The Birthday Crown Surfaces

Today marked Rhett's official entry into his FOURTH year!! I can't believe how quickly each year passes. It seems like yesterday that I was crafting his three year old birthday crown in the wee hours of the morning. Now, suddenly, I found myself sleepy eyed in the kitchen yet again cutting and stapling to keep in line with tradition.

Last year it was Chicky Bear that got to come to the table for the birthday breakfast. This year a new little friend was invited as well: meet Jiggy Fluffy Morgan....his newest favorite animal given as a gift from one of Rhett's bffs. I don't know what's up with the names that he gives his pets. All I know is that they come from the heart :)
One brother was awake for the early morning song and candle blowing. This years birthday breakfast: coffee cake.

I woke Cade so I could have at least one pic with him.....excuse his hair and sleepy eyes. At the time of this picture he hadn't even made the obligatory trip to the bathroom.......

Since today was the actual birthday day, Rhett was able to choose where we ate for dinner. Much to my disappointment, we ended up here:

If he could, he would eat pizza every night of the week. He was in hog heaven.
Did you know they have "prizes pizzas" at the Snappy? I would be almost a millionaire if I had a couple bucks for every time he reminded me of that. His favorite: shocolate with shocolate ships.
The good thing about being four is that you don't quite realize that you need quarters to play the car driving game. Please don't let him in on this if you see him. I'll just let him act like a loony bin for free.
It was a great day to celebrate one of my favorite little boys. Stay tuned for official party pics!

Birthday Bash!

Little Buddy has his fourth birthday bash last Saturday with a few of his best buds (and some brothers that managed to sneak in on the fun). He said that he wanted a spiderman party and he wanted to paint little spidermans. So, with that in mind, I bought monster plates from the Tarjay and we painted pumpkins. Seriously, it was way cuter than spiderman ever dreamed of being.

He didn't seem to mind that I had only listened to parts of his request. The pumpkin painting was a hit. Everyone enjoyed it.

Rhett was all business while painting his. I'm so glad the weather warmed up just enough that we were able to get outside. I was dreading the thought of having a bunch of four year olds painting inside. Not to mention the mess the haybales were prone to making.

Aunt Tracie and Cade teamed up on a pumpkin.

They were super proud of the results, too!

I thought this one was particularly cute.
Here is the sea of finished pumpkins. Some of those probably took at least 3 days to dry. Apparently you can never have too much blue paint.
I had some fun little games planned but quickly realized that all anyone wanted to do was hang off the bridge in the back yard and throw clods of dirt into the creek. I'm fine with that. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
Rhett and Silas outside.
I did manage to get everyone inside for the Stick the Eyeball on the Monster game. We had a quick run through but the fun was cut short by two older Morgan boys that went all ape and started fighting over the last eyeball. 
The perfect thing to calm crazy coyotes is to let them eat chocolate topped of by and entire canister of icing. Just for your information, when I ordered these treats I specifically asked for the lady to put LESS icing....this is LESS icing. Wowsers.
Rhett later let me in on the fact that this was his favorite part of the whole party-- when he blew out the candles and everyone sang for him.

I think everyone cherished eating all the sweet goodness of the cupcakes!

Rhett was SO happy to get some new things to play with. There were a couple "I've ALWAYS wanted this!!" and "I've been waiting FOREVER for this!" and "This is just what I wanted!!" Some friends were stoaked just watching their's get opened!
Friends.
I got one picture with the birthday boy. He was running full tilt all day. We took in a great dinner with the grandparents and then spent the rest of the evening playing with our new things.
We had tons of fun at the party. Unfortunately, even now, after the party has ended, Rhett is inviting (and uninviting) friends and strangers alike to his party at the GlowGalaxy...."where EBREETHING glows." Wishful thinking has somehow convinced him that his "real" party is still on the horizon. I'm trying to let him down gently. Hopefully Halloween will be distraction enough to help him forget! Next birthday in the Morgan crew: Bobby. I'll be inviting all his little buddies to Let It Shine gymnastics. Ever since I saw that foam pit I've been dying to have a party there. I'm sure he'll love it too!

The Wilderness

We spent our two days of fall break taking a quick Morgan fam vacation to the Wilderness hotel and indoor water park in the Smokies.

We spent most of our time playing in the highly anticipated indoor waterpark. Rhett had been talking about it non-stop since we decided to go. He had a big time splashing in the wave pool.
The place wasn't huge or anything so it was easy just to let Cade run with his cousins and do the slides. I didn't feel like he needed to stayed pasted to me. I was a little nervous for him to be in the wavepool alone because it was crowded and well....wavy. I made Bobby do wavepool duty. I'm not fond of being in cool water when it feels like winter outside.
Rhett ran with Amelia alot. She loves to give him hugs......and kisses. 
Isaac tried his hand at the surfing and he did a great job!!
There was a huge bucket that dumped water every few minutes.  After several attempts I finally caught a picture of Cade in the waterfall.
He and Cooper had been waiting patiently for the big dump earlier and I was standing by hoping to get a good shot of them getting doused. Unfortunately, when the water came falling down it was like every kid in the place dove right in the way and I ended up getting shots of the rear ends of a bunch of strangers.
I did get this one of some overgrown kiddos trying to play in the spray......
Grant and Rhett enjoyed playing in the little spouts of water.
Talk about wearing a kid out..... Rhett got his fair share of playtime and then was ready to tucker out.
Luckily he was just tall enough to be able to do two of the three slides. He.wore.them.out. I started counting the number of stairs that we had to climb to get to the top and I finally lost count at 90.....and I guarantee that we climbed those stairs at least that many times (well, it felt like it anyway). Everyone had their turn at the purple and yellow tunnels.



Wendy and I spent most of the time walking around with our cameras. Between the two of us I think we compiled some pretty good photos. 
We attempted to go to Cade's Cove but made a wrong turn and ended up stopping at a gas station in the middle of nowhere to use the facilities and get junk food to sustain us. After that fiasco it was determined that putt putt down the street from the hotel would be a safe and easy to find alternative. And what's putt putt without vampire teeth?
One of us, whom shall remain nameless, took this friendly game a bit too seriously. No names.
We broke into two groups so I didn't get to see these silly boys putt any. Rumor has it that Cade got a hole in one.
Oh, and so did I. I am a quality putt putter. It takes a lot of skill to putt well while you have your camera backpack on your back and the camera slung over your arm. 
This was the crew hanging with Bobby and me. There were several off the course shots and more than one momentarily lost golf balls but we had fun nonetheless.

Grant somehow managed to score a hole in one even in the midst of all of these creepy gophers!

We had lots of fun playing with cousins and swimming in non-swimming weather. Kudos to the water park and all of it's fun! We'd love to visit again!

Scarecrows Are For the Birds...

Grant had scarecrow day at school today and he was NOT happy about it. I was very surprised because the night before we had his clothes all ready to go in his bedroom floor and he was nothing but excited. But when it came time in the morning to actually dress he nearly cried.

He looked at himself and said, "I just look ridiculous".  He made me promise no less than 10 times that he would not be the only joker dressed like a scarecrow at school. He even went so far as having me pack a pair of jeans so that in the event he was the target of some lame clothing joke, he'd be able to run to the cubby and change. 

This reminds me of another time I tried to dress a child in overalls. What's the holdup with overalls in this family?? 

For the record I went to school to check on Grant and he was perfectly happy and lovin' life in his scarecrow attire. Thank goodness the rest of kindergarten played along or I would have never heard the end of it!