Catching up...

So since I last posted about Finny's 8th birthday in January, we have had three birthdays around here.

On February 6th, Mr. Lellybug turned two. He wanted frogs so he got frogs. He loved them! We had a small family birthday and thoroughly enjoyed our sweet two year old boy. Punky, Finny and Goose all had a fine time helping me to set up his birthday gift display - a blue blanket "pond" complete with stuffed frogs and paper lily pads for his gifts. We went to the mall and he picked out his very own Build a Bear - a two year old tradition around here. Then we went out to dinner and the nice folks at Red Robin brought him an ice cream and sang to him. I love that after the song he tried to start up a conversation with one of the wait staff - a very friendly man who tried hard but still had NO idea what my sweet boy was trying to say to him. ;o)

On February 18th, our big boy Punky turned ten. 10. Yes - a whole decade of life! I could write a number of posts on how that feels as a Momma - but I'll spare you all that philosophical navel gazing. But to celebrate his big day - he had his first sleepover birthday party. He invited his two best friends and his other two best friends (meaning his brothers Finny (8) and Goose(5) as well as his two favorite age mates - Logan whom he's known since Logan was crawling and Punky was a sturdy 13 month old toddler, and L.C. who is a newer friend but dear to Punky's heart) and we went with a camping theme. I had so much fun setting up the party! S'mores, some survival skills training with their Daddy, a tent in the living room, a scavenger hunt in the rainy NW woods with their Daddy and one of the friend's Dads... it was all a ten year old boy could ever dream of and more. It was a great birthday, and he deserves it. We are blessed with one wonderful firstborn son! Of course we need to celebrate him big!

And just the other day, on March 16th, our sweet little Sweet Pea turned one year old. My baby is now a whole year old. I'm still in shock. But we had a wonderful birthday weekend. On Friday we just had a simple family day - she opened her two gifts, played with them and her siblings all day, and enjoyed her first whole cupcake that evening after our family pizza and movie night. It was a lovely day to reminisce and enjoy our sweet girl. All the children loved celebrating her and she clearly knew it was HER day.

In our family, we don't do too many big birthday parties, but we always do a big first birthday party. It was no different for this Sweet Pea of ours. We invited three families dear to our hearts whom we know and love and who have been with us and supporting us and loving Sweet Pea right along with us for her whole little life. I decided on a daisy and ladybug theme and had SO much fun planning for it and decorating for it! I got pretty paper for banners, cute stickers, lots of flowers, some cute daisy soaps for the sinks and party favors, and I even bought a hand made ladybug and daisy dress form Etsy. Very fun stuff! We really enjoyed having our friends over, and Sweet Pea was so happy to watch the action, having no idea all the fuss was over her own sweet self. ;o) I must say it touched my heart to have her hanging around me all afternoon - she wanted to be right near me, checking in and touching base the whole time our guests were here.

My sweet girl. I love that little blessing. And I love that she loves me as much as she does. What a gift!

So that is the end of our winter birthday blast. My hubby has the first spring birthday of the family, in 10 days. Then comes Girly Pie - but not until early May. Then Goose and I have the summer birthdays. So that gives me some time to rev up for more bday fun. We don't do big birthdays every year for everyone - but for some reason this year is lining up for a lot of big ones. A ten year old sleep over, an eight year old Big Day Out with Daddy, a big 1st birthday, and Girly Pie will be four - and in our house that is the first (and only, so far) "real" party, with friends over and games and real party-ish stuff like that. So I will have more fun stuff to plan pretty soon! At least Goose and Lellybug have less intense birthdays this year - so their days are smaller and simpler - more family focused. It is good to have both kinds, though. And I am just so blessed to have so much to celebrate every year!

Happy (belated) 8th Birthday Finny!

My sweet Finny is 8 now.

Not quite sure how it can possibly have been that long since I held him in my arms for the first time. How can you remember such a moment so clearly no matter how long ago it happened?

Each birthday that I celebrate with each of my children I find myself resolving to cherish each moment even more. I want to really be present for every.single.second.

Otherwise, I really will blink, and one day, it will all be over...

Delightful, curious, creative, artistic, loving, brave, determined, handsome, capable, confident, humble... Finny is all these things and more.

