Family Birthday Dinner and Weekend Fun

 On Friday night, Papa and Bugga took us out to dinner to celebrate the 9 year old's birthday.  He had a party on his actual birthday with his friends, so we did the family thing Friday.  He even got a banana split.

He made sure to have me take pictures with my phone and text them to his vegan brother who had texted us a picture of his own vegan banana split earlier in the week.  He wanted me to make sure to tell him this one was "real."

It was a great time with family.  The four year old (as well as all the boys) love their time with Papa and Bugga :)

The nine year old chose the restaurant, so we ended up going to the Patio Grill.  They are a pretty casual restaurant, so most of our crew had cheeseburgers.  The four year old had chicken nuggets and fries, dipped in ranch.  His fingers were covered in ranch up to the middle knuckle, despite my trying to teach him that you only need to dip the food, not your entire hand in the dip.  That, and it was dripping off his chin.  Such a mess.  But on the bright side, our picky eater cleared his plate, so I guess a little mess is worth it.

 The one year old was taking a drink when I started taking this picture, but my phone does a bright blink of light on your face before snapping your picture, so he knew I was taking one, and popped up to pose for it.  Oh brother.  I brought his dinner with us, as we can no longer trust to order anything considering all his allergies.  Some day he's going to hate that.

 He was enjoying all the attention and being kind of silly, and crashed his head into the edge of the table.

See the spot on the middle of his nose - the lower one right lined up with his eyes?  He hit hard enough to cut himself, but thankfully it wasn't too bad, and he didn't cry much.

 If you ever wonder why I'm tired a lot, or why I forget things or feel overwhelmed at times, here's a pretty good picture of the answer.  And this was only 6 out of 10 of them.  That was Thursday - a very overwhelming day.  I had a fire inspection for the daycare, as well as several in-and-out kids (part day attendance, so people were coming and going non-stop).

 We're also having our four year old evaluated by the Learning Center to see if he's up to speed on everything, so they have several different therapists (speech, etc) coming over - sometimes multiple times - to play games with him and see how well he does everything. (That's what he was doing while everyone else was playing with the blocks in the previous picture).   It looks like a ton of fun, especially for him, and he enjoys the attention.

We also spent much of the weekend cleaning and getting ready for the house to be painted this coming Friday.  I had made the mistake of setting our toddler cups on the table, and the baby crawled up and helped himself to a couple of the lids.

Such a clown!

Our 20 year old daughter sent us our Christmas gifts (yes, as in LAST Christmas - lol).  The boys each received coordinating shirts, which they wore to church this morning.  I tried to get a picture of them all together, but the four year old wasn't cooperating.  I meant to try again later, but didn't get it done before lunch, and lets just say the shirts didn't look quite as good after lunch, lol.

They are pretty cute shirts though...

The nine year old received a birthday gift in the mail from his Grandma.  It is this cool kit that came with pieces and detailed instructions to make lego machines that move.  Very cool.

 It has detailed step by step instructions with pictures and directions.  He worked on these by himself, then came and showed us what they could do.

The first one he tried was a grabber, which works kind of like a scissor lift.

Pretty cool.

Then he made a spring board.  He's getting ready to launch here...

See the piece flying off toward the bed?  Kind of hard to see since the piece is grey.  And it really flew high and fast.

(We had to delay the demonstration because someone else needed some attention.)

Here's a closer view.  He's using one piece to press on the piece he's going to flip up in the air.

Yes, it is very entertaining.

The most intricate thing he's made so far is this little wind-up speed racer.  It has a crank on the side, and works with a rubber band attached.

 And it will go a long way - the book says 50 feet, but we don't have that much space in the house so I don't know for sure.  But it went as far as it could, then he turned it and it went all the way back.  Pretty cool.  He's wishing now that he had made this one last so he wouldn't have to take it apart.  The kit doesn't have enough pieces to do all the projects at once without taking the previous projects apart.  That's the only downfall I see to it.  He loves it and it's a very cool gift.

Now this just cracks me up.  See the way the four year old has his legs crossed?  Well, out of the blue, he told me he was being a flamingo.  I have absolutely no idea where he learned about flamingos. None of us knows.  Maybe they talked about them in Sunday School today or maybe he saw a show on tv at Bugga's or something.  I really have no clue, which is what made it so funny.  Well, that and the very slow, deliberate way he pronounced "flamingo."