Birthday Boys!

About a week and a half ago we got to celebrate both of our boys and their birthdays and it was so much fun! I love birthdays and the chance to make my kids feel extra special. We started the party with a fire station tour and then came home for lunch, cake and even a pinata!

Learning all about the firetruck!

I was impressed with how long they all stood and listened to the firefighter talking.

After a little while all of the girls noticed baby Parker in his carseat nearby and they all gathered around him instead of the truck. That's what happens when you're a boy and all your friends are girls. I wish I had a picture of it - it was pretty funny. Tyler on the other hand was totally in his element, just loving seeing all the parts of the trucks. And Carsten watched and listened pretty intently too!

Sitting in the truck!

All of the kids! The sun was pretty bright so their expressions are hilarious.

Birthday brothers!

Getting their fire hats and badges. :-)

Future fire fighters on their first day of training.

Enjoying their birthday lunches.

We loved the fire station cake.

Blowing out their candles!

There was a ton of frosting on their little cakes.

They liked them. A lot.

And the much anticipated pinata! They were so excited about this.

Tyler especially could not wait to hit the pinata. All of the kids did a great job taking turns hitting it. I wasn't sure how it would go with kids this young, but they all had a lot of fun with it and it was really cute to watch.

Picking up their treats. :-)

We just love these boys so much and we had a great time watching them celebrate with their friends. Tyler is so excited that he's four. He tells everyone he meets. And Carsten proudly holds up one finger and says "two" if you ask him how old he is. He was saying three for awhile, so he's getting closer. :-) Happy Birthday boys!

Growing!

Aria was two months old last week! I love this girl. She is so sweet and we are loving her little smile! The first time Carsten saw her smiling he started clapping and cheering, "Yay Eeya!" She has a great little built in support team in her big brothers. :-) Lucky for us, she is sleeping pretty well at night. She started waking up only once during the night when she was just a couple weeks old and usually sleeps for six hours. She even takes a couple of two hour naps during the day, including one at the same time as her brothers! I really never thought that would happen. She likes watching everything going on around her and laying in her play gym looking at whatever toys the boys have hung from it for her. Tyler likes to make sure she has new things to look at so he switches them out a lot.

Tyler and Aria both had check-ups today. Tyler had his four year old one and Aria had her two month one. I have a love-hate relationship with these early doctors appointments. I'm always excited to go and see how much they've grown! Today she was 10 lbs. 12 oz (26th percentile) and 22 1/4 inches (28th percentile). But mostly I dread them because of the shots. Aria did great for them though. She broke my heart with all of her little tears, but recovered pretty quickly. Both of her brothers were right there to love on her when it was done and I got lots of snuggles from her the rest of the day.

Tyler was really excited for his appointment. He loves getting his vision and hearing checked. And this time since their appointment was shared, the nurse took him to do get weighed and measured while I undressed Aria. He came running back to tell me, "I got to do the arm pump thing like you do!" He thought getting his blood pressure taken was so cool. Then the doctor came in and asked him a bunch of questions. When she was asking him about the foods he likes, he had me shaking with silent laughter and the doctor was holding her laughter back as best as she could too.

"Do you like yogurt?"
"Sure!"
"Do you like apples?"
"Well sure I do!"
"Do you like watermelon?"
"Sure I do!"
"Do you like broccoli?"
"Oh, sure I do!"
"Do you  like chicken?"
"Sure I do!" (He does not like chicken.)
"Do you like steak?"
"Sure I do!"
This went on for a long time and every single thing she asked got a very exuberant, "Sure I do!" The only one that got a different answer was eggs. He said, "Sure I do!" And then followed up with a detailed explanation of all the ways he likes his eggs cooked, including when Daddy makes them and he gets to dip his toast in them. Oh, and part way through this little interview Tyler suddenly jumped up off his chair and did a flying somersault, banging his head on the hard floor. It was completely random. He was just loving his appointment and all the fun things he got to do!

He also had to get a couple of shots today and just like the sweet, protective big brother that he is, he offered to go first because he is brave and Aria might be scared.

This is the second time I've had all three kids in the tiny doctor's office. Last time Carsten was sick and it was a much quicker appointment. Let me tell you how it went this time. During Tyler's appointment Carsten sat under the doctor's table reading books. But he repeatedly moved around and bumped his head or tripped over things and had to come over to be comforted. And when she started asking Tyler questions, Carsten ran over to answer them all too, jumping up and down the whole time. During Aria's appointment both of the boys crawled in circles around the room giggling, sat on each other's laps and showed off how high they can jump. Thankfully their doctor thought they were funny. I will tell you one thing. My little family is loud and full to the brim of energy, but they make me smile all day long. :-)

While I'm writing about Tyler I have a couple more of his quotes.

Here is a science lesson from a four year old: "Snow is dried up rain. Dried up snow turns into hard boiled snow and then hard boiled snow turns into frozen snow."

