stuffed into one 7 passenger minivan!

Note: We were so grateful that we took the extra effort to have all the pets blessed as Spooky the hamster passed away last evening. He will be missed.

2 months old and smiles for Grandma

Praise report

S. slept 9 hours straight last night in her own bed!! Yea!! Late night birthday parties must wear her out. I’ll write about sweet W.’s birthday soon. His was the last of birthday season. Now we’ve got to get the house ready for S.’s baptism this weekend!! Life is a never ending party around here!!

Friends Already

A sweet lady at church had a baby just 11 days after we had S. They looked so cute together a couple of weeks ago (the new baby’s first church trip) that we just had to take a picture!

When She Was 6. . .

Birthday #2 of birthday season at the B. house was on the 10th. As it was a Wednesday and Dad works until about 9 p.m. on Wednesdays we had thought to move the celebration to Friday. But then Dad got appointed head spiritual director of a Christian retreat weekend and had to go on an overnight training trip on Friday. He also had commitments Thursday evening and all day Saturday. Happily he decided to take 1/2 a day off that Wednesday so we were able to celebrate on sweet girl’s actual birthday.

Bright and early the children were ready for N.’s chosen birthday breakfast — Fruity Cheerios. <gasp!> Later she went to work with Dad so the boys and I could finish the cake, wrap the presents and decorate the dining room. It was so much fun decorating with the boys!! A. blew up almost all of the balloons and W. helped me make a doorway of pink streamers.

And here she is. Little Miss 6 Years Old:

As you can see she was very excited. She had requested a princess cake. This year I’m into easy cakes (go figure!) so I purchased a Beauty and the Beast polly pocket type set from WalMart and used it as the cake toppers.

Today we’re headed to the Build A Bear Workshop to cash in gift certificates from Grandma J. to A. and N.

Next week — the last birthday of birthday season — W.

The Story About Ping

The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack is the book N. and J.E. have been covering in school last week and part of this week. It is part of a unit study curriculum called Five In A Row by Jane Lambert. The idea is to read the same book 5 days in a row discussing it more in depth at each reading and doing activities to go along with it. I’ve wanted to do it with the littles for ages but just couldn’t fit it time to do the activities. But lo and behold I have two teacher’s aides this year ages 10 and (almost) 8. <grin>

They have all had a ball with Ping. One activity was a science experiment on buoyancy. Oh boy was it hard to keep my mouth shut as A. and W. directed the activity involving dunking whatever they could think of into large bowls of water at the kitchen table. They had the best time. That activity kept them busy for an hour!

What was little baby doing while all this mess  learning was going on? She was chatting with Mom while I folded laundry, of course!

On another day the boys talked with the littles about real ducks and what they like to eat. Then we all headed to the park to feed some real live ducks. And feed them we did! They downed a whole loaf of heels we’d been saving in the freezer. Luckily for Mom this activity fell on Dad’s day off. (maybe it wasn’t really luck <ahem>)

Come and get it!

I’d like to say little baby was fascinated by all the ducks and geese. But, well, you see the picture. Maybe in a couple more months. I’m not sure why I look so mad. Perhaps I’m just being cautious as I had a run in with a flock of geese in my youth.

The week of Ping ended last night with a special Chinese dinner prepared by the littles. I’ll try to add those pictures tomorrow!

The Big 1 - 0

How did this happen? How did my sweet cuddly baby turn into a real live big kid? He was almost 1 year old in the following picture:

And here he is as a big 10 year old boy:

I’m so proud of this handsome dude! He has practically become my right arm since little S. joined the family.

A. enjoyed his birthday party with the Indiana Jones theme. (the cake idea came from one of my favorite blogs — Life As Mom.)

He was thrilled with the cake. Unfortunately after we decorated the table and lit the candles it quickly became a fire hazard. I’m sure you can guess why in the next picture:

Obviously we were aware that the streamers might be a problem so we were being extra careful to avoid them. However, when K. started lighting candles Indiana Jones’ whip drew straight to the flame. I started yelling “the whip, the whip!” K. started yelling “blow them out!” I blew them out and blew cookie crumbs all over the table. A. meantime had been standing in the foyer waiting to be called in and heard mom and dad yelling and screaming over the cake. We hollered at him to get ready, lit the candles, and called for him to come blow out the candles QUICK!! After they were out we sang “Happy Birthday” and he made a belated wish.

First Church Visit

I’m a week late posting these pictures. We actually returned to church last Sunday while S.’s soon-to-be godparents were in town. It was a little crazy getting 5 kiddos (plus myself) ready for church. It took over 3 hours!! Today was a little better. I think it only took 2 1/2 hours. LOL

Tomorrow activities will be added in to the school schedule. We had the luxury of being at home for school every day last week with no outside activities. I dropped most of the weekly outings (4-H, choir, tae kwon do) for this semester so we could enjoy little baby’s early days without too much craziness. But it’s impossible to stay at home all the time. W. returns tomorrow to speech therapy and cub scouts, Wednesday we are expected to return to evening church, Thursday we are toying with trying the chess club again since we aren’t doing all the other activities, and Friday we may try a Boys’ Explorers Club/American Girls Club. Yikes!! Writing it out makes me realize I’m not taking a break from activities at all. Just swapping old ones for new. Hmm… We’ll see how it goes. I may have to rethink. Maybe tomorrow’s trip to speech therapy with the whole crew will be a good indicator of how much we’re capable of at this point.

Enough rambling. Here are the pics of S. from last Sunday:

Mrs. F. knows just how to make a little one happy. She has a new granddaughter just 11 days younger than S.! They got to meet one another today. I can’t wait to download and post a picture of them together.

Mrs. E. (or “Babash” as my kids like to call her) is a favorite of all my children.

Little brother taking advantage of the fact that people other than Mommy are holding baby sister. By the way, little 5 year old N. took this great shot!