Happy 5th Birthday Isaac!

Tuesdays around here are pretty busy. Isaac has speech therapy in the mornings, and pre-school in the afternoon. Then I clean the pre-school after the kids all get home from school (I get a killer discount). My mother-in-law also comes on Tuesdays to help watch little Jared while Isaac is at speech and so we can work on craft and sewing projects together. So throw in a birthday and a sick hubby and I was frazzled. Isaac wanted a firetruck cake for his birthday and I was determined to make him one. I was making the fondant instead of buying it and the red would not cooperate! After 2 hours of fighting it I had to go to the store to buy more marshmallows and make another batch. Why in the world did I wait so long!? I also had to do the birthday shopping the day of because Jared was sick and I have been busy taking him to the Dr, filling prescriptions, and just taking care of everyone. I had to take him to the Dr 2 times and we still ended up in the ER after Isaac's birthday party for IV antibiotics.

Anyway, on to the birthday. Here is the cake after I cut it and started to assemble it. We decided to make Red from the movie Cars, Isaac's favorite movie.

crumb coat

 This is the final cake. I was a little disappointed because it didn't turn out just like I wanted, but considering I didn't have all the time I needed and I was rushed, I was happy with it. I ran out of time to put all the finishing details I would have liked on the cake, but the whole thing is completely edible. The kids LOVED it!

 I tried to use silver pearl dust for the bumpers, mirrors, and a few of the lights to make them look chrome, but I couldn't get them to paint right. Hopefully I can figure it out by John's birthday in 2 weeks, because he wants a Lightning McQueen cake. I better get started on his right away!

 Here is Isaac opening his gifts.

 He was so surprised to get a new bike!

He was happy to ride his new bike! It makes all the stress of the day worth it to see the smiles on his face!

Side note: Jared is finally doing a little better now that we have some antibiotics on board that are working. We have gone to the ER 2 times for the IV antibiotics and we still have to go again tomorrow, hopefully for the last time. I am thinking he should be able to eat tonight as the swelling in his ear has gone down a ton and he can almost close his jaw completely. He has both inner and outer ear infections in his left ear.

Thanks for reading!

Labor day weekend

We went camping again for Labor Day weekend with lots of family! We had a lot of fun, although it was a lot colder than 2 weeks ago!

Knot tying

 Jared was teaching everyone how to tie different kinds of knots.

Uncle Kim came and joined the fun!

 It is so good to see Uncle Kim up and doing so much better! I think he had fun tying knots with us!

 He even taught Jared a few knots!

Dinner

 Then we all had dinner at Uncle Kim and Aunt Diann's cabin!

 Little Isaac fell in love with Lisa's little girl!

 Then we were entertained by a bunch of the kids in the play "Hansel and Gretel in the Enchanted Forest". They did and awesome job with costumes and everything!

 The cute bunnies!

Most of the cast.

Little Jared and D'artagnan

 The boys had fun playing with cousins, digging in the dirt, and gathering rocks!

John, Alexa, Layla, Aubrey.

 These cute cousins were trying to pull the big rocks out with rope! It was fun to watch them try!

Little Jared at the cabin.

Rumplestilskim!

 Kim and Diann had planned a fun game for the kids. Rumplestilskim told the kids a story and then they got to answer some questions and earn a "dollar" to spend in Rumplestilskim's General Store.

Some of the kids with some of their loot.

The party pooper!

 Morgyn actually had a lot of fun playing with Jared's cousin Nick's kids. He has all girls. Something new for her!

The "Brains" of the cabin!

 That was an answer to one of the questions that none of the kids knew!

More bb gun shooting.

Nasty bug!!

The kids actually found this nasty bug. After researching it when we got home it is a Jerusalem Cricket. Apparently not poisonous but their bite will hurt real bad!

Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Isaac's first day of school!

Today was Isaac's first day of pre-school. He was really excited about it until we went on Tuesday to meet the teacher and have orientation. They let the kids play while the teacher talked to the parents and apparently a boy in his class smacked him. He DID NOT want to go today! He begged me to stay. I did manage to get a picture of him on Tuesday in front of the birthday tree with his name on it!

I expect him to be all smiles when I pick him up!

2011 first day of school!

Morgyn was way excited for school to start! She is in 9th grade now.

All the kiddo's ready!

Jacob, 4th grade, and John, 1st grade, so excited! Johns is excited to be there all day!

Camping

We went camping the weekend before school started. We needed to get our camper out of the mountains for some much needed repairs. It has been in the high Uintas for at least 15 years. It was little Jared's first camping trip. He was so excited!


This was just before we entered Evanston.

 It was a really nice trip! Jared drove the truck with Isaac and Jacob, and I drove the van with John, Jared, and Morgyn. We took it slow and pointed out beautiful nature to the kids.


This was a beautiful cloud!



YES! There is still snow in the mountains in late August!

We put the kids right to work when we got there!

We needed to rake rocks away to put up the tent.



We also needed to gather firewood.



Morgyn in Lex and Shannon's camper getting it ready for her to sleep in. Thanks for letting us borrow it!

John checking out our camper where all the boys slept.



Fire starters

I made these ugly little things (fire starters) out of an empty egg carton, dryer lint, and melted crayon.
They worked great! We put 2 in each fire that we made and had no problems starting the fire!

Jacob LOVED being on fire duty!



We roasted hot dogs and made yummy smores.

The kids had fun shooting bb guns and sling shots.

View 1 of camp.



View 2 of camp aka "the gravel pit".



There was a deer watching us from the neighbors cabin! That was pretty cool!



The potty

 Here is the "potty". I thought for sure we would have a melt down with Isaac, who gets grossed out way easy, or little Jared, who is potty training. But Isaac didn't complain and little Jared thought it was great!

And here is the camper all loaded and ready to roll.

It really was a nice trip! I hope we can go again soon but only stay longer. One day is just not enough!

Locks anyone?

I have been having a problem with the kids getting into stuff and eating ALL DAY long this summer. Well we came up with a solution. We installed door knobs with key locks on our bedroom doors, the laundry room door (it has all the cleaning supplies in a closet in there), and the storage room door. Then we installed 4 latches with pad locks for the pantry doors, and we installed cables with pad locks on the refrigerators. We also found the key to the lock on the freezer. Hopefully this will stop them!

Isaac was in the newspaper!

My pediatrician is retiring this month and they had a story on him in the Standard Examiner. I had taken Jacob and Isaac in for a final check up with Dr. Kramer before this dreaded day came. He came in and said that they were going to be taking his picture and asked if it was OK with me. He was really embarrassed by the whole thing but I said that was fine, he is such a humble man! He was so funny. He wouldn't let her take the picture if the boys had their shirt off. He said, "You can't take a picture of his half naked body!" He wanted her to take a picture of all of us together but they told him they were here for him. Then he said, "You have to get a picture with the mother, I wouldn't have a business if it wasn't for the mothers!" In the picture above Isaac was actually sitting on my lap, but you really can't tell. They took several pictures and I wasn't sure if they would use any of the ones with the boys in it. Then a family member told me they saw Isaac in the paper! He thinks it is the neatest thing ever!
Click here for a link to the story!



Dr. Kramer

 I really love Dr . Kramer! He has been such a wonderful pediatrician and will be greatly missed! He does live in our steak so I will be able to see him occasionally at church functions.