Growing Up

I think our "tween" is looking rather grown up lately.

(Wish I would have used my nice camera for the sweater pic!)

More Balloon Fun

A couple weeks ago I ordered some high quality balloons especially designed for twisting. We got them yesterday, and what a difference they make! They are so much more durable and easier to twist. The kids and I have had a lot of fun learning to make different things. The dog absolutely hates the balloons, though, and has started hiding in the laundry room whenever she hears the squeak of a balloon being twisted.

We are still working on getting the proportions correct every time. I've moved up to a couple more difficult twists, but those aren't consistent either. In addition to the standard dog, cat, giraffe, mouse, and bunny, the kids have "mastered" a snail, an octopus, and a simple hat. I've managed some monkies, parrots, and palm trees, too. Here are a few pictures of our creations.

Danielle with her snail and dog


















A monkey



















Danielle modeling a parrot. If you pull a piece of shirt up through his feet he'll sit on your shoulder.












Danielle thought she needed a couple palm trees to go with her parrots and monkies.



















Tyler modeling his hat while working on an octopus.













His octopus (before a little "arm" shaping).






I know it's silly to spend an evening making balloon animals, but we have had so much fun doing it together. All this practicing does create a problem, though. I bought a pack of 250 balloons. What am I supposed to do with all the balloon creations?!

Wrapping It Up

Tyler has finally finished up his prolonged birthday celebrations. Mamaw took him shopping on Thursday. Yesterday my mom, stepdad, & brother came over to celebrate. Today was probably what he was most excited about, though. He and his best friend (and Danielle) went to MM today to enjoy the go-karts and other activities. They had a great day!

Double Digits

"AAAHHHH, I'm 10!!! " Happy birthday to Tyler!


I've tried really hard not to dwell on his age today. The time just goes so fast. In another 10 years he will be in his 2nd year of college! :(

I was rather lame in the birthday cake department this year. Danielle didn't get anything special, and neither did Tyler. After shooting down all of Tyler's cake requests, he finally said he'd just like a green cake with green icing. (His favorite color is green.) I felt guilty about making it so blah, so I made it tie-dyed, too. It looked neat. (The tie-dyed cupcakes were a big hit! Well worth the extra effort.)

Tyler is at an odd age as far as gifts go. Occasionally he'll get out some of his cars and make them crash, but usually he prefers to design things on the computer or ride his bike. Even his enthusiasm for Legos has waned a bit lately. He didn't have much of a wish list for his birthday either. I doubt he'll play with it often, but one of his gifts from us was a set of Hot Wheels wall tracks he asked for. I thought he'd be able to design the track layout and that would keep him interested, but it doesn't really work like that. Even so, he enjoyed setting it all up tonight and connecting it with some of his existing tracks.

Watching him race the cars down the track and into a bucket took me back about 8 or 9 years.

Tyler was really excited about becoming a "tween" this year, and I think he had a good day. Well, as good a birthday as you can have when you have to spend the majority of the day at school. We have a couple more birthday celebrations yet this week, including a trip to ride go-karts and play laser tag with his best friend this Saturday.

Birthday Prep

Tonight I made 4 dozen cupcakes for Tyler to take into school tomorrow. There are 28 people in his class, including his teacher. Since I had to use 2 boxes to have enough for the whole class, he's going to take some in to his Enrichment class on Thursday, too.

I decided to make tie-dye cupcakes because I thought they would look nice without being too labor intensive. Wrong! It took forever to layer all the batter. They turned out nice, though. The kids added the food coloring to the batter until it got to a shade they liked. I should have watched a little closer. I answered the phone while they were mixing the colors for the first box of cake mix. By the time I hung up, they had emptied all the food coloring bottles! I had to make a trip to the store before starting on the second batch. I supervised the tinting a little closer the 2nd time!

The pictures are terrible. I was too lazy to pull out my good camera or worry about the lighting. (And, as you can see, I could really use a new cupcake pan for Christmas!) The cupcakes turned out nice, though. Tyler is excited about taking them in.

Backyard Visitor

Around lunchtime today we heard a horrible "thunk" against the windows in our family room. We have 3 really tall windows that each have a transom over them. Every few weeks a morning dove or house finch will hit one of the windows. Usually they are just stunned and shake off their shock in a nearby tree before flying away. The "thunk" today was really loud and caused us all to run to the window. Turns out today's collision involved a juvenile cooper's hawk.

I don't know if it was chasing a bird and didn't notice the window or if it saw the trees reflected in the window and didn't realize the window was there. Either way, it was a horrible sound, and when we looked, the bird's body was in a heap on our patio. We were afraid it was dead,but as we watched, it slowly started moving its head back and forth. It's wing was at an odd angle to its body, so even if it was alive, I feared its wing was broken.

