Birthday Party

 

Mackenzie decided that she wanted a fairy birthday party this year, so we made it happen yesterday.  A few girls from her CDC class came over along with a couple of my co-workers and a lot of family and it made for a really great party.

 

Brian made a Tinkerbell cutout for the party where the kids could put their face in as Tinkerbell and it was a hit with the girls.  Here is a shot of Mackenzie as Tinkerbell:

I made a lot of decorations for the party including big tissue paper flowers and giant tulle poof balls.  Mackenzie decided that these would be great for a parade, so the girls started out the party by parading for all of the other guests.  The girls took turns leading the parade.  Here is a shot when Mackenzie was in the lead:

The living room was the main party area.  Here you can see some of the decorations as well as some guests.  On the table are kits for the girls to make their own fairy as well as fairy headbands.

 

Manu is graciously modeling a headband in this shot with Mackenzie:

 

And here are a couple of action shots of us making the fairies.  I didn't think to take a picture of the girls with their finished fairies, but they were basically made out of floral wire, wood beads and fabric flowers and I thought they were super cute.

 

Finally here is a shot of Mackenzie getting ready to blow out her candle and of everyone else getting ready to eat cake!

The party was a lot of fun and the rain held out for us so that it was a pretty nice, although hot and humid, day for the party.

Today is Mackenzie's first day of kindergarten so hopefully I will have a new post soon.

Sleepover and More Bounty

A few weeks ago I let the kids have a sleepover in Mackenzie's room.  We have 2 crib mattresses since Mackenzie was still in a toddler bed when Isaac was first born, so we put those on the floor in and the kids slept there (with the bears I made them, awwwww).  Brian was working so I took a picture of them for him and then forgot that it was on the camera, so it was a pleasant surprise when I downloaded pictures today.

Our garden continues to thrive.  In the picture below you can see the back end of the main garden (on the right) and the raised bed that Brian made for me for strawberries that never grew and that now is overflowing with pumpkins, cucumbers and zucchini.  

 We picked a pumpkin today.  It is the perfect size and shape right now and since we had one fall off the vine last year around this time that turned perfectly orange for Halloween I figured I would try again.  There are a few tiny pumpkins on the vine now and I am hoping since this one is off the vine now they will grow more.

We also picked another enormous zucchini tonight.  I swear these things grow over night!

We are planning what will probably be our last trip to the cabin this weekend.  Mackenzie had orientation at school today and she continues to be unimpressed so far.  Monday night she gets to go to the open house and see her classroom, so I am hoping that sparks some interest in her.  During orientation we saw her friend Gia from CDC.  They are not in the same classroom, but Gia is in the other all-day kindergarten class, so hopefully they will see each other pretty regularly.

Weekend in Michigan

 

 We went to Michigan last weekend expecting to go to the fair.  We thought we were going to go on Sunday, but Michael called Saturday night to say that they were leaving the fair and Saturday was the last day.  The schedule that my parents had included items on Sunday, but evidently they were tear-down events for the vendors, farmers, etc.

So we had a lovely day on Saturday with Grandma and Grandpa at their house and then we decided to go to the Michigan Renaissance Festival on Sunday.  I have always been hesitant about Renaissance Fairs to be honest, but I am a convert now.  We had a great time.  They had quite a few man-powered rides for the kids that Mackenzie loved.  Isaac was a bit tentative about the rides.

Mackenzie even rode a pony!  We have gone to multiple places with pony rides and Mackenzie has gotten on a lot of ponies, but she usually gets off really quickly.  This time she stayed on her pony for the whole ride! Maybe because Grandpa was with her?

She also got her face painted:

 

Isaac loved the swords.  He was pretty good when Mom told him that he was not bringing a sword home to beat things with, but perhaps this was becuase Dad told him that we have plenty of wood at the house to build a sword with.

 

Last night we went school supply shopping for Mackenzie.  She has an open house tomorrow to go see her classroom, etc.  I think that I am much more excited/traumatized about the whole thing than she is.  I am super excited to get to see her kindergarten classroom.  I can still remember mine exactly!

