Jack's birthday

Well, we are back to posts after Evan was born at least now.   I remember on November 1, thinking, oh, it's NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), which I did last?  year and the idea is to post everyday in November.  I use it to just post more often.    Instead, I didn't post at all in November.  Kind of crazy since I have a new baby and lots to talk about, but kind of normal too, since,well, I have a new baby. 

So, if you missed my marathon posting yesterday, I posted THREE times, of things that happened BEFORE Evan was born.  

Now I'm at Jack's 3rd birthday!   It was pretty low key, since well, I have a new baby.  That is the recurring theme recently.  Jack's birthday was 11 days after Evan was born, so there were no invitations, decorations, or a homemade cake.  But there was a cake, family and gifts, and love.  That's all a birthday needs, right?  It's all Jack needed.  Oh, and a Happy Birthday song.  You need that too.

Some of our cuter guests.

Jack not looking excited opening gifts, but he was, he loves this car!

Jack not sure about being sung too.....which is funny, he loves singing Happy Birthday to people!

Blowing out candles

Now, finally a smile! 

And since I didn't get a picture of Evan at the party (he was mostly being worn in the Moby) here is a random bath picture.



birthdays/Ferndale Chamber Gala

Last weekend Rachel and Bryant hosted a party for John and his dad's birthdays, which are 4 days apart.  His mom made pasties (YUM!) and we had a nice get together, as always.

Here are the boys blowing out candles.

And, of course, sweet baby Boden

That weekend, we also attempted family/2 year pictures again at Mill Race Park in Northville. This time, Jack was great, but we got kicked out because someone paid for the whole park to get married in.  I have never heard of closing a public park for something, but whatever.  The lady was really rude to us too.  Hopefully Katie was able to get something!

This past Thursday, John and I went to the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce Gala.  It is a an awards event with dinner, and dancing for the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce members.  Not to sound vain, but we were extremely disappointed to see that we weren't even nominated for any awards.  New business of the year?  I wonder who brought more business to Ferndale than us, since they opened?  There was a LONG list of nominees, and we weren't on it.  I don't think we should have won, as as the winner was very deserving.  But I do believe we should have been nominated.  Oh well.  I think we will still qualify as a new business next year, so maybe then!

The Future of Ferndale Schools

We went to a Ferndale Public Schools Meet and Greet today, and we were so happy that we went.  We have been wondering about the quality of Ferndale schools ever since we moved here 6 1/2 years ago, and today we have decided that there is no question that we want Jack to go to Ferndale schools.  They sound fantastic!   All of the parents there are thrilled with their experiences in the schools.   It's so exciting!  I love the sense of community we have here in Ferndale, and it's even stronger with the families with school age children.  It really sounds like parents are super involved in the schooling of their kids here, and I think that is so important.   I truly believe in the "it takes a village" kind of mentality and I love that we have found that here in Ferndale.  I think the support of the parents here is amazing, and as much as I don't want to send Jack off to school, I'm excited to be a part of such a tight, strong community. 

 We realized that we really should be seriously thinking about preschools now, since some of them have waiting lists...

Jack got this t-shirt today, it's a little big on him.  He's calling it his dress.

Happy Day to you!

Today was John's birthday, and when I started singing to him, Jack looked around frantically, and picked up a decorative lighted candle to use as a microphone, and belted out "Happy Day to You!"  We have no idea where he learned this!

2 year pictures

We went to get our family pictures/Jack's 2 year pictures done today by my sister in law Katie at Mill Race Park in Northville.  Jack was crazy.  I've never seen him like this.  The playground didn't even make him happy.   We *may* have gotten one good picture.  (family).  Unfortunately, I wanted outdoor pictures mostly for Jack's pictures alone.  That didn't happen.   What really stinks is that my sister in law lives in Lansing and drove out to us and it was for nothing.   So, now I'm stuck with a decision.  We have to go to the studio anyway to get pictures in his halloween costume.   So we can just do studio pictures then.   But, we did studio pictures last year and I'm not sure how they will be different, except he's older.   I just don't want the same thing again, if that makes sense.  I thought there would be more options outside. 

Next weekend is supposed to be nice, and we could try again outside, but I hate to take the chance and have them do the drive AGAIN....