"I want to do my job chart to buy a convertible." After we talked about how much money real convertibles cost and how long that would take to save up for, "Well I can just buy some money to buy a convertible." Oh, if only it worked that way. I would buy a convertible too!

Our Easter

Tyler was so excited about Easter this year. He was asking almost every day, "Is tomorrow Easter morning?" He was so sweet explaining what Easter is all about and both of the boys loved doing our Resurrection eggs every day.

On Saturday we made and decorated Easter cookies.

Their very sugar sprinkled cookies

And our giant Easter Egg cookie

I always love dressing the kids up for Easter and this year was especially fun adding a little Easter dress into the mix.

I love these three.

They are just the best!

So much love.

Aria's first Easter!

Since most of our family doesn't live close to us, Easter is the one Holiday we just celebrate on our own. This year we decided that since it's always just us and we're always here, we should start a tradition of going to Redstone for their Sunday brunch. So after church we headed over there. We have only had their brunch once or twice, but it's delicious, and we didn't know it, but for Easter they have a buffet, a ham carving station and desserts included. We were glad we decided to start this little tradition. So yummy!

First annual Redstone brunch!

I think they liked it! :-)

Then after the boys took naps we had their Easter egg hunt!

Carl and Aria napped a little bit too. :-)

Looking for eggs!

They were pretty excited about the egg with a Peep in it!

One more surprise. :-)

And then we colored eggs. The boys loved every part of this day. :-)

We are so thankful for our little family and for this fun weekend celebrating Easter together.

Birthday Boy!

On Thursday my oldest baby turned four! Four years old! I have a hard enough time believing I actually have three kids, much less that one of them is already four. I remember pretty clearly bringing Tyler home from the hospital like four days ago. Not four years! I know I'm being dramatic but the time has really flown.

Tyler is still our adventure boy. He was made for danger and I'm pretty sure he's part monkey. He loves to climb, run, ride his scooter and do his exercises. (So cute.) He loves building and creating things with blocks, duplos, lincoln logs, tinker toys and anything else he can put together. He is creative, funny and a complete sweet heart. He is such a loving and kind little boy. If he hears me say "ow" (which may or may not happen a lot) he comes running from anywhere in the house to give me a kiss and make sure I'm ok. He is my little protector and I'm so thankful that his little sister has a such a loving and protective big brother. He loves to snuggle up to read books and he is quick to say I love you.

I am so blessed and thankful that God chose me to be this little boy's mom. He brings us so much joy!

Tyler has been looking forward to his birthday for so long. He's been telling everyone that he is almost four. Carl was home from work on Thursday and we got to spend the whole day together celebrating Tyler's birthday.

It started with running out of his room through birthday streamers. Then we had chocolate chip birthday pancakes for breakfast.

Tyler has been begging to go to Red Lobster since before Thanksgiving and we keep telling him that would be fun to do sometime. So we thought it would be the perfect birthday lunch.

He even got a birthday card and a little bowl of whipped cream from the servers who sang to him.

And if that wasn't enough, he also got to touch a real lobster. He would not stand by it for a picture though - apparently standing next to it is scarier than actually touching it. I don't really blame him for not wanting to get to close to it though - you couldn't have paid me to touch that thing!

Tyler has worked really hard saving money for the last few months and finally saved up enough to buy "Planes" earlier this week. So for dinner we made pizza bagels and ate downstairs while we watched his new movie!

Then we went upstairs to open gifts. He was a little excited and started without us.

Tyler had a construction birthday party last year. I basically had to talk him into that and convince him it would be cool. But he loved it so much, he wanted the same thing this year. He was very specific about wanting a construction cake with trucks and worms. So I spent a very long time putting this cake together. I have made this cake recipe twice before. Once it worked perfectly and the second time it fell apart coming out of the pans. So I took a risk to make it again because it is the most delicious cake I've ever eaten. I made four layers just in case some fell apart. Unfortunately all four cakes fell apart. So I worked and worked and worked to make this look presentable. The inside is uneven and crazy and held together by huge amounts of frosting with random pieces of cakes filling in gaps where the cakes were broken. It was ridiculous. Then when Tyler woke up from his nap and saw it, he informed me that what he wanted was cake in a cup. Apparently he wanted dirt cake. So after all that work, he put his cake in a bowl and mashed it all up to make dirt cake. :-)

He did still love his cake and was very excited to blow out his candles, even though it wasn't dirt cake.

After his cake we had one last surprise for him. A scavenger hunt!

He absolutely loved it. It was so fun to see how excited he was to find each clue.

 And the last clue led him to his brand new bike!!

(How do I have a child old enough for a real bike?!)

He was a little nervous to ride it, but with a little practice, he's going to be flying around on that thing.

We love this sweet boy.

Happy fourth birthday Tyler!