Bountiful Harvest

Yesterday I spent some time in my garden.  My potato plants had died, I think from a bug and I was not expecting much, but a coworker suggested that I try digging up the potatoes, even if I only got baby potatoes.  Much to my surprise I got some pretty big potatoes.  I also got about 6 baby potatoes.  I put four back in the garden in the hopes that I would get another round of plants and I brought two inside.  I think I remember a science project where you hang a potato over a glass of water and watch it sprout.  I thought that it might be fun for the kids to watch a potato germinate.  Anyway, here is a shot of my potato harvest.  Not bad for my first try and I only spiked one with the shovel!

I have been picking a lot of tomatoes and cherry tomatoes on a daily basis.  Luckily I really like tomatoes since no one else in my house will eat them.  I have also given some to Linda and Shannon.  Here is one day's harvest:

Finally, when I was out in the garden I had to call Mackenzie over to see the hiding zucchini.  It was right on the ground under all of the leaves and it was gigantic!  I didn't think to take a picture of it until I was shredding it up for zucchini bread.  Here is a shot of two loaves that I baked yesterday.  I baked two more loaves tonight and I am guessing I have enough for 5 more loaves.  It has a ton of sugar in it, but we all like zucchini bread so I figure I can freeze a bunch for some treats later in the year.

Finally, we have a fairly good size pumpkin on the pumpkin vine, 2 cucumbers on the cucumber vine and baby green peppers as well.  All in all it has been a great gardening season for me.  My new bean plants (the first round gotten eaten by a bunny) are starting to come up.  Hopefully we will get some beans before the end of the season, but even if we don't I am going to consider this my best gardening year yet.

Congratulations, Mom

This past weekend we celebrated my mom's retirement and her birthday.  She has been retired for over a month and seems to be enjoying it very much.  I think that the party went very well and that everyone got a chance to wish Mom the best and enjoy some food and drinks at The H in Midland. So congratulations, Mom, you deserve a long, relaxing retirement.  Hopefully you enjoy your Kindle.

We have been spending a lot of weekends at the lake with my parents and Lexie.  The weekend of the 23rd we went up to celebrate Lexie's eleventh birthday.  I made her a beanbag (of course) with fabrics that she picked out.  She did an excellent job:

I thought that I had taken a picture of Lexie on her beanbag, but evidently not.  Hopefully my parents have a picture on their camera.  Here is a picture of Lexie that Mackenzie took.

I haven't figured out how to put videos on the blog yet, but here are a couple still pictures of the girls tubing behind the boat:

I also got to go tubing.  I rode with Mackenzie and Lexie rode with my friend Missy.  Missy did a couple of turns around the lake on skis, and even dropped a ski.  Pretty amazing, I am quite confident that my skiing days remain over.

I think that we are going to enjoy a "quiet" weekend at home this weekend.  I am not sure when the last weekend was that we spent in Perrysburg, but it has been a while.  Hopefully we have nice weather and the we can work on the yard and just spend some time at home. Mackenzie is already planning 2 play-dates.

Summer is Flying By

June flew by for us and July is passing just as quickly.  I can't believe that it is the middle of July already.  I will try to sum things up as best I can.  Mackenzie followed up on Safety Town with a week of VBS, which she loved just as much.  Grandma bought her a CD at the end of the week of the music that they used throughout the week.  At the end of the week the kids danced and sang along with the music at a dinner and at church.  Mackenzie really enjoys playing the music in her room and singing and dancing along.  The next week Brian was in Estonia and the kids and I kept ourselves very busy.  I drove the kids up to Grandma and Grandpa's cabin on the third and we hung out with Uncle Mike, Aunt Misty and Lexie for Uncle Mike's birthday.  I came home to work on the 5th and 6th and then picked up Brian at the airport and we headed back up to the cabin for the weekend.  The kids really love it up there, which makes me so happy, since it was such a joyful place for me growing up.  This weekend we went down to Dayton to go to a Pool party at Brian's cousin, Matt's house.  His wife Jean was celebrating graduating from Ketterning College.  The kids had fun swimming at the party and playing with water balloons.  We stayed at a hotel last night and the kids got up and went swimming there this morning before we headed home.  Mackenzie went swimming in her small pool here after quiet time.  So, needless to say, they really like swimming : )

The kids are really growing up fast.  Mackenzie is doing really well at her reading lately.  She is starting to recognize a lot of words and to try and sound words out.  Isaac is continuing to be a typical 3 year old and to defy authority as much as possible.  He is also super sweet and is telling all of us he loves us quite often and giving lots of kisses.  He also enjoys singing songs and playing games.  His name is extremely fitting for him, he loves to laugh.

