Irene's 1st Brithday!

Irene turned 1 on Saturday and we went to Rebecca's Grandparents' house to celebrate. She is such a sweet and happy little girl with a huge smile. She loves to dance and bounce and even "chases" her siblings these days. She is energetic and curious. It is fun to look back at the pictures from the last year.  They willing let us set up in their yard so they could watch the kids play. It was a joyful and memorable time. Irene is Rebecca's Granny's namesake.  We did a Rubber Duck/Bath Time Theme. Rebecca did an awesome job coming up with fun things for all the kids to do.

Irene had her own duck pool to splash in and some rubber ducks to play with. She was quite content there a long time. We read 10 Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle. There were "tub tunes" playing in the background for the party. We started with duck fishing (magnets on mini yellow ducks and home made fishing pools with magnets) and duck racing (blowing the ducks across the pool).

 We filled a couple of kiddie pools, one with suds, one with water and made sponge balls and had duck-shaped beach balls that they could throw back and forth. They also had slippery bars of soap to keep ahold of and toss.

"Incoming!"

Then we played duck duck goose and pin the duck on the bathtub. 

Everyone really enjoyed that and did really well at it. Emma didn't have to wear a blindfold, Ezra wore the blindfold but wasn't spun, and Gabe and Olivia each did it all the way. Such fun to watch! They don't make this game for sale that we could find. Rebecca drew this bathtub--pretty impressive huh? :)

This is the first cake we've had for one of the kids that we didn't make ourselves. While that's a little sad, it was 2 cakes was a lot to try to do two in one week. Harris Teeter had the perfect cake for our party. And they make duck shaped crackers (like goldfish). We also cut duck shaped cheese with a cookie cutter and had hotdogs, pasta salad, and homemade ice pops. 

We got Irene her own cupcake, which she tried rather tentatively.

But the restraint didn't last long. :)

The kids all enjoyed visiting with their Grandparents (Rebecca's mom and dad), Great-Grandparents, Aunts Kelly and B and Cousin Matthew.  

Today we celebrate Ezra! He is 4!

Today is Ezra's 4th birthday! It's amazing how much our little guy has grown. He is such a joy to have around and makes our days brighter with his goofy faces, big laugh and love for his siblings. He is so smart and often spouts some tidbit he overheard us teaching Olivia or Gabe. His passions also lead to loud expressiveness and the more than typical ways of a strong-willed 3 year old. As parents, we are so glad we "survived" this year and really enjoyed it. Looking forward to the coming year. We wanted to make his day.

We started his day with a request for a repeat of last year's special breakfast. Here is the post from last year. It is fun to look at the two together. Then we headed to the dentist (our twice a year trip just happened to fall on this day) and fortunately he really likes the dentist. He got to pick an extra prize which just made his day.

Grandma and Grandpa got him the Planes movie and we picked him up a Dusty glider to go with it. Movie days are special treats so of course he wanted to watch it.

Aunt DD and Uncle Rudy got him a favorite game of their littles. The kids spent lot of time playing it.

We also got a much bigger glider! Such a simple and inexpensive toy that provided us with an evening of so much fun.

And to top off his big day, Rebecca and I made him a Dusty cake!

Happy birthday, Ezra! 

An Evening at the Park

We enjoyed a fun evening at Triad Park this last week. We had a bit of hot weather early this week so it was almost too hot to go out in the middle of the day and really enjoy ourselves. We decided, then, to have dinner early and then head to the park for the end of the day. I caught some good pictures of the kiddos.

We took a short hike through the woods and they each found the "perfect" walking stick.