Mom's Birthday

Happy Birthday last week, Mom! :)

Getting presents for parents is always a bit hard. You can't possibly buy them anything, because they have to be the ones to take you to the store. After several years, though, the same old handmade presents (drawings, cards, handprints) get old.

This year I made Mom some "coupons". One of them is for a "spa night" when I take care of everyone and she gets to take a pampering bath. :) Another was meal I cook (I make alot of lunches, but those are generally just sandwhiches-- this is for a full dinner).

You can see Will's present in the picture here. It is a balloon with a drawing of our house-- with a sold sign.

I forgot what Nick and Ben did... Adelynn made a card and sang a song.

A couple of days before Mom's birthday, I babysat while she went shopping. Marcus, of course, was a pain.

"Do you want to make a present for Mommy?" I asked?

"Yes! Mommy wrist!" (He loves to make bracelets for Mom and Dad).

Marcus picked out all the beads ("Wed, so wed Mommy couwer," which translates to, "Red, because its Mom's favorite color.") Then then made a necklace with a red string and a teddy bear bead. Everyone knows that Mom loves teddy bears. :)

And he drew a picture!

The sweetest thing Marcus did, though, was to give Mom a "Pize" (Surprise). While Mom was opening her presents from everyone else, Marcus started shouting and then suddenly disapeared. He came back with his "special box."

His special box is a shoebox full of his favorite things: a hat I crocheted him, a birthday card, a dice (?), a pencil, and a few other random objects.

It was so touching to see him give his box to Mom! "You share me," he said. "You my pecil tuff." (You get my special suff.)

And then, when he saw how happy Mom was, he ran off and got Daddy Bear-- his teddy bear. "Pize! Pize! Mommy, you me Daddy Bear!"

Here is Will with his first balloon-drawing (it popped)

Mom's cake! My first time doing a double-decker. And the last time I will try to do individual petals for icing roses. Big blobs of red work just as well, and they don't cramp your hand. :)

Marcus and William's Birthday Party

After we went to Grants Farm we came back for Will and Mark's birthday party at Grandma's!

William spent the rest of the time at Grandma's playing his new Wii game. :)

And Marcus fell in love with his Nerf gun

Little Marcus is 2!

Baby Marcus is no longer a baby- he is even starting to potty train! (and just barely 2...) He is fasinated with balls, cars, and trains. When Mom bought the shirt he is wearing in the picture, he stook stock still and stared. "Do you like it, Markie?" Mom asked. Immediantly he ran forward, grabbed it, and cried, "Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba!!!" (Ball ball ball ball ball!!)
He loves to ask what things are, and repeat what you say. (in other words, he is finally talking) As I was pulling up pictures to choose what should go on the blog, he climbed into my lap and said, "Me-me! Me-me!" (Me) and "Ba! Ba!" (ball!). Then he needed to see pictures of everyone else: "Daddyyyyyy! Daddy!" "Ad-uh-enn" (Adelynn), etc. He is so cute!

He LOVED the basketball net. In the past he would make you lift him up to the real basketball net outside. The downside of that is that, once to started, he would never let you stop. Now he can play basketball all day long without straining people's arms. :)

CAKE!!! When he saw this picture, Mark started rubbing his stomach and then energetically jabbing his finger at the computer monitor. I think he likes cake. :)

Blowing out the candles... we had to do it twice, because he blew it out as Dad was in the middle of lighting it.

William's 11th Birthday!!!

I can't believe how old William is! Well, actually, I can, because he is acts older than 11, but still! He wasn't home on his birthday (Boy Scout Camp) so we celebrated it a few days late.

That hat is tradition- he got it at Trish's wedding a year ago and will not stop wearing it!!!

Lets see.... William is big into Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter (as always). His favorite colors right now are red, black, and orange, and he loves being goofy. :) I think that runs in the family...

Chocolate cake with chocolate chips, chocolate icing, double chocolate ice cream, and chocolate milk. Guess who loves chocolate?

Playing his new game- Wii Sport Resort! It's amazing!

Will in his Gryffindor scarf I crocheted for him.

Happy Birthday, Ben!

 

 Here are some late pictures of Ben's 13 birthday party at Grandma's. I had to steal these pictures from Grandma's Facebook- I had taken them with Grandma's camera. I didn't see any pictures of him with his new iPod Nano... (its awesome! *dies*)

  

 Blowing out candles

 

Getting ready for cake!!!

Ben is a teenager now!

