Rae's birthday party

Since we are moving before Rae's birthday, she got her party early. We had a pretty simple pool party at the park with pizza and cake. The hardest part of the party was tracking down phone numbers for friends from her kindergarten class. But I was able to get a few and I think Rae was really happy to see them again before we leave!



The cheesy birthday girl!

The boys had fun too

These little guys love the wading pool!


One of my favorite things about Kirksville are these little wading pools. They have them at 3 different parks in town and they are free to use. They even have a lifeguard on duty. This one is right down the street from our house and was open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. There is another one that was open everyday (except Sunday) but it was always really crowded. This one was perfect, never too crowded, but always enough kids to play with. We will really miss these pools!


Getting ready to pull the pinata
(Which I got for free at a health expo)

The loot!

Blaise and his buddy! I bought rings for each of the girls to take home.

Just hanging out on his own.

Keeping with the "pizza" theme - we sliced up some giant cookie!

I think it was a success!

Random Rae Dialogue #2

(Yeah, it has been a long time.)

After watching this video...

Rae: Is this real?
Me: No.
Rae: Because a cow can't go into the butt of another cow and come out like that.

The latest

I know most of you have already seen these events/pictures on facebook - but I like to be able to refer to my blog to remember dates/events, so I'm recording it all here too. I know the camera must have some more recent stuff on it, so I'll try to transfer those and blog about them tomorrow. Nothing creative coming from my mind this week - all I can think about are all the little things I have to do for the move!

One of the counselors in our primary presidency lives on a farm and does all of the work herself (milking cows, butchering lambs, feeding chickens, making cheese - just thinking about it make me feel so lazy and unproductive!) We had a primary activity there a few weeks ago. Rae liked to get up close the the animals, but Blaise did not (and Isaac stayed home with Roy, thankfully)


Feeding a goat

Blaise wanted to wear his "farmer hat" which is also his "cowboy hat", depending on the situation. He was excited to pose in front of some horses with his hat on!

Uh, yeah, I dyed Rae's hair. I found some hair dye on clearance at Walmart, so I bought it for myself. Then I convinced Roy that he should dye his hair. I didn't feel like using the remaining dye on my hair because I had done my recently, so I thought it'd be fun to do Rae's hair! Judge me all ya want!

For the 4th of July our city had a cupcake contest again this year so this time Blaise entered too. I showed both kids a bunch of different cupcakes on the Family Fun website, and Blaise chose this one. I thought it was a good choice, because he could actually do most of it himself.

You are supposed to have 5 cupcakes for the judges to taste and 1 that you put on a special display for the judges to look at. For Blaise's we put his in a flower pot with some fake flowers. I wish I had taken a picture - ergh!

Rae was actually able to do most of her cupcakes by herself as well. They looked a LOT better in person and her display cupcake was REALLY cute. I'm so angry that I didn't take a picture! We put a cupcake in the middle of a paper plate with some rocks around it like a firepit. Then we took two polly pocket girls and sat them on the rocks and one of them was roasting a marshmallow. I think that extra effort probably got her a lot of points. She tied for second place! Her friend Franny won first and her friend Corinne got second along with her. It is an honor to be winners with these girls - their cupcakes were amazing!

This kid....

....is such a rascal! He likes to be like the big kids and likes to cause trouble. Here are a few pictures to illustrate what life is like with him!

We had to take apart the VCR to retrieve the DVD he wanted to watch....

....and then we had to re-arrange the entertainment center so that he could no longer reach the VCR. Now he has a nice little play space!


Rae and Blaise love to help him be a big kid!

"Hey, do you see what I'm doing?"

"Hahahaha, I'm so hilarious!"


Helping himself to some fruit. I let him keep the plum and he ate every last bit, except for the pit.....smart kid!
We've been doing lots of packing and the full boxes are put back onto the empty bookshelves - Isaac made it up onto this box but couldn't get down!

I'm tempted to pack him up and ship him to the grandparents!

He has also learned how to push the kitchen chairs over to the kitchen counter. Ugh. I swear that Rae didn't figure out how to do that till she was like 3! The other day Roy fell asleep on the couch in the morning when he got up with the kids, and when I got up later I discovered a huge mess in the kitchen. He had put a couple of cups in the microwave (luckily he doesn't know how to turn it on) and he had opened the baby formula and the scoop was in the living room. He's just pure trouble He's lucky he's so stinkin' cute too!

This video was taken almost a month ago. He gets real serious about yummy treats!