Birthdays, Holidays and Vacation

For Ken’s birthday Jessie made the crust and Mark made the filling for pumpkin pie.  And boy was it DELICIOUS!  You know your getting old when you have to split your candles up to get them all on there :-)!After dessert Scott and his family stayed and played Apples to Apples with us.  It was fun.

Ken was in charge of treats for FHE…somehow candy bars had come up and I taught the kids the a couple of one liners I’d learned growing up “Stretch it out, out, out…Caramello,” and “chewy, chocolaty, crunchy, munchy -- Whatchamacallit!” But I had never actually tried either of these. For a really fun surprise Ken got a couple of Caramellos and Whatchamacallits and we split them in half and each got to try some of each.  The kids thought it was so fun to try and stretch the Caramello, but none them were too successful.….and now that I’ve had both I’d have to say that I’ll just stick to my Snickers bar.Jessie surprised me St. Patrick’s Day morning just as it was about time for her to leave for school with this… “Mom, I told Tori if she came over right now, you would put shamrocks in our hair for us.”  I just want her to remember this for when she has children :-)….so two slightly tardy girls we ready to celebrate the holiday.Rachel snacking on our green biscuits we had for dinner to go along with our split pea soup…we are sure going green.Neil had finished his dinner before we ate and was tired of sitting in his high chair but we found a new toy for him to play with so he wasn’t grabbing our plates of food. He loved looking at us through the canning ring.  And I think the last picture is fun…Ken’s head turned into a baby.Becca flew out to spend almost two weeks with us during her spring break.  Vacationing was cut somewhat short when on the third day she was skiing with my cousin and on her way down for the last time she fell and fractured her left tibia.  Needless to say, we didn’t get out much while she was here, but we did play LOTS of games.  This night I was decorating a page for the front of Mark’s notebook with his name and Becca joined in and decorated her name.One of her new favorite games is Banana Grams.  Basically Scrabble tiles that you arrange in a cross word puzzle in front of you.I took Mark and Jessie to the dentist and Mark had three additional loose teeth (he’s had them for months, since he refuses to wiggle them).  Well the dentist told us that one of his permanent teeth had grown in enough behind a loose one that they would schedule him to get it pulled in a week or so.  Begging and pleading with him to wiggle his loose teeth, so we wouldn’t have to go back and get them pulled worked and Mark lost and addition three teeth this week!  One of them was so old that it had a whole in the side of it!!  So here’s another tooth fairy note.

Dear tooth fairy,

I just got rid of my fourth tooth this week.  Please remember to get it.

-Mark

PS.  How are you?  PPS. Do you like hotdogs?  PPPS. I like hotdogs A LOT!!!  PPPPS. Good night!

Neil was up with us while we played games one night after the other kids had gone to bed.  He was sitting on Ken’s lap playing with some toys on the tray of his high chair.  Pretty soon he ended up like this….

the top half….and the bottom half…Jessie and Abbie made up some fun games for us to play together on Saturday to celebrate Ken’s birthday.  One was a mystical animal game where they had five different baskets: one with different animal feet, tails, heads, bodies and ears.  We took turns picking animal parts to draw.  It was quite funny.  Here’s one of our creations.It has bunny ears (by Abbie), bird head (by me), snail body (by Rachel), dog feet (by Mark), and a horse tail (by Spencer).

Neil LOVES the piano.  Ken has also taken up practicing again…but that’s hard to do if Neil’s holding down half the notes you are trying to play while he sits on your lap.  In the end….they both got to play.