Extending the birthday celebration

Finally I'm posting some photos from Henry and Elliot's weeks long birthday celebration.   The birthday began with a huge pool party with all of Henry's and Elliot's friends.  Thank you to their school for organizing the end of the year party for the Friday before his birthday.  I snagged one photo of Elliot and his teachers.

On Henry's actual birthday on Saturday we had the boys' friend spend the afternoon with us.  They hunted for roll-polliess under the bricks at the fire pit and then played at the park down the street.

The Friday before Henry's (Saturday) birthday we went to Brusters ice cream.  They loved the experience so much that we took Gamps back for another birthday celebration at the ice cream shop on Sunday.

We spent a morning at a bounce house for some of our friends who turned 3 a few days after Henry turned 4.

Gamps and Charlotte came over for a shared birthday celebration complete with tons of presents

And my first attempt at a fun cake: 2 layer yellow cake with chocolate icing and strawberries (from our strawberry picking adventure) all throughout

One morning in the middle of all of this, I found Henry and Elliot singing Let it Go at the top of their lungs on their make-shift stage

 We spent an afternoon at the splash pad and rode bikes for a little while to build up a sweat before getting wet.

 And rode bikes a little in Lullwater where we were able to see our goslings (the ones we saw as sweet little one on Mother's day)

 And spent a relaxed moment blowing bubbles, as they love to do.

On Memorial weekend we hosted a birthday party complete with a slip n' slide thing

and a dinosaur piñata that took the gang of six kids 4 rounds to bust it

With all the fun that began and continued since a few days before Henry's 4th birthday, they were tuckered out by the time Elliot's 2nd birthday came around 2 weeks later.

Sain baina uu!

Hello from Mongolia!  Scott is heading in to his third, and last, week in Mongolia on a work trip during which he, in all too concise of a summary, is assessing the vegetable sector.  He sent a few (fantastic) photos that I thought I'd post.  This one on the left is of a farm and dotted in the photo are two 'ger' or yurts that the farmers live in during the summer to be near their farms out on the steppe.

 A 'ger' close up

 Horses on the steppes

A slew of photos from a mongolian (goat) BBQ which Scott said was delicious.

Complete with vodka shots

And the airag or fermented mare's milk Scott tried but may not try again

Discovering Stone Mountain from above

Although this one is coming a bit late I didn't want to miss posting it.  At the boys' school auction I won a "Discovery flight" out of a small airport near my house.  Some of you may know that since I was 6 or 7 I have dreamed of having a small plane pilots license.  I've flown a few times, most often with one of my Dad's friends when we lived in Minnesota, and always look for ways to go up again.  When I saw this 30 minute flight on the silent auction list, I stalked it like a mad woman. I ended up splitting the flight with a friend.  During the flight he sat in the co-pilot seat and I was the photographer.  We had such an amazing time on our tour of Stone Mountain!

Here we are setttng our route - or letting the instructor / pilot set the course ;)

While I flew, the boys played with some of our friends and their kids at the great airport playground.

 And were enthralled when they saw a helicopter take off

Even though it's now been 5 or 6 weeks since this morning at the airport, Elliot will still tell / ask me "Momma, you fly an airplane?" and Henry will response "Yes, Elliot, Momma flew an airplane."  Maybe one day I'll take them up with me when I pilot!

Snuggling

After our trip to Disney we decided to start putting the boys to bed at the same time together in their shared room.  Up until that point we'd read them a few books and then put Elliot to bed in their room while we took Henry to our room to read a few more, longer books, and let him fall asleep in our bed.  In the first few days of the transition to having the same bedtime we convinced them to stay in their separate beds, or rather convinced Henry to stay in his bed, at bedtime to avoid them getting all hyper and jumping around while giggling like crazy. Henry soon learned that he could get in his snuggling if he waited until Elliot fell asleep and then crawled in to Elliot's bed.  Now I have to remember to move Henry back to his bed before I go to bed otherwise Elliot wakes up in the middle of the night because he's too squished with all of Henry's loving snuggling.  Here are a few of the snaps over the past few weeks of what I find when I go in to move Henry:
First time I saw it:

Here you can see that Henry is sleeping on a pillow which he brought from his bed - showing that he was ready to stay:

In this one it's hard to see unless you really look but they are both sleeping on top of their swords. It's hard to find them without their swords these days - or for the past 6 months for that matter.

One of my favs...
I heard Henry tell Elliot the next morning "Elliot, do you know I put your ankylosaurus on you last night because I knew it would make you happy to snuggle him." To which Elliot said "Oooooh".

Seriously?

Eggs hunting and birthdays

Although Easter and my birthday were a few weeks ago, I still want to put up a post about that weekend since it was a lot of fun.  Explaining some of the Easter traditions to Henry and getting him excited to get to bed so he could wake up for the egg hunt were quite entertaining.  When we were in Dhaka we had Easter parties with friends, but it wasn't until this year that I realized I had never explained the Easter Bunny.  The day before Easter I told him that the Easter Bunny would come at night to hide eggs for him to find in the morning.  He quickly looked perplexed and said "But, bunnies aren't nocturnal. Why would an Easter Bunny come in the middle of the night?" and then "Bunnies are mammals.  Why would the Easter Bunny leave me eggs?"  HA!  We had just as much confusion around Santa Claus's practices at Christmas this year.  Note to self, get Elliot on board before he'll really think about all the craziness.  

We hunted around for awhile

 

And then assessed the loot

Then ate a good breakfast

And then, for an added treat, the boys played Zelda. Now this just cracked me up!  Scott played while the boys watched but by the sounds I heard while I was in the other room, I would have thought that all of them were playing.  I would hear nothing for awhile and then suddenly Henry and Elliot would say "ya! ha! ah! ha! ya! ah!" while, as I figured out when i peeked in, swinging their swords as vigorously as Scott was shaking the wii nunchuck.  Henry and Elliot are so in to the game! Thank you Uncle Fish.

Later on that day we had a cook out and beer brewing party.  A few of us bottled the beer last weekend and hope to have a beer tasting party in a few weeks.

The day before Easter was my birthday. We had three things planned for the day but with the rain that came through, all three events were canceled.  Instead, we capitalized on Scott's birthday present to me and...made pasta!  Since my birthday we have made two batches of ravioli and a bit of spaghetti. YUM!

This was after a great birthday morning with pancakes

And a painting session during which Henry made me a birthday cake, after perfecting his skill for Scott's birthday a few weeks earlier.

Too bad I have to wait a year for another birthday!