I called a local wildlife rehab hospital to find out how to safely bring him in to be cared for. As I was talking to the lady, the hawk managed to stand up and shake itself out a little. We decided to leave it alone for awhile to see if he would recover. He stood there and looked around for quite awhile. I managed to get a couple pictures of him from the other side of the yard and through the window (the 3rd pic). He followed me with his head, but didn't move otherwise. A little while later Danielle went in the backyard to take a picture with her camera. She got out there and within sight of the bird, and it flew away! It flew gracefully to the top of a tall tree in a nearby yard. Danielle wasn't even disappointed she missed her shot - we were so thankful he was ok and able to fly! We have seen this bird in our yard several times before and are so grateful he'll still be around! (I've never seen him successfully catch one of my feeder birds, so I don't mind his periodic visits.)

Isn't he beautiful?! Look at those feet!

Life Skills

I know this is silly, but I've always wanted to learn how to make balloon animals. I finally got a book out of the library and decided to learn. The kids LOVED the idea and wanted to learn, too. So, today the kids and I learned a new life skill: how to make balloon animals. :)


I didn't have much time to look around, so I just grabbed a couple of overpriced but cheaply constructed balloon kits from the grocery store. They each included 22 balloons and a cheap plastic pump. The balloons were so cheap that several of them popped before they were ever fully inflated. They were very difficult to tie, too! We had a lot of fun with the ones we did manage to successfully inflate and tie.


Here is my first dog. Obviously I need to work on proportions! I did get better. I made several dogs and advanced to a bunny and a mouse.









Here are the kids' first attempts. Tyler's dog's tail was too long, so he added a couple extra twists just for fun. Danielle wanted to make a dachsund. It looked just like the picture in the book.

Danielle went on to make several more dogs of varying sizes, a giraffe, and a mouse. Tyler made some dogs, a giraffe, a mouse, and a sword.












I can't believe what a good time we had learning how to make these! It would have been even better if the balloons hadn't popped so easily. I am going to order some better quality balloons online so we can learn to make more things.

Photo Sundries

Sorry for all the photo posts. With school well under way, there really isn't anything to blog about right now!


Here are a few photos from last week.

A Significant Anniversary

Until this year we really hadn't discussed the events of 9/11 with the kids in any detail. We had mentioned it briefly in the past, but never spent much time discussing it. Explaining such a specific horror to your children is difficult, and as parents we spend so much time trying to shield our children from evil. They're older and we felt this year was different, though.

Tyler's enrichment class spent a lot of time discussing 9/11. When he came home and we discussed it further, he remembered details that I had forgotten. Of course, listening to our conversation, Danielle had questions, which Tyler & I tried to answer. I'd say it was a "good" conversation, but that doesn't sound right. It was an important conversation, and I could tell that hearing about that day meant something to Tyler.

A local high school errected a "Field of Honor" for the victims of 9/11 by displaying a flag for each of the victims. It's one thing to hear how many victims there were, it's another to walk through a field of nearly 3000 flags. Tyler joked "We're in public, Mom, so don't start crying" as we started walking through the flags, but after awhile he got pretty quiet, too. It was a little overwhelming to remember that each one of those flags represented someone's husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter.

I remember where I was and what I was doing when the planes hit. I remember all the feelings of that day and the days immediately following. Our children weren't born yet (Tyler was just a couple weeks away), so they can't remember those feelings. It's our job to be sure they understand the significance of that day and what it meant to America.

Photo Sundries

Farewell to Summer

We've enjoyed a nice long Labor Day weekend. Today we said our farewells to summer by digging out our jeans and jackets and attending a rib cook-off. (It was 97* on Saturday, only 63* today!)

One of our neighborhood friends hosts a rib cook-off every Labor Day. This year was the biggest cook-off with 10 rib entries. Ron got to be a judge again this year. The top 3 positions are named, with the 1st place winner getting his name on the cook-off trophy and the 2nd place winner getting a whipped cream pie in the face by the 1st place winner. We all sample the ribs and other good dishes and the kids run around and play.

Someone else in the neighborhood is a magician and he performed for the kids. We've seen him a couple times, and he is probably one of the best magicians I've seen. It was fun just to listen to the kids giggle. Both Tyler & Danielle got to help with tricks. After the magic show the kids played some games. This one involved spinning around on a bat and then running (or attempting to run) to retrieve a ball. After the kids' games the adults played a cornhole tournament.

It was a fun afternoon. We live in an awesome neighborhood. It's so nice to live next to people we genuinely like and consider good friends, and who are in the same stage of life as us. It's neat to be able to watch all our kids grow up together.

It was a good way to bid farewell to summer.