Special Celebration!!

Today marks a very special milestone…. My parents celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary today!  They live about 9 hours away, so I called them, and found out they celebrated with a fancy dinner out.  Beautiful restaurant, great view, delicious food!  Yay!  So in honor of them…. I am posting some photos of their wedding- 45 years ago.  They got married in the Bahamas, because at the time, my dad was working as the Assistant Director of Golf, at one of the resorts down there.  They looked stunning…Both of them!  Of course, I am very biased.  (The last photo is my favorite… )

Munchkin Turns 2!!

Okay, it was LAST month, that this event happened…. but better late than never!  Actually, what’s motivating me is that this month we are celebrating Jabber Jaw’s birthday.  I couldn’t put photos up of that, without having posted about our littlest guys celebration.  No way!  Besides, Tiger Shark’s tooth photos have been up here for way to long.  Seriously.
SO our little munchkin loves Elmo.  He loves to sing/say “Elmo” at different times throughout the day.  He is actually just getting into Sesame Street.  For awhile there, no TV show was of any interest to him…(only the cords BEHIND the TV).
Naturally, I wanted to do some kind of Sesame Street themed celebration.  I was originally going to do Cake Pops, that I saw HERE.  But everyone got sick with the flu, and so we were lucky to find a day that everyone felt well for Munchkin’s party.  (We celebrated it a week and a half late…. shhhhh……  he doesn’t know.)  Anyway, those cake pops were sooo not happening.  I really wish I had time to make them, but I chose instead a simple 3 tiered cake.  I made a white icing, and decorated the heck out of it with sprinkles, candy and fondant.  It was my first 3 tiered cake.  Here are some photos of the day. 

Sesame Street Pinata

 

Elmo and the presents

Pin the Nose on Elmo 

Pinata

 Blowing out the candles!!  Looks like he had a little help…..

Presents- One more Goodnight Moon book.  (We now own three- but you can never have too many of his favorite book!)

 Cookie Monster who actually eats cookies….

 Tentatively feeding him a cookie…. (still holding his favorite book though)

 The best shot I could get of all the crew….. 

At the end of the day…. Munchkin had a BLAST!

Small Fry Celebrates a Birthday!

Small Fry had a birthday recently.  He wanted a Thomas the Train birthday theme…. so, I began to think of a few Thomas the Train ideas, like a cake, etc.  Here’s the thing about Small Fry, he isn’t in preschool like my other boys were, and so we aren’t having the big preschool birthday parties.  Our birthdays are pretty much our family.  Maybe every other year we have a few friends over for birthdays, but typically it’s just us.  And by “us” I mean, just our little family unit, as The King Fish and I don’t have family that live in the area. 

Birthdays are a big deal for us.  We want to make them very special for our kids.  So we almost always have streamers.  The dining room table must be “dressed” for the event.  



The birthday child always gets to chose what they would like for dinner.  Small Fry’s choice was interesting…. chicken divan, and corn on the cob.  Hmmmmm.  He wanted a Thomas cake, and since we have a Thomas Cake pan, that was one easy thing that I could provide for him.  Except that a few days before his birthday, The King Fish and I could NOT find the Thomas Cake Pan anywhere.  And we looked everywhere, in the cabinets, pantry, all  the usual places.  Then we started to look in unusual places…. the garage, the attic, the master closet in our bedroom…..  No Cake Pan ANYWHERE.  Plus they are not sold in any stores around here.  Ordering it was not an option, as we didn’t have time for it to be shipped.  Enter Plan B….. make my own Thomas Cake.  I found one online where Thomas was actually carved out like the train. Holy Cabooses!  (What movie is that phrase from?)  It was a very difficult cake to make,  especially for this novice cake maker.  I was up until 4am working on that cake!  A whole lotta love went into it…. but it was worth it! 

I also found several ideas for games we could play as a family for when we had our little family party.  Tiger Shark made this awesome poster.  It’s called Pin the Nose on James, and he drew it all freehand.  That was such a fun game that everyone enjoyed. 


Jabber Jaw was tied up with football, but was able to come back and help me laminate some of the cutest Thomas the Train Bingo cards that I found online for free!  Awesome! 
      

Finally we had a Thomas Piñata and everyone enjoyed whacking away at that! 





Here is the birthday boy at the beginning next to all his presents and some of the games….  I forgot to get a photo of the birthday boy and all his brothers.  Darn!  Next year I must remember!

So much work went into this little party, but it was one of the sweetest birthdays we celebrated!  We certainly made some lasting memories. 
This is a photo of Munchkin sometime during dinner. 

He was certainly zoned into something, but I have no idea what it was.  His birthday is next, and I’m thinking of some sort of Sesame Street cake/theme.  Stay tuned!
~Jackie

Tennis Practice

Back in January, the King Fish had a day off of work and Tiger Shark had a tennis lesson.  (Jabber Jaw was still down with his broken collarbone).  So I had the rare opportunity to spend the entire lesson practicing some action shots on my camera. Usually I am chasing after little children etc. etc. etc.  It was nice to be able to do this, and such fun too!  I definitely want to consider getting a babysitter in the future so I can do this with both of the older boys!  (I have a bunch of shots, but here are a few of the better ones.) 

  

 

Tap. Tap. Tap…. Is this thing on??

Small Fry got a dual microphone, Child’s CD Player for Christmas…..

 

The child loves to sing…  I mean he was in heaven!

 

Can you tell??? 

Our little munchkin was not so sure what to do with his microphone…

 

Hey, do I wrap it around my neck? 

Hmmm…. what’s my big brother doing with it???

  I see a musical career in their future… Don’t you???

Snow Photos!

We got our first white Christmas since we moved down south.  It was lovely, and it’s so cold here the snow is still on the ground.  Amazing!  Our littlest fish did not venture out into the snow, because he is battling another cold.  But the rest of the crew went out and had a wonderful time sledding and building snowmen!  (And yes, that is Jabber Jaw sledding with a broken collarbone….)  Boys!  <sigh>