It's a MAD Birthday!!

Year six has taken me by surprise. You'd think I'd be expecting it since, well, year 5 had passed 12 months ago, but I'm always shocked. Six seems so big on my baby boy who's not so baby anymore. His breakfast request was doughnuts from the doughnut shop so Bobby took off early in the morning to fulfill his birthday wish.

Rhett's party had been planned for some time being that he wanted a "Mad Scientist Party" and an unusual, and totally unrelated birthday cake: "chocolate and vanilla swirl with a red spider on top". Whaa? Whatever. When it comes to this kid I've learned to just roll with it. So, here you go:
Halloween is actually a fun holiday to have your birthday near. It ensures that everyone has a cool costume to wear to your party and makes it easy for me to find cute plates and napkins. All his buds were dressed for the occasion.
On a side note, I'm not sure what is going on with Cade in these pictures. He's totally out of control.
After a bit of playtime, the Mad Scientist and his English accent were ready to start partying. I'm here to tell you, an English accent makes everything better. In fact, I talked with one the rest of the night and my self-esteem skyrocketed.
Everyone wanted to be a volunteer for his experiments.....including one person in the back that may be just a smidge too old to be competing with 6 year olds for a volunteer spot. Just sayin'.
Mad Scientist made some crazy bubble concoction and put in on the boys' heads screaming, "There ah braaains on yaw head!!!" (That's how you type with an English accent.)
There were lots of other experiments and LOTS and LOTS of laughing.
One of the favorites was the huge bubble. Everyone had a turn and got to stand inside of this crazy huge thing.
The bubble was followed up with the shooting of a sky rocket, mixing things and making explosions outside and then the making of cotton candy and smoking bubbly drinks. If I haven't said it the Mad Scientist guy was probably the coolest party we've ever had. He was amazing and the kids LOVED him!
We said our goodbyes to Mad Scientist and headed upstairs for some cake to top off that cotton candy.
After the birthday song the candles were blown out.....
and the cake eating began.
I had one happy birthday boy!
Here's to many, many, many more birthdays with my favorite curly headed boy. I hope they are filled with as much joy as the first 6! (For the record, it was really windy on this day. That hair is not complete bed head. Although I'm not the mom of the year and I DO send him out with bed head plenty of days. I'm not perfect, people and that hair is unmanageable!)
Love you, Little Buddy!

A Beebee

I made a discovery in the past week or so. It all started when I decided to take an impromptu stroll down the doll aisle in Target. Had I known the fit that would ensue I definitely would have stuck to the paper towel aisle or something. After signing "please" incessantly and pointing like mad at the babies, Elaina threw a tee-total hissy fit when I did not put a baby doll in the cart. She cried all through Target, all through check-out and then halfway home. Here's a cute pic of her not crying:

I thought she had forgotten about the babies. I thought wrong. The next night we were at the ball park and a little girl wheeled her babydoll in it's nice little stroller right by Elaina. Before I knew it Lanie had snatched that baby right out of that stroller (she was like a panther!) and tucked it under her tiny arm. Then she screamed and kicked and kicked and screamed right there on the concrete when I took it to give it back to it's owner. She was m.a.d. I was embarrassed :) My discovery? I've not been nurturing her innate mothering needs as I should have. Who knew? The boys never wanted to mother anything! So, meet Carol:

I took Elaina back to Target the very next day and told her she could pick out a baby. I tried really, really hard to get her to pick a brown one. She shook her head "no" and pushed it away every time. She knew what she wanted and it was white baby Carol. I threw in a stroller and knew I was good as gold. We got home and she went to town!
She pushed Baby in that thing up and down the driveway for 30 minutes. Then she brought her inside and pushed her. She kissed her, slept with her, and held her on her shoulder and patted her.
It was a rough go of it for a few days. Now that beebee Carol is here, all is right with the world!
We can all sleep soundly tonight:)

Fall Beach Break

Sometime around July we made plans to spend this year's fall break at the beach with our buds. We rarely do anything on the whopping two days of fall break that we're given so this was a welcomed change! We stayed in the same house that our family vacationed in in the summer and it was perfect! The other thing that was perfect? The weather. Ahhhhhh. We headed straight to the beach when we got there.