These are important to me, though, as they serve as the main decor in our living room, and our Christmas card picture :)   I could figure something for the Christmas card, but I'd like updated living room pictures!

Halloween!

Ok, I missed a day.  But, I'm impressed at the rate I'm blogging!  Of course, I'm still blogging past events, so it barely counts, but you may not have seen Halloween pictures til February at the rate I was going!

Ok, so we love Halloween, as you all know.  (all, 6 of you! heehee)  What we are doing is finding the cutest costume we can for my mom to make Jack, and then me and John try to coordinate with him...  It's not been easy. 

This year, Jack was an elephant.  So, the best we could come up with was a circus theme.  John was going to be a ringmaster and I was going to be the lady that rides the elephant.  Making John a ringmaster, was proving to be difficult.  One day, at Target, I spied a "Circus Cutie" costume, aka an adult female ringmaster!  It looked great, so we gave up on homemaking and then I was the ringmaster.   Now, John was not going to wear a tutu, so we had to come up with a costume for him.  We though a pooper scooper would be funny, because circus's have them right?  Someone has to clean up the elephant messes!  What does a circus pooper scooper look like?   A clown.  So we gave up on the pooper scooper idea and just make John a clown.  We bought a few pieces and thought we could put together a decent clown.  We were wrong.   We are not good at clowns.  Oh well.

Our first Halloween event this year was the Downtown Ferndale trick or treating!  We go every year, it's fun to show Jack off !

 Checking out his competition in the window of Pinwheel Bakery.

And, how did we get him to keep his head on?  The promise of a piece of candy...

Later that evening, we had a Halloween party at our house.   Some of the yummy food....

The hosts...you can see this is our worst clown.   The makeup was terrible.

The guests:

Barney, Betty and a stegosaurus.

Dr. Trouble and Medusa....

 Kermit and Miss Piggy:

 Kelly, the Milkmaid (heeehee, that is totally what I should have been Jack's first Halloween!) 

A monk, a nun, and Zorro...

 I hope this doesn't make Jack scared of his 2 year well check next week.

Boden did NOT like my flashes in his face.

It is impossible to get a good picture of a 2 and 3 year old in costume. 

And then, the next day, of course, Halloween and trick or treating!

This time, we did not do the makeup and changed the outfit around a bit, yet it still is not very good.

Our next door neighbors... 

He wanted to go right into this lady's house!!

The loot!

Jack is 2!

Jack turned 2 on October 21!  He was sung to at our La Leche League meeting that morning, but otherwise we didn't  really talk about it too much, since Daddy was out of town.   We had his party that weekend, and thankfully no one this year had H1N1.  (Last year John brought H1N1 home with him from a business trip and we had to postpone Jack's birthday party!) 

We had a train theme, and I wish I had taken pictures of the invitations, they were SO cute!   Here are some pictures of the other stuff:

These wraps say "chew chew"  heehee

This is a terrible picture, but these are some little pillow box favors for the kids.   They had organic dye free suckers, dye free ghoul gummies and a 100% fruit wrap in them. 

Opening gifts!   The first gift was a ride on Mickey Mouse airplane and he wanted to do nothing but play with it, so I kind of had to force him to open the rest, so we missed out on the "WOW!"s and things he did earlier when he opened gifts from us.   That was a bummer.

Time for cake!

Yum!  This is carrot cake sweetened with honey and maple syrup sweetened cream cheese frosting.  Thank you thank you thank you to my friend Tanya for the use of her food processor.   Shredding the carrots only took about 10 seconds this year, and not HOURS  like last year.

But, even better than the cupcake, was the ICE CREAM!!  I was thinking about letting Jack have some ice cream on this birthday and then my friend Tanya convinced me that was crazy talk and gave me this recipe for banana ice cream.  Step 1.  Freeze bananas.   Step 2.  Put them in the food processor for 5 minutes.  Ta-da!  Banana soft serve!!   Jack LOVED it!!  Nothing but bananas!!!

There was kind of a theme with a lot of the gifts.   And Jack was in heaven.  

this is blurry and my face looks fat, but it's really cute of Jack.

And thank you Uncle Jim and Aunt Nancy for all the 2 dollar bills!!  Great idea!