Birthdays!!!!!!!!!!

I love September. Well I might be a little bias... it is my birthday month and the month that I first held my first child for the first time.  Landon and my birthday are 5 days apart and I love it.  I also love September because the day after my birthday is Autumn my favorite month. 

This year Landon choose a Batman birthday theme.  Not really what I wanted him to pick but I went with it.  I was surprised he picked it because he has never watched Batman and doesn't even have a Batman toy (although now he has lots (;  ).  Landon helped a lot in the planning, I have to say he is quite the planner.  He knew what he wanted to eat, what decorations he wanted, what kind of dessert and who he wanted to invite.  I helped offer some suggestions but it was mostly his ideas. 

I thought it would be fun to have the kids dress up so we edited the theme to be Batman's Superhero Party.  I loved the costumes!  I think I will be encouraging my children for more dress up themed parties.  Arabella went as Sailor Moon.  Sailor Moon is a Japanimation or Anime Super hero that was my favorite growing up. I made Bella's costume. Landon went as Batman, of course.  My parents, Josh and I bought the different parts to Landon's costume.  I was Catwomen and Josh was Joker, per request of our son-Batman. 

The Super Heroes (and Joker)

 Thank you everyone who made Landon's birthday special!!!

Party Time!

 The Joker had captured some of our little Super heroes (seen in lower right hand corner) so all the BIG super heroes had to brave past THE JOKER and bring the little super heroes to the safety of Mrs. Victoria ;)  The kids had fun!

Save the Super Hero Game!

Birthday Boy and His Cake and Cupcakes!

 Mommy and Batman's Party back home with our family at Uncle Jon's and Aunt Merry's.  I was surprised with the most amazing chocolate raspberry cake made for me by my sister, Merry.  It was the best cake I have ever had!  Although the trip home included leaving a day late (due to sickness and just too much to do), loosing Reesie for 4 hours in Tallahassee (Josh stayed behind to look for her and thankfully he and Sally found her), Jon driving to Tallahassee to pick up Josh, and a whilwind trip home in general, Landon and I did have a great time celebrating our birthdays and so thankful we have an amazing family to celebrate with!

The Super Heroes, Cat Women, and Joker

Cake, Presents and Play Time!

We also enjoyed celebrating a family friend's birthday.  Emma turned one! 

We were excited to celebrate with her and family and friends!

Catchup of our August

Catchup of our August

We are huge fans of finger lights in this house.  Talk about inexpensive fun!  I picked a pack of 3 up for $1 at Micheal's at Christmas for Landon last year.  After everyone enjoying them so much we bought 40 online for less than $7.  The kids love them.  They get played with everything, stuffed animals, plastic animals, trains, cars, dress up, and and everything in between. 

Finger light fun!

Ashley invite us to the creek to have some fun in the water and search for sharks' teeth. We didn't bring out swim suits so Landon borrowed a cloth diaper cover and Bella played in her diaper.  Yay for cloth diapers being multipurpose! I am planning on taking some of the teeth we found and make Josh and Landon shark necklaces. 

Creek Splashing and Play Time

Our Findings

Arabella has been praciting her photogratphy skills.

Landon's friend, Ben came over for a play date.  Landon has been asking for a while for him to come over.  Finally our 2 busy families were about to coordinate a date.  We did a Lighting Mcqueen/ Cars2/ Olympic art work.  The boys had fun with trains, finger lights, and big Legos.

Play date with Ben

Unfortunately, this was one of the few trips to the beach this summer.  It was quite the eventful trip.  Our car tire got a hole in it.  Thankfully it wasn't a blow out and it was a mile from the beach.  Josh dropped us off and took the car up the road to a mechanic we had seen close by.  The guy who worked there was very nice and really helped us out a lot with putting the tires on right away and gave Josh a good deal.  After he was done, he mentioned that he wasn't even suppose to be at the shop that day because they were closed but he had gotten a call and had to meet someone at the shop.  Very thankful!  While at the beach we meet a little boy a few months older than Landon who was named Landon.  Needless to say, our Landon was so excited to meet another Landon.  He still to this day talks about him.  Josh joined us for about an hour before a storm rolled in and we had to leave. 

Beach trip

Isiah's birthday party

Fruits of our labor from our garden.

2012 London Olympics

BEhind on posting again.  Oh well.. Here is our Olympic festivities


We spent the whole week reading, crafting and playing with the Olympics in mind.  I have never really been hyped about the Olympics as I have been this year. I mean I would watch it sometimes and I really love watching certain sports.  It has been fun learning and counting down the days!

 Here are some of our adventures in prepping for the Olympics!

Olympic shirts.  Landon did his all by him self with my instructions. Arabella picked out what she wanted to do on  the sleeves.  The torch has been a favorite play thing of the week. 

 Torch- I saw several torches on Pinterest as I was gathering ideas.  I used some ideas I saw and added a few of my own.  I think ours looks pretty good compared to the real one this year considering it is made of almost all recycled items ( with the exception for the tinfoil and gold spray paint) and can't really be safely lite on fire.  I was excited we made it all with recycled items.  That orange stuff is from a bag the tangerines came in ;)
I used a toilet paper roll for the round part to hold.  The triangle part is a paper towel roll. After making the trinagle part we pushed one roll into the other and then taped them to We covered the whole thing with

Togas and laurel wreaths to remind us of the original Olympics.  British flag lunch to remember who is hosting this year.  I also have been using Cars 2 as a motivator since part of the movie took place in London.

The Food!

Since our small group meets on Friday and the Olympics started on Friday we had an Olympic around the world themed dinner. It was fun!  Our small group did a great job of representing Asian foods.  I think more than half of the dishes brought were Asian. I made an Olympic Ring Pizza for dessert. Everything was really yummy!

Josh and I planned several dinners that were new to us and distinctive to different places in the world.  We had Bangers n' Mash, Yorkshire Pudding, Egg rolls, Edamame, Burritos, crepes, and Stir Fri.  I tried to find traditional recipes.  It was really fun trying some new foods.  All of them were quite yummy! I think the favorite was bangers n' mash.  

Here is some of the food I remembered to take a picture of.

The Games!

We did some Olympic games as well.  I had a ton planned but as typical in our house.  Life got in the way.  We still had fun and learned a lot!  Before we played any of the sports we watched either the event or practice of the event online (Thanks Mom and Dad for giving us access to the online coverage!).  We did the discus(we made them out of paper plates), soccer, boat races, javelin(made out of straws), obstacle course races, gymnastics, relay races, and swimming.  Landon's favorite sport to watch and play was soccer.  Arabella's favorite to watch and play was gymnastics but she really liked soccer a lot too (Just like her mommy- maybe she will want to gymnastics and soccer like I did).