Happy birthday a day late, Sweet One. I was just a little too busy making your big day wonderful yesterday to post your birthday note on your actual birthday - a trade off I think was wise to make. I love you. Thank you for more memories in 8 years than I ever dreamed possible when I first held you. And I can only imagine what will come in the years ahead.

Goose Turns Four

It's too late and I'm too tired to write about all the fun times we had last Thursday when my sweet little Goose turned four. I hope to sit down another time and put a little more effort into sharing the fun we had as we celebrated the big day together.

But I did just have to post a couple of pictures of my boy on his big day. Can you guess what theme he chose? He'd been talking for MONTHS about the big Soccer Birthday he wanted. The child has never even played soccer himself, but his Daddy played a ton and he's watched his two big bros play on teams for a few years now.

Sweet, funny Goose. That boy steals our hearts on a daily basis. He's the funniest, cleverest, most amazing four year old I know - Oh how blessed I am that he calls me Mommy.

Little Big Man

Tomorrow is the BIG DAY... Finny will be SIX YEARS OLD!!!

I can hardly believe my baby boy is turning six. He really has changed and matured so very much over this past year that I've been very aware of how much older he's getting. But still. Six?

I still remember the days when I was pregnant with Finny - a Momma to one little toddler guy. I would look at friends with "big" kids and think, "My kids will NEVER be that big. Five years olds are HUGE!" It just looked like it was a lifetime away for me, and I never thought I'd leave the safe, cozy nest of mothering young ones.

And truth be told, a good part of my parenting never has left that safe nest... I have always had a couple of young ones around to keep my there. But those first babies of mine have indeed grown. Now I'm the mom with the "big" kids. Not only is Finny turning six tomorrow, but Punky will be eight next month. Those kids were beyond my scope of reality way back when my mothering journey began. I could look at two and four year olds and grasp that I'd be there someday. But those seven and eight year olds? They were practically grown, as far as I was concerned. ;o)

But here I am, mother to four sweet souls, just about the meet the fifth little one God has chosen to bless us with. And now, today, six years old doesn't look so very big after all. Of course he seems so big compared to Girly Pie, but then I look at him at the dinner table, his head up over the table -barely. A young, young child. He can read and write and do great math calculations... and is still so blissfully ignorant of so many things that I can't help but smile through just about any conversation with the boy. He is still so full of the innocence and beauty of childhood. He's so big, but so little... and that's the thing I never could have known back when all I had were babies. The beauty that comes with seeing life through the eyes of a young child - not a toddler or even a preschooler, but truly a young child - is an amazing thing. I just never knew how blessed I could feel to look at someone and know haw far they've come, and to have some idea of how far they have yet to go. Each and every day is an eternity to my Finny - and I remember being that way myself. I don't know. I can't quite put it into words.

But Finny will be six tomorrow, and instead of really feeling like my little, little man is getting so very, very big, I sit here today on the eve of his big day and just feel joy and blessings galore to have known him for these six year, and I feel incredibly honored to be the mother God chose to walk along him in his journey through life. He is big, yes. But he is still so little. And I just love, love, LOVE seeing that played out in his life every single day.

So happy birthday Finny! I love you so very much, my Little Big Man.

(And I'll post a bunch of super cute Finny pictures later in the week!)

Goose's Bulldozer Cake

Oh my. It does seem hard to find the time to sit down at the computer for much of anything these days.

But I have finally managed to get here to put up the pictures of Goose's cake. I do hope to write a nice post about how wonderful his birthday was and get some pictures of our happy little three year old man up for everyone to enjoy. But for the moment, here is the little how-to on our favorite family bull-duh-zoder cake... uh, I mean bulldozer cake. ;o)

First, prepare one box of your favorite flavor cake mix. We prefer white cake around here, but for the actual bulldozer, you can get whatever you want. Divide the batter up into two mini loaf pans and one regular size bread loaf pan. If you don't have those handy, you can just use a 9x13 and do some creative cutting later.

And while you're in the cake making stage, you should prepare ahead one 9x13 chocolate cake and one box of chocolate pudding. You'll use these later.

Once the loaves are baked and cooled, cut the rounded tops off of all the loaves. I then put the big loaf upside down on my tray for the main dozer, and use one mini loaf for the cab, and one mini loaf for the scoop - that scoop one I like to cut at a bit of an angle to make it look scoop-like.

