Our Week {or 2} in Pictures

Alright, I've been a blog slacker. I admit it. But here are my reasons {and photos to add as proof}:

Ollie's birthday was on Saturday. Holy Cow! We have a THREE year old!! We decided to have his birthday party 2 weeks early this year. We knew we {and a lot of our friends} would be involved with Discovery Weekend the weekend of the 17th. And, we knew that Grandma Dunham's 90th {yes- that's right, 90th} birthday party would be this past weekend in Kentucky on the 23rd- Ollie's actual birthday. So, in order to not interfere with my birthday keep his party away from Labor Day and then into September, we just went ahead with it- he doesn't know, right??

So, he had his 3rd Birthday Party at Pump It Up on the 9th. If you want a no-fuss, all included birthday party, I would highly recommend this place. It's a little pricey, but you don't have to clean your house- TOTALLY worth it. It was a Thomas the Tank Engine themed par-tay and the birthday boy loved it. Like all things, we didn't tell him about it until the day of, so he was excited!

Here is Ollie and about the best picture I got of him. He was just a streak of energy in every other picture- no matter what I set the camera to! Any camera help, here?
He was absolutely sweaty and loving every minute of it.

Henry was not a fan of the big slide- at all! Isn't superdad a good sport?
Here is the obligatory picture of the cake. This is from Publix (of course) and the train actually moves. I found the candle spelled out at Party City. And the "3" was left over from Jason's 33! Ha! I'm a recycler- that's right. On another note, I had to move half of his 2 year old cake out of the deep freezer and into the trash to make room for half of this cake. Someboy PLEASE remind me to get half this size next year!!This is how they open presents. They even keep a list for you of who brought what- like at a bridal/ baby shower and Ollie gets to sit in the big king chair while all the kids look at him opening the presents. He loved it!! And here is Ollie {thrilled, huh?} wearing our party favors. It's a train theme. I love a theme. See our safari room post if you're unaware of this. I'm sure many parents were thinking of a lovely place for my "theme" when I sent all their children home with train whistles hyped up on cake.

OK- fast forward 2 weeks to Ollie's actual birthday. His school does what they call a "Celebration of Life". To me, that sounds like a euphamism for a funeral, but whatever- like most things, they didn't ask me! So, for Ollie's "celebration of life", his mom has to do a lot of homework. You are supposed to sum up each year of their life in a couple of sentences and with one picture. YEAH RIGHT!?! Don't they know this was our first child and we have THOUSANDS of pictures? So, I spent many nights clicking through our files trying to find representative pictures for each time period. I think I ended up with about 8-10 pictures and did a pretty good/ all-encompassing job with the narrative.

So, his teachers set up an elaborate calendar of months on the floor and Ollie holds the earth in his hands to represent the earth (not a stretch) and he walks around the sun (a candle) for each year.

They ask the parent(s) to stay and read the narrative and pass around the pictures AND I get to bring a special snack that day. This is not begrudgedness that you're sensing- it was just one more thing on the to do list. I didn't mind bringing snack, but at 11:00 the night before {after a 3 hours school board meeting}... well, let's just say I MINDED.

Then they all sing Happy Birthday and he gets to blow the candle out. I think this is where the symbolism stopped with the whole ceremony (as the sun is still in the sky) and the 3 year old fun portion kicked in.

So, the overzealous part of me cranked up after I had cut a watermelon for snack- around midnight. I am so thankful to all of Ollie's teachers who have helped us raise him over the years. Truly, they are our partners- even if he's only there half a day- they are special and precious to us. So, I decided to make them little birthday party goodies/ Friday happies. They all got a baggie with cookies and brownies and the little sticker on the outside says: "You have blessed and enriched our lives. Thanks for being a part of Ollie's first 3 years."

Am I a kiss up? You bet your bippie. Am I a little over the top? Oh yeah. But those teachers get paid next to squat, work their bums off every day and do it all just to make my little guy happy and help him learn. So, the least I can muster is a cookie or 2. If I was really on top of things these would have had ribbon, but I was exhausted and I figured that would make the TTC {Time To Chocolate} shorter.

So, after all this on Friday, I rush home to pack us all for a trip to Kentucky this weekend. We had so much fun visiting with relatives and catching up. We hadn't seen many in a LONG time, so it was overdo! Here's the birthday gal- crowned of course.

Her children and spice (plural of spouse) hosted a yummy luncheon and reception at her church and there were over 100 people there! After a while of chasing children and trying to get Ollie away from the potato chip basket, we found the church nursery with toys that were new to our kids= cool, so we hung out in there. And I actually got a half way decent picture of our boys in the same shot! It's not great, but if you have 2 or more children then you know my pain.

So, a great week and weekend and I'm very thankful to be home for a while.

I feel like I'm leaving Henry out, so here's where we've been keeping him lately:

KIDDING, of course. The fact that Henry looks a little like a jailbird in this outfit does make it a little more convincing, though!! This IS one of his favorite places to crawl into. It was Ollie's, too. Poor Luke. No love from anybody around here.