The Garden

Not much seems to be happening in the vegetable garden, but the first Peonies showed up yesterday, and the irises are in full bloom. 

Getting creative

I guess the boys were frustrated by the fact that Kaya seems to like their toys better than her own. 

Patrick is five!

My thoughtful one, my best yard helper, Kaya's best friend, turned five yesterday.  Just to give you an idea of the level of his sweetness, he requested that a framed picture of his baby sister go on his nightstand.

All he wanted to do was build Legos on his birthday.  All day.  He does them all by himself, usually requesting assistance to get the stickers on perfectly. 

As a final surprise, I picked up the Lego Movie sheet set at Target for $20 (a great deal) and made his bed while Tom read his bedtime story downstairs. Emmett is on one side of the pillow, and Lord Business is on the other. 

He loved it.

Happy Birthday, P.  Love you more than you love Legos.

Memorial Day Weekend 2014

Memorial Day weekend was spent working in the yard, with some fun for the kids mixed in here and there.  On Sunday, Tom and I took the boys to Oakmont to hit on the driving range (more accurately, behind the driving range where no one would be bothered by a three and five-year-old).

This was Tommy's first time out with his clubs, and after the first hit, all he wanted to do was play with the balls and the sand.  

Patrick is doing well and I think I may enroll him in the summer golf camp. He was all business.

Monday we attended a local parade where we saw Tom driving one of the fire trucks.  I took some adorable pictures. Too bad I didn't have my memory card in the camera.  Later that evening, we attended a picnic where Kaya ate more than her brothers combined.

Kaya's signature expression. Neither of the boys did this. Unfortunately, I had, and still have, a cold all weekend. Hoping to finish up some big yard projects this weekend, and work starts on the outside of our house on Tuesday. 

Farewell, Preschool

Last Wednesday was Patrick's preschool's graduation program. (I didn't cry) My favorite part? The classes used sign language to read us Brown Bear, Brown Bear. 

Patrick with his teachers, Mrs. K and Mrs. R

I have actually been looking forward to this moment, because Patrick's behavior at school has been less than typical for my sweet boy.  A couple boys in his class have set the tone for misbehaving, and Patrick jumped right on that wagon.  Two weeks ago, he was sent to the preschool director's office. Yes, Patrick.   One of his teachers had him as a 3-year-old as well, so she has really seen the change. Hoping this summer break will be a chance to reset.  

As for his teachers, God bless them, because they get Tommy in the fall.  

Only a Matter of Time

I knew with 100% certainty that Tommy would be the child who drew on walls and other things.  I just didn't know when.  When was this this past weekend. 

He colored my couch.

Thank goodness for washable markers and slipcovers.  It all came out.  The funny thing is, I bought this sofa with a washable slipcover before I had kids. I had a black lab and wanted to be able to get the hair off.  The slipcover has been washed so many times, it is fraying on the edges, but I haven't been able to find anywhere that still sells the couch and replacement covers.  

Mother's Day

I didn't get breakfast in bed. There was no homemade card or picture from the boys. But they did do my bidding. On Mother's Day, I got a garden, ready for planting. Tommy and Patrick pitched in, and Tom got the fencing up. 

Before:

We decided to convert the lower bed into our vegetable garden. I transplanted the few plants that were there to other beds, but we had to install fencing due to the high number of deer that come through.

After:

Cannot wait for some home-grown veggies this summer! Thank you honey, it was the perfect gift.

Despite the Rain

It has been raining for what seems like a week here in the 'Burgh.  Our lawn looks more like a dandelion jungle, and my flower beds have been sitting bare, landscape fabric exposed. Until today. All my best helpers came through, and the boys unloaded two truckbeds worth of mulch.  One more to go next weekend. 

Lego Party

Two weekends ago we had a joint 3rd/5th birthday party for Tommy and Patrick (we celebrated Patrick's early because we were not sure whether a trial would take Tom out of town around the time of P's real birthday).  Patrick picked Lego for his theme, and a Tommy chose  a fireman theme.  That meant two cakes. To keep things a bit on the simple side, I told P he could invite ten, and only ten, friends. He invited every girl from his class first, and then 4 of the boys. My ladies man. 

Tommy invited three friends, and cutely refers to all of his brother's friends as his friends too.  The favors were beach buckets filled with a small Lego pack and Lego soap.  The soap idea I copied from justcraftyenough.com, which had awesome directions.  It was ridiculously easy.  I bought the silicone lego tray molds from Amazon (I think $15 for the two I used). I bought the glycerine soap base and coloring from Michaels.

They came out perfectly. The only negative was I only had one giant Lego figurine in the molds, so to get 10, I had to wait 25 minutes for each to harden. I should have bought two of that mold to make my life easier.

I decided to bake a square cake to create a Lego brick that I wanted to cover in blue fondant.  I found these jumbo marshmallows at grocery store to act as the raised part of the lego.  Turns out fondant is not as easy to work with as I thought. 

My cake kinda sucked.  I covered it in Lego mini figures to help cover up the lumpiness.  It didn't help that sometime during the party set-up, Tommy apparently decided to taste test his brother's cake.

By the time I got to Tommy's cake, I was pretty tired. I scrapped the awesome, detailed tutorial I had picked out online and winged a simpler version.  

Despite using the whole bottle of red food gel coloring, my icing never got red.  So Tommy got a pinkish fire truck. He did not seem to mind.

The boys helped with decorations:

All my cute ideas you see we're copied from Pinterest or the internet. I am much too tired to think independently.

The boys got their presents from Tom's parents at the party.  Every kid wanted a turn on the digger, it is pretty cool.

Patrick got a bike with training wheels that I think he is a bit afraid of currently. 

The chalkboard walls got good use and there was a LOT of lego building.

The best entertainment, by far, was Kaya. She stole the show.

The aftermath of three hours of Lego building. 

When Tom realized the party was three hours and not two, I wasn't sure he was going to make it, but he pulled through! It was a great team effort (a special thanks to Baba who spent the whole day helping out and picking up Legos). Next year the boys will have a nice party too. It just won't be at my house :) It was fun and worth every effort for the boys.