Voila!

The next step is to decorate the dozer. We like to make yellow frosting, use chocolate donut wheels and licorice tracks. I get a little tube of black decorating icing for the details.

Now it's time to get out that chocolate cake and chocolate pudding, for the "mud." I used about half of the cake, and maybe 2/3 of the pudding, though you can use as much as you want to make as much mud as you want. Personally, I think the mud is the tastiest part of the cake! Toss some chunks of the cake into a bowl, and spoon globs of the pudding on top. Then mix it all up until you are happy with the consistency (and taste!) of your mud.

Then start putting the mud around your decorated dozer. Have fun and make it look good. Dirt is always a good thing. ;o)

And that's about it. Now you should have a cute little bulldozer in a nice bed of muddy goo. We stick a few plastic construction figures around and add some finishing touches like the age and name of the birthday boy...

And the final result is one very happy three year old boy! The cake was by far the highlight of Goose's entire birthday. He was so stinking cute about it!

And just as a suggestion, we found that taking bites of the chocolate mud at the same time with bites of our favorite raspberry sorbet was REALLY good. Gourmet good. But that was just our grown up preference. The kids were happy to slop bites of all and every little bit in their mouths without differentiating between flavors.

So there you go. Bulldozer cake. It's a good thing.

Birthday round two...

And did I mention that this last Sunday, almost a week after my actual birthday, my super sweet and sneaky hubby - with help and support from my best friend and my mother - threw me my first total surprise party!?

Just when I thought my birthday was totally over and behind me. It was great. I don't think I've ever been as surprised as I was when I walked into my own kitchen after church and saw all my friends standing there yelling "SURPRISE!" to me. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. ;o) Poor Girly Pie and Goose were completely shocked and confused.

So thanks guys. I've now been humbled. I didn't really think I could ever be totally surprised like that.

For once, I am happy to say I was wrong. ;o)

Happy Birthday to Me.

Hmm...

Just as I suspected.

I woke up this morning on my thirtieth birthday...

And I feel just the same as I did yesterday. ;o)

Only I guess I've been more celebrated and gifted by my wonderful family and friends today. Which is wonderful and great and makes me feel so loved. It's great!

So now I am officially thirty. 30. Three decades done, the fourth begins today.

I can only hope that God has in mind to bless me with a few more wonderful decades to come. But, for today I am just thankful for the years I have had, and the day I have been blessed with today.

Oh, and I'm thankful for my new HUGE wooden picnic table that my Dad and Hubby got me for my birthday. Now my whole family, and guests, can eat all together on sunny days in the backyard. It's so exciting!

Tick, tock.

My birthday is a week from Monday.

I'll be 30.

Crazy.

I never thought I'd ever be anything but twenty-something. And I know that I'll feel exactly the same way when I wake up on the morning of my 30th birthday as I did the night before.

But still. It just seems weird.

I just had to post that. Not sure why. I'm not exactly worried, and I'm not really feeling "old." I guess it's just one more reminder that nothing ever stays the same. And since I've never really looked beyond this time of life, when I am young and can do pretty much anything with ease and am having babies and raising my young children... well entering into a new decade is just a strange reminder that someday these days will be gone. And my life will be really different.

Not just new-baby-different, or new-school-year-different, or new-schedule-different... but really, REALLY different. Like no-one-living-at-home-to-make-a-mess-different. And only-seeing-my-kids-on-holidays-and-family-gatherings-different. Like I'm-the-Grandma-and-not-the-Mommy-different.

But the whole name of this blog - Psalm 118:24 - defies this thinking. TODAY is the day the Lord has made. And for me, regardless of if I'm still in my twenties or if I'm fifty something, He has something in TODAY for me to do and to learn and to receive and to give.

So yes, my birthday is just days away. And a new decade will be starting. And I know very little about what that decade will look like for me.

But today I'm still 29. ;o) And I am still blessed to be a daughter of the King. My husband still loves me and my children are still a blessing to me all day every day.

So I'll worry about that whole "30" thing tomorrow, I guess. ;o)

A Year in Pictures

Words escape me.

Happy First Birthday to my Sweet Girly Pie.

I love you.