Ben's 13th birthday was yesterday. He had a sleepoever Friday night and then as a last-minute thing we went over to his best friend's house as a family (his best friend's family also happens to be good family friends with us) :)
More to come later. And by the way, Ben is camera-shy (or rather he just makes weird faces or sticks his hand on the lenses) so I don't have many pictures. I'll put up what I do have later. Sorry about the boring, picture-less posts!

Nick's Birthday

Nicholas turned 8 on Sunday, Dec. 14. Sorry it took me so long to get the pictures. (The pictures uploaded in random order- sorry)

He got one of THE COOLEST Wii games- it has a mat that you jump on and play all sorts of games on.

The cake I made. The white icing Dad got is the new "creamier, lighter" stuff. I had to use that instead of the decorater icing, which is really stiff. It was a little hard to do!

Outdoor Adventure in action- doing the jumprope, which believe it or not is one of the boringest games on it- yes, the game is that good.

I've got alot to post! Yesterday was Nick's birthday, and I need to get those pictures up. I have older pictures to post, too.
On Sunday, the Woelks were having a Christmas party where they asked people to preform Christmas songs. The Sauers and I discovered that we had the same song, O Holy Night, in the same key. Nicole played the violin, Michelle played the flute, and I was on the piano. (Jacob Hamacher played gutair and Elise sang) We played it through a couple times, and it sounded really good! Mrs. Sauer asked us to play at the Christmas Eve Mass! I'm so excited!
It was also really neat to hear Father Basil, who is from Nigeria, sing. In addition to singing, violin, flute, and gutair, the accordian and recorder were also played. Dad challenged everyone with a fun singing game. He divided the room in half, and each half sang a different word (Not syllables) of Jingle Bells. This is what some of it should have been like:
Side 1: Jingle
Side 2: Bells
1: Jingle
2: Bells
1 Jingle
2 All
1The
2 Way... etc.
This is what happened:
1 Jingle
2 Bells
1 Jingle
2 Bells
1 Jingle
2 All The
1 Way
2 Oh What- wait! One WORD, not syllable!!!!!!!!

Ben got a long-awaited email account. What else has happened? Lets see, we set up the Christmas tree and lights. Well, we haven't done much to post about, but I have some fun pictures coming, so hang onto your seats!

Nick and Addie's Party at Trish's

Wednesday, we went to Trish and Nick's new house for Nick and Addie's Birthday party with Grandma, Papa, Trish, and Nick.

The two birthday kids.

Trish and Nick gave Adelynn a box of hair bows.

Too sweet.
Grandma and Papa gave her the new Tinkerbell movie

Nick's present was Mario Galaxy for the Wii

His big bro liked it, too

I told him to smile. This is what I get.

Adelynn got a bike! It is Kennedy's (Nick's neice, I think. My uncle Nick, not brother.) old bike, but looks like new!

The cake had TONS of icing! YUM!

Eating Cake

The Cake

Mom got decorator icing and an icing kit. This is my first attempt:

Nicholas put on the strawberry icing. He decided that he did not want to attempt the flowers.

Adelynn is 5

Adelynn turned 5 on November 25th. She was so sweet!

She wore the same outfit that she wore to the play, only without the ribbons in her hair. Instead, she but a bow right smack in the middle of her head. Oh, well.

I made her a little crocheted ballet bun holder. She wanted to be a "real" ballerina. I told her that we will ask Mom about getting "real" ballet shoes when she actually learns her first dance. (Walmart has pink ballet flats that look like the real thing.) However, I still have not finished choreographing her dance (I do not know that much ballet, and it is hard to teach her simple things- she keeps falling over when she does pirouettes and she waves her arms like a bird while doing an arabesque.)

Mom and Dad got Adelynn a Dora paint-by-number (she looks at the pictures and attempts to match the colors, stubbornly refusing to use the numbers) and a, what is it, Bella Dancerella dance thing. Basically, it is a movie "Bella", a teenage girl, dancing and looking positively ridiculous with a big pink plastic wand, five little girls dancing with her, and a dance mat that you stand on. Adelynn got upset that the movie did not teach her how to dance, but she loves to pull out the mat and practice first through third positions.

Mom made the mistake of handing Nick the video camera. I now have a video of Nick's teeth, the ceiling light, the bow on Adelynn's head, and someone's toe, but no video of Adelynn opening the presents. Oh, well.

I can't believe how old she is! Five already! And she is so sweet. Mom asked her if her birthday was good, and she said, "almost". Mom asked what she could do to make it better. Adelynn looked at her, and said, "No fighting." (Her birthday was a cleaning day for the rest of us, and everyone was being pretty cranky to everyone but her).