M's Never-Ending Birthday Celebrations

So let's pretend that it's two + weeks ago and I'm on-time blogging about M's big 5th birthday. Are you all pretending with me? Thanks. Now if only pretending my house were clean would make it so ....
Anyway, as I'd already mentioned, there had been quite the build-up to M's birthday with her claiming birthday privileges all year. She also drew pictures of birthday celebration expectations, requested watching birthday episodes of any show we happened to be watching, and told everyone who would listen that she was going to be 5 (and then next year, 6). She really had two main requests though. She wanted to go to John's Incredible Pizza, and to have a pinata. So here we were celebrating the big day (a week in advance because that's when we could get to Portland):

Good times! Nana, Bopa, Grandma and Grandpa Smith, Patti, Jim, Elena, Kyle, McKaylee, and Marlee joined us and it was a blast. What a place! It so out-Chuck-E-Cheeses Chuck-E-Cheese. It is spacious and clean and full of fun. Also, the food buffet is fantastic! And there's plenty of roomy seating that doesn't make you feel claustrophobic. We are officially fans. I think it's safe to say everybody had fun!

Then we raced home to celebrate with the Bernes, who joined us for pink cupcakes (of course). The girl is easy. I considered (briefly) making some fancy, impressive cake, but she REALLY REALLY loves to decorate her own cupcakes and just requested that they be pink. Then she and her sister had a blast dumping buckets-full of sprinkles on them while I kicked my feet up and relaxed (feeling only occasional semi-insane twinges of guilt that I hadn't been supermom).

Isn't she cute? And, as mentioned, this was all a week before the actual day! More to come.

Green Education

Not entirely sure what M was "studying" in preschool today but these were the first 2 things asked for in her prayer tonight: "And please bless that the earth will have no more trash on it, just recycling." Followed by, "And please bless that nobody litters." In her defense, I had asked her to think of something different to say tonight.

Good times at the Portland Zoo

 It had been a REALLY long time since we'd been to the zoo (I realized the other day that our little dude has never been, despite his total love/obsession with animals. And he's 17 months). It was a little chilly with the wind, but there was a gorgeous clear blue sky, which is as much as you can ask!

 The little guy was just thrilled to be outside and was happy in the stroller for a bit, but he couldn't really see the animals. But life was so much easier with him in the stroller. But he loves animals. But I'm too pregnant to chase after him. But what's the point of being at the zoo if you can't see the animals? But we'll never get him back in that stroller. But ... ah, there are just too many difficult decisions to make as a parent. I let him out when we got to the penguins, which were basically the first animal that was doing anything. I won't mention that we lost him at one point during the trip later when he ran out of a tree-surrounded play area and across a whole field when I merely turned my back to grab something out of the diaper bag. Shudder.

 But he did LOVE the penguins. And he's REALLY cute.

 Thankfully, I wasn't alone to chase after him and keep track of the girls at the same time. Grammy and Papa brought us to the zoo as a little pre-birthday celebration for M. Little man appreciated this greatly, and showed it by allowing them the great privilege of holding him every now and then when he needed a lift.

M likes to take full advantage of her birthday. The actual date was February 13th, but starting shortly after New Years, she was claiming birthday privileges. You know, like I get to go first in this game because I'm the birthday girl. J wasn't always willing to go along, but did more often than you'd think ... for a whole month.

Oh, and here's little man in the petting zoo. Grammy had been helping protect him but turned her back, and despite being no taller than the pygmy goats, he took off to tap each one of them on the back - like he was responsible for counting them or something. She turned around and saw him walking amidst a very tightly clustered group of 3 of them, shoving them a bit so he could get through. No fear. Just a love tap to each, and he moved on.

 Big Red could take some cues from her little brother. This shot required minutes of pep talks before she had the courage to get that close. Oddly she won't get anywhere near the head and prefers petting the back end. I, personally, would think avoiding the rear would be advisable. I guess it's just me.

Good times! Oh, here the girls are showing off their zoo stamps on their hands, not doing some weird salute. Thanks Grammy and Papa!

Silliness

Way to grow Spike! Spike (J's "pet") has been outgrowing Bobo (M's "pet") all along, and while M was sad about it for a few days, she decided it was all in the name. Neither her nor Bobo were to blame. Spike was just more motivated, thanks to being more appropriately named :)

 Man they've been looking forward to this day! Ha! It's pretty much as good as having a real pet, with very little clean-up involved.

 See what I mean about not growing as well. This is what Bobo's mane looked like BEFORE she started cutting. Kind of more like a clown-do than, you know, a serious little soil monkey head growing grass on our kitchen counter.

A buzz cut evened things out a bit. And made everybody happy. And left grass clippings all over the table. Still better than doggie doo-doo I say.

Are we having fun yet?

We were doing a new birthday puzzle this morning as a family--a puzzle that turned out to be a lot harder than expected (one of those lenticular ones that change picture as you move back and forth. Yeah, we don't recommend them). The girls had a couple of gems about the experience:

J: This puzzle says it's for ages 6 and up, but it's so hard for me! It's even hard for 30- and 31-year-olds... and those are BIG numbers (we laughed and pointed out that most people don't like being told they're old. It's one thing to tell mom and dad that, but please try not to tell other people that)!