The painting in the living room is done.  Now we need to find carpeting.  It may take us a while though, first of all because I am cheap and carpet is expensive and secondly because the painters are coming tomorrow to start to paint the outside of the house (also expensive).  However, the room looks so great and getting the carpeting replaced would really be the icing on the cake, so hopefully we can get it done.

Work, Work, Work

Being summer, Brian is on a very relaxed schedule at the University, which leaves him open for home improvement work.  At this point, I am sure that he is anxiously awaiting the fall sememster.  But for now he is stuck working at home.  Right now, along with some smaller projects, we are working on the living room.  We had to have a plasterer come in and fix a number of areas that had been damaged by water in the past, including a big section of a living room wall, which opens up the opportunity for painting.  Our living room is pretty big and has some built in cabinets and quite a bit of molding and window sashing.  So the process of cleaning, sanding, priming and painting has been long and tedious.  We are making great headway though and I am confident we will be done with the painting at the end of this week.  Then we can shop for carpet.  Fun, fun, fun.

Here is a shot of Mackenzie helping prime the built-ins:

We have managed to have some fun in the meantime though.  My parents were here a couple weekends ago.  Mom and I took the kids to the 577 Foundation and the kids loved showing Grandma around.  We went to Cirque de Soleil Quidam on Sunday.  It was very good and I think my parents enjoyed it.  However it was much darker and slower than the other Cirque shows that Brian and I have seen and the kids really lost interest in it.  Here is a shot of Isaac napping, which he did for a pretty good portion of the show.

Mackenzie really did not enjoy most of the show and we ended up leaving a little before the end of the show.  It is unfortunate because I think they really would have loved the earlier Cirque de Soleil show that I saw that was really colorful and fun and exciting.  I will have to do better research before we take the kids to another show.

We took the kids to Madagascar 3 yesterday for Father's Day and it went much better.  They both got a little scared, but Isaac sat for the whole show. 

Prior to going to the movie, Mackenzie had wanted to go shopping. She had $8.57 in change in her purse. I had told her that she could buy herself something to eat at the movie. So she bought a box of Starburst before the show.  She got scared by the "bad lady" in the movie.  She covered up her ears and then asked (very loudly since she couldn't hear) to leave the theatre.  So I took her out (a bit begrudgingly).  While we were sitting on the bench outside the theatre she asked me, "Did you really want to see the movie?"  I told her that I had paid $7 for a ticket to see the movie. She then reached into her purse and took out a penny (all she knows currently is that it is a piece of money, she doesn't know how it all works quite yet) and held it out to me with a sad look on her face. Of course I felt like the meanest Mom on the planet at that point.  I told her that she did not need to give me the money for the ticket and then I suggested that we try to go back in and watch the movie from right inside the door so we could leave easily if she wanted to.  She agreed (a bit begrudgingly) to go back in and watch from the ramp headed into the theatre. When she got scared she would run down the ramp to where she couldn't see the screen and when it sounded better she would head back up. Since the theatre was really empty (we went to a 10 am show), I figured this was okay and it worked for her.

Given the active way Mackenzie watched the movie, she didn't eat a lot of her Starburst. At the end of the show we saw a friend of Brian's and her two little girls. Mackenzie gave each of the girls (and Isaac) each 3 of her Starbursts, which I was very proud of.  Isaac pretty much ran up and down the hallway of the theatre and then found the arcade and the photo booth.  He did say thank you to his sister for the Starburst, which I was also proud of.