Diva on the beach was a bit scared of the ocean this go around. It was smooth as glass the first day but she was still timid.
Her bff? Timid would not be the description I'd pen to her. She headed right for the ocean and dove in face first. She was eating fear for breakfast on fall break!
I wanted so badly to get a great little beach picture of these tootsies but I don't know if you've ever tried to photograph two kids under 2 sitting in sand in the bright sun but it didn't go as I had quite anticipated. Oh well.

Elaina, sit next to Carris! Sit down! (in my sugar voice)
Ummmm.....girls? Girls? Look here. Here!
Oh! Oh! Elaina! This way! This way!!
Carris! Elaina!! Elaina! AHHHH, Boo! Boo! Girls!
Caarrriisss.....Laaaanie....Look here! clapping, jumping Girls!! Girls? Hello? Ugggghh. Forget it.
I have really never seen the ocean and the sky more beautiful. The boys were living it up, jumping, swimming, screaming,
more jumping......
karate chopping??
I'm not sure what got into Cade but he went all bonzo chasing the seagulls.
You give a kid one extra day off of school and he goes all berserk on you.
There are no pictures to stand as proof that I was, in fact, on this trip but here's one proving that there was at least one adult (although that is subject to one's perception) on the trip.
Mr. Jason buried the kids in the sand and they were getting a kick out of it.
In the spirit of Halloween, Cavin was in a casket :/
Rhett was a muscle man and I'm assuming that this is his muscle man face. He just looks plain mad to me.
We headed to Baytown Wharf to take in the sights. There weren't as many things open as in the summer. We were going to have a nice dinner at the Marlin Grill but decided that spending lots of cash on fine dining with 7 kids really didn't make a lot of sense. So, much to my disappointment we ended up eating at a greaserie with bad, live music. Note to singers: at some point in at least one of your songs you should probably open your eyes. You can't feel the music that much for an extended period of time.

There was a nice little fall set-up that I thought would be a great place to attempt another picture of the girls. I did individuals first so they could warm up. Of course, Elaina didn't smile but I wasn't surprised. She's pretty good at the blank stare.
Carris didn't smile either which was shocking because she's always smiling.
Then the together shot: Hey! Girls! Over here! "Ummm, Lanie? You gonna look at them? Me neither."
"Well, maybe one quick look just to make her feel better." Lanie: "I'm out."
I just wanted ONE good picture of her in the incredibly cute outfit I patiently waited for to go on sale. Just ONE! She wouldn't look.

Then she took off running. Every.Single.Time. I give up.
The boys spent some time playing games in the arcade and then we called it a night. Two little girls with early bedtimes (thank goodness for that!) is a bummer to big brothers on vacation.
We had a great time vacationing with friends. There was lots of wave jumping, jellyfish dodging (Cade didn't fare to well coming out with 4 stings!), sandcastle building, beach sunning, laughing, and just good ol' catching up. We can't wait to do it again! (Hopefully next time with a little less drama from the little gals!)

The Release

Grant's second grade class has been growing butterflies and learning about their life cycle and cocoons and all. It was a huge day in the life of the class when all of the little cocooned babies hatched into real, live butterflies. So in celebration of the great event they had a "releasing party"! Ms. Vilag very carefully opened the top of the housing while all of the kids were poised and ready with an orange slice to attract their butterfly.

Grant traded her an empty orange for one that had done a better job with the whole 'attracting' part.
"Coooool."
This one actually turned out pretty good. There were a few that had to be transported to a nearby tree so that they could meet their maker peacefully.
Grant let one of his buddies have a turn with the nice, still butterfly.
Was I thrilled to go to the school to see butterflies released into the wild? Not really. What I WAS thrilled to see was the smile that my presence at this event brought. It's times like that that cause me to remember that this stay-at-home mom stuff is really worth it.
I don't want to miss a thing......not even a butterfly release on a sunny day.
Now, fly! Fly away little butterfly before one of these crazy kids smooshes your antennae!