A Sweet Celebration

A photo essay...

Why? Because we are leaving for vacation tomorrow and I am so unbelievably tired I can barely put two words together.

I only have one thing to say other than that--I am the cupcake master.

Oh, and my pals are the best gals around.

Lila

Hi.

My name is Ya-ya. Spelled L-I-L-A, but I like to call myself Ya-ya.

Today is my birfday. I am two.

Being two is fun. I love my life! I get to play with my bruh-yahs, Mas and Co-Co.

My favorite thing to do is to cullah. You know, with crayons.

I like to watch "packpack" on TV. Mason insists it's called "Dora" but I am certain he is wrong.

I'm a super big girl now. I like to use the potty ever chance I get, but my mama says she doesn't have time for me to be potty trained. Those big girl underwears are so pretty though. Mine have Tinkerbell on them.

My mullet has finally grown out long enough so mommy can manage it. Every morning I make her put pigtails in my hair. Or else.

My favorite 'nack is raisins. I leave them all over the house!

Every night before I go to bed, I tiss mommy, tiss, daddy, and tiss my bruh-yahs. I love to give tisses. Mwah! Then I say nah-nite.

I am happy to be two.

Happy birfday to me! Sing it, people.

P.S. I'm having a really "sweet" birthday party this weekend. If my mommy has her act together she'll post some pictures next week.

Monster Truck Sized Egg-Shaped Celebrations

I woke up this morning the way I always do--to one of my children staring in my face.

This time it was Cole. The birthday boy.

He climbed in bed with me and I snuggled him. Told him it was his birthday and now, at long last, he was officially four. And then I looked at the clock and noted the time.

It was almost exactly the same time it was four years ago when I met him for the first time, several hours after his tumultuous and highly dramatic entry into this world. And in retrospect, I can't believe after such an entrance he has turned out to be such a quiet, easy-going, happy-go-lucky child.

Have you heard of a Golden Birthday? It just learned of this phenom last week. Apparently it's when your age matches your date of birth. So since Cole was born on the 4th and he's turning four, it's his Golden Birthday. Imagine that.

Since today is Easter, we had his party yesterday. It would have been so nice to have his party today, on his actual birthday, but of course people would be celebrating the holiday with their families.

This year was awesome, because Cole told me exactly what kind of birthday party he wanted. A bounce house party, at our house, with monster trucks. Pirate monster trucks, to be specific (come to find out this means Captain's Curse from Monster Jam).

I thought all of his decisiveness would take the guess work out of it for me, but it just so happens that Monster Trucks are the hardest to find, hardest to plan birthday decorations. But I worked it out. Right down to the cake. After Target and Publix were both sold out of their monster truck cake decoration parts, I said eff it (literally, I was frustrated) and made my own cake.

Then I found these snazzy letter candles, but of course there was no "Cole." They were also sold out of most single letters. So how did I score this? There was a "Nicole." Ha!

Pre cake he's already got chocolate on his face. Donuts. We had a breakfast party. Getting the kids nice and jacked up on sugar. : )

Lila, in her very own pink monster truck shirt. With her very own chocolate donut face.

After the party, after the cleanup, after Cole and I went to Publix to order cupcakes for his class party on Monday, we switched out of Birthday mode and into Easter mode to color eggs.

Before.

During.

After. 18 freshly colored little cadets standing proudly in their carton.

And then this morning when Rey pulled out the white eggs to make Cole's breakfast french toast, Cole wondered what kind of trick we played on him to make the "painted" eggs plain again.

This morning, in a special hybrid Easter/Birthday mode... we stopped in our harried rush to make it from point A to B to C to Z and took a few quick Easter best pictures.

My girl.

My girl and her brothers who love her to bitty bits.

I almost made Cole change out of his blazing red Crocs. But he really wanted to wear them. And although some might think they ruin the "perfect" shot, I think the perfect shot consists of perfectly happy kids. It was his birthday, he was already sharing it with a holiday, and by george if wearing red Crocs would make him happy then it also make this picture perfect.

It also covers their perfect little personalities. Lila the Ham. Mason the Showman. And Cole, perfectly bored out of him mind and wondering when this would be over so he could get back to his Dragon Wagon.

I made it into a picture!

Tried to fire off some singles of the boys.

Mason poses.

Cole does not.

He would be very pleased for you to know that he's now four. That's four years old, people.

And lastly, a cake. Post egg hunt, post Easter brunch with one family and Easter dinner with another, we had the final cake. With four candles.

Egg-shaped for Easter, with four springtime layers.

Between the cakes and the candy, our entire family is poised to lapse into a sugar coma.

I think I did a good job of making the best of my boy sharing his birthday with Easter. I think I managed to make him feel special and still make a special holiday for my other Garanimals.

But I am dead dog-tired. And thankful that Easter doesn't fall on April 4th every year.

I assumed it would happen at some point again though, and I even took the time to look it.

