2 March 2012

1.  Things I have been doing instead of blogging...

• celebrating holidays
• grieving the loss of grandparents
• pinning on pinterest (Wanna follow me?  I'll follow you back!)
• organizing pictures
• hanging out with Kara
• sleeping
• reading OTHER people's blogs
• keeping the house cleaner
• running kids to activities
• trying to get more done at school
• planning birthday parties (4 in the last 8 weeks, to be exact...)

Yep, sounds like about 5 months worth of stuff.  Moving on...

2.  Saturday we had Tate's friend birthday party.  It was detective themed and we all had so much fun.

Tate started out by hand delivering the invitations to his friends...there was no way to send these in the mail!

idea found {here}

We started by taking fingerprints and getting into disguise, just like good detectives would do.  

Then we photographed everyone for their Secret Agent ID.

Then it was time to open gifts.  The only problem was that the gifts were suddenly missing!  ;)  The kids had to follow clues that led them to a pair of Tate's shoes, the china cabinet, Beckett's sock drawer, behind a sold sign of E's, to the mailbox, to the sandbox, to Tate's piano books, and finally to Tate's bunk beds.  They kept track of the clues in their top secret notebooks.

 

After all the clues were collected, the boys figured out each one had a letter on the back.  The last clue instructed them to unscramble the letters to find where the presents were hidden.

After finding the gifts, Tate opened them and we had cake.  We ended the party with a couple more detective games.  It was one of the cheapest but most fun parties we've ever had!

3. Tuesday Gigi turned 81.  We love you so much, Gram! 

4.  We celebrated leap year this week.  Well, I guess we didn't actually celebrate, but leap day happened.  The only thing that was different about February 29th is that we actually got some snow!  Most of the winter has looked pretty brown around here.  In fact...I snapped a pic a few weeks ago of Beckett and Aves walking to Patti's for daycare.  I thought they were so cute because they were each holding one of the monkey's hands...

The picture also shows how when I say they just walk across a couple backyards to daycare I mean they literally walk across a couple backyards to get to daycare!!!  I took it from my front porch.  But now their walk looks a little more like this:

The weather is supposed to climb to 50 degrees next week, so I think we can pretty much give up on snow that sticks around for the winter.  E is still on his quest to not use his snow blower all year.

5.  One day Avery made this all by herself and brought it to me and was so proud:

 

It says "This is what I want to be when I grow up."  I was so impressed and my heart melted.  I asked Avery why she wanted to be a teacher {getting all proud of myself and sentimental and all} to which she replied "Because I want to be just like Miss Bruns."  PPPPPHHHHHTTTTT.  That's the sound of my ego deflating.  =)  I do love that she loves school and her teacher so much!!!!!!