M: Yeah. This puzzle is stupid-hard.

Love the way her brain works

In prepping dinner, I took some frozen corn out and poured it into a bowl. I then returned the bag to the freezer and got out a bag of frozen peas. M walked up, looked at both, pointed at the corn and asked, "are those peas so cold that they're a different color?"

Fun at Cooper Spur!

So when there's been all this crazy snow/ice on the road, we've stuffed the whole family into our little Camry because our Mazda's traction sucks. So it's just easier on the nerves, although being packed in so tight does lead to other things that are less easy on the nerves. Here they're still happy, if not a little crazy. We've now done this to-and-from Portland and to-and-from Mt. Hood's Cooper Spur.

What a fantastic find! We've never been there before but it was so cheap and SO completely geared towards beginners and kids. It was great. Dude even warmed up after a bit and thought it was great fun to walk up the hill to the bottom of the lift and laugh his head off at the skiiers coming by.

Aunt Patti and Uncle Jim even came, bringing their two large and very happy dogs to enjoy the snow!

Don't they look ready to ski?!

And Nana and Bopa were the ones to come up with the idea for the day. Sadly I don't have any pictures of the actual skiing because Bopa had one girl, Cooper the other, Nana was in charge of the refueling station, and I was following the little man up and down the hill.

They also had sledding off to the side, with a little rope tow to get you up there.

It wasn't the fastest sledding hill but the girls still cited it as their favorite part of the day ...

Despite how worried M looks here.

And Nana even gave it a try! Although apparently she didn't weigh enough to make it down the hill either. She stopped halfway down and had to push herself the rest of the way. She only did it once.

And before and after the little guy got worn out, this is where we spent our day. Thank heavens for the comfy couch in the little lodge! He even miraculously fell asleep amidst all the tumult. It didn't last long and this pic was snapped shortly after he awoke, from which he took like an hour to recover. He doesn't like his naps interrupted. To show his displeasure, he refused to look at the camera. In fact he sat like this, stroking his blanket for that full hour. After everybody was worn up, and the girls had even gone up the lift a few times (J will be sure to let you know that Bopa made her fall), we headed into Hood River for some yummy pizza.

Thanks so much for all the fun!!

And then it just kept snowing

 So after a few days of dusting, it decided to get serious and really snow. And snow, and snow, and snow. Guess who wasn't complaining?

Little dude thought it looked like loads of fun, although in all honesty, by the time he was all zipped and tucked and covered and tied up, he was less convinced.

 Pretty quickly, his concerns grew. You see he couldn't move.

We solved the problem by finding him the best seat in the house!

Where he could watch all the action. And clearly, he was the only one watching since nobody else had their eyes open. Even J. Why's SHE closing her eyes? She's throwing the snowball!

He thought it was hysterical when they hit each other with the snowballs. Especially daddy. Everybody always loves that. His other favorite thing was to knock snow off of the tree branches and watch them spring back up. For some reason that was hilarious.

And despite it not being the best packing snow, the girls got right to work on building a respectable-sized snowgirl (although in all honesty, daddy did all the heavy work. they just accessorized).

They also built a rather impressive snow-brick wall to keep our snowgirl from running off and doing what snowmen do at night, but sadly, I didn't get a picture of all that hard work.

And that would be because I had to go back in pretty quickly. Little man got cold just sitting still, and I could only carry him so much so we left others to have fun in our winter wonderland. And it's a good thing they did, because the next day is started to drop freezing rain. And it did more the next day. And off and on for a week. So we had nasty snow covered in layers and layers of ice for forever! Not the easiest thing for a 7 month pregnant lady to walk around on, especially while holding a 16-month old! Just sayin. And it wouldn't melt because it wouldn't warm up and even when it did a little it didn't do us any good because our front yard doesn't get a lick of sun in the winter (should've seen all the garbage and recycling cans everybody had put out on the curb but that didn't get picked up for an extra week. Frozen solid. At least they didn't stink)! And you could hardly park your car anywhere because of what the snowplows had built up along the sides of the roads! Just a couple days ago, when it had been 2 weeks since the snow, Coop stood on our sidewalk right below our porch, and without moving at all, slid the whole way down to the street on the remaining ice. Total nightmare, but it is finally gone and we're now enjoying balmy 40 degree weather. Hardly even need a coat for that!

Every little bit counts

So we haven't got the promised dump of snow by any means, but we have woke up to light dustings the last two mornings. And there's really no convincing the kids that they won't be able to make snow angels or a snowman family out of this tiny bit of snow, so here's a ton of pictures from the fun. I'm way too tired to be selective so here are pretty much all the good ones, because the kids are cute whether there's enough snow or not:

Ok, so he might have been wearing his sister's old pink snow boots. But he doesn't mind! And they keep the feet warm! At least he has such a tough, manly hat on!

Daddy wasn't answering her question, distracted by trying to get the best candid shot. She didn't appreciate being ignored. Clearly.

J has gotten rather photogenic lately, hasn't she? This snowball basically took all the snow off of the lawn to make. Gotta admire perseverance.