2021. Easter will be on Cole's birthday again when he turns 15.

At least I have 11 years to recover from this weekend before I have to do it again.

Oh! It's my Blogiversary!

On this day, one year ago, my blog was born.

Sounds like a good excuse for me to eat some cake.

As if I needed an excuse.

An Open Letter

To my dear Blog,


I know that I have neglected you lately. For some of this neglect I have good excuses. For some of this neglect, I do not.


Let's stick with the parts where I have excuses.


First, I will reiterate that someone crashed into the back of my mvan. At the time of last blogging, I was in that grateful I'm-so-happy-my-kids-and-husband-came-out-in-one-piece stage. A lot of me holds on to that, but as the royal pain in the tooshie of getting a rental car big enough to fit your family began, wrestling with insurance companies reared its ugly head, and dealing with the body shop nonsense became my harsh reality, I started to have hatred towards the accident. And I still can't get over the fact that kids born in 1993 can drive automobiles. Maybe they shouldn't, in which case this thing would have never happened in the first place.


Next....


My eldest turned the ripe old age of five. *I* have a five year old! Yes, that freaks me out.


Kids these days don't just have birthdays, they have birth weeks. Does that make me sound old?

The beginning of the festivities was on Sunday. Only in Florida can you throw a pool/beach party in the middle of October. And it was hot as all get out, too.

Mason and Cole (and maybe even Lila? I can't remember at this point) had been rather sick in the days leading up to the party. What started off as a good effort towards pre-party prep ended in a mad rush to get the thing over with. Perhaps it makes me a bad mama, but I was not feeling like a party animal.

Cousin Alex was our Master of Ceremonies.

The kids had fun sometimes...

And sometimes they did not have so much fun...

Lila, she was definitely livin' large.

But by and large the biggest hit was this game--Drip Drop Slash. A Florida version of Duck Duck Goose. The kids had a wild time.

Not such a tight grasp on the part of the game where you run around the circle though. Instead they ran away from it.

A close second for entertainment value was the hermit crab races.

Disgusting little buggers, if I do say.

I sewed this spiffy banner.

And I made some nifty cupcake toppers. Too bad I neglected to bring them to the party...

Sometime back we started an event of taking the birthday child to a special, one-on-one breakfast with a parent. Cole picks daddy, and I put on a brave face even though I want to die inside when I don't get picked.

But Mason! Oh my Mason! I can trust him to pick me.

And when it was all done, he even asked me if next year I would bring him to breakfast on his birthday again. So despite my doubts and convictions, I guess I'm doing something right here.

I bought him $40 worth of Spiderman cupcakes to take to school. The boys' school does not allow homemade goods to be brought in. How do you people feel about that? I think it's crap. I'm sure someone out there agrees and doesn't want their kid eating someone else's homemade stuff, which makes me think that the world has gone to pot.

Mason's birthday happened to be fire truck day at school, and my original plan had been to go and take pictures of the event and his cupcake eating. But alas, I had to go to the body shop for the mvan, thus eliciting less accident gratefulness and more accident hatred that I was discussing before.

That night, Mason's request was a grilled cheese dinner at Calistoga. A boy after my own heart.

And like that, a three day celebration, two cakes with singing, one happy boy later and we were finally done celebrating.

Okay, Blog, I get it. That's probably not a good explanation as to why I haven't posted in 33 days. So I'll continue.

We took a trip to Tampa. Rey's best friend Nick is getting married, which to say the least is freakin' amazing. He is lucky to have found his beautiful fiancee Angie, even if we can't understand what she sees in him. (Kidding! Love ya Nick!)

They lived in Michigan but were visiting Florida for a friend's wedding, so they had an engagement party for the ol' college crew.

It was a bit of a frat boy reunion. But I am happy to say that not one but TWO of Rey's frat brothers told me I haven't aged a day in the eight years since college. LOVE those boys!

Which brings us to Halloween.

There are no words.

Oh, wait! Yes, I can think of a few.

Candy. Candy. Candy. CANDY. Candy. Candy. Candy. Costumes. CANDY. Candy. Costumes. Candy. CANDY!

Kids with stomach aches eating more candy!

And lastly, mixed into all the everyday mayhem, the sick kids mayhem, the birthday mayhem and the Halloween pandemonium, there is running.

Remember? I decided that running a half marathon was a good idea!

And now, running is no longer something I do for fun, something I do on days where other forms of exercise elude me, it's something that I have scheduled.

For real, I have a calender with mileage and rest days and strength days and cross training days.

I'm still pretty sure I have no clue what I'm doing.

But as much as I bitch about it, and I really do hate to run, I will kick ass and take names.

Cause that's how I roll.

So you see, Dearest Blog? I have neglected you, I know.

But I had my reasons.

XOXO,

Ashley

P.S. Lots of complaints were lodged through the various channels about the lack of your updating, Blog. It's amazing that none of these people who miss my posting ever, AHEM, leave comments. : ) Cause then I would be more aware of my wide and vast and expansive audience and how it misses me so.