Aileyisms

Last night, Ailey heard Sam in the bathroom with the hair clippers and she came in and told me she heard Daddy mowing his head. :)  Just now, she came up to me and said, "Did you get ice yet?"  I asked her what she was talking about and Zekey interpreted for me and said, "She means Frozen, the movie."  Haha!  That girl!

The Creativity is strong with this one..

Braden is constantly coming up with alternative uses for things.  This is the latest use for the monster truck with the long-since-disappeared battery:

He also likes to include all his siblings in trying out his ideas. ;)

Braden is 9!

Happy birthday to our smart, kind, clever, inventive, fun, funny, silly, brave, energetic, thoughtful, wonderful boy-o!  We are pretty sure that life somehow got fast-forwarded while we weren't looking and you just jumped to being 9. :)  We love you so much and are so blessed that God gave you to us so we can walk beside you in this life.  What anadventure we have had so far and what an adventure is still to come!  We release showers of blessing and wisdom and love over you in abundance!  Oh, happy day!

Braden wanted a NASA birthday.  Again, no invite-everyone-and-go-way-over-the-top party for this year.  That's next year's craziness. ;)  I did decorate and do it up boy-style.  We don't want anything too girly in this house for boy birthdays.  Just ask the boys if you don't believe me. :)  Braden helped me hang some stuff and he was very specific in the planning part of it all.  I really like it when the kids are that involved with their party planning.  I'm looking forward to when they get even more involved.  Let's just say that there should be no excuse for any of them not being able to pull off surprise parties and all the fullness thereof when they are older! ;)

Don't you love it when you can use a 40% AND 50% off coupon at michael's at the same time?!  Me, too!  I got a few things there including these cake wires:

In my perusal of the cake decorating aisle, I came across and find that I am in want of this baby in the not-so-far-off future:


I also got a few things at Hobby Lobby (totally busted out the 40% off coupon there, too. :)  I'm loving the paper lanterns and pinwheel thingymabobs lately.  I printed off the space shuttles and the garland and viola! just enough deco for a 9-year-old boy. :)

 First, we had his birthday breakfast.  He chose to have pancakes with only peanut butter chips in his.

 We all really liked how the cake turned out looking....the actual cake part, though, was NOT impressive.  This was actually the second failed attempt.  I was trying to make the raspberry lemon cake from Taste of Home, but it doesn't do well in anything other than several shallow round or square pans.  Eh, it would work in sheet cake form, too.  I tried to cook it in my pampered chef batter bowl first so that I could have the dome shape, but it never got done in the middle and the outside got burned.  So, when I was at Michael's, even though I had decided not to get a special pan, I went ahead and got the ball pan and tried it again in that.  It still didn't get done in the middle!  Ugh!  More like a gelatin than cake which makes for a very unpleasant experience.  Bummer.  The planets were pretty good though.  I just made them from rice crispy treats and marshmallow fondant and then used gel food coloring mixed with almond extract to paint them.  A special thanks to Kristen H. for helping me cover the planets in the fondant!  It would have taken me fo'evah otherwise.  I picked up some better Duff paint brushes while I was at it. (I'm starting to see a trend here... ;)  Next time, I'll just turn a plain yellow cake into lemon yumminess or maybe a lemon pound cake...mmmmmm.  Braden is a lemon fanatic, too. :)

The silliness is strong with this one!

Everyone was excited about getting their own planet to eat. :)

Braden said the best part was when I took him by himself to the store and said that he could choose what he wanted up to $10.  (He also got an Academy gift card later.)  Let me tell you, this kid bargain shopped!  He found that green dart gun in the pics on the clearance shelf for $4.48, got a few extra bullets for it on the clearance shelf for $1.98 and then went and got three hot wheels cars for $.97 a piece.  He was excited about his haul AND about not spending the whole $10!  These are exciting times, folks!  It will be a beautiful day when I get him all in to couponing. ;)  (He does already have a grasp on the Hobby Lobby coupon...it has begun:)

Another Bradenism to tempt the corners of the mouth...

So, Braden was sitting in the computer chair and the rest of the kids were orbiting him like smaller satellites.  They were tickling and giggling and being their normal silly selves when all of a sudden Sam and I hear Braden telling his audience, "Don't touch there!  Its my no-no rectangle!" Well, after that how are you supposed to maintain composure?!  Sam and I could.not.stop.laughing...could not stop!  I'm just glad that I wasn't drinking anything because either I would have choked or everyone in the splash zone would have gotten a shower. :)  Of course, the kids got a hold of it and decided to milk it for all its worth and tried to come up with as many names as possible: private square (staying with the shapes theme), private spot, no-no spot, no-no rectangle and no-no square were ones I caught before I could stand the silliness no longer.  Yet another peek into the inner thought process that is Braden's mind. :)

According to Zekey

Apparently a 4 year old and a 5 year old can make a 9 year old, but a 3 year old and a 5 year old just makes an 8 year old. :)

Crazy Hair Day

The pics are pretty self explanatory. ;)

According to Braden

Apparently, as far as boys are concerned, the term "playdate" is applicable only to girls.  According to Braden boys would prefer to use "hanging out" instead. :)  He's totally at that age....

Mud Fun

Funny Ailey

Ailey was snuggling with me the other day and she said, "What if my mouth were on top of my nose.....then my nose would talk!"  Haha!

Funny Brea

She can fall asleep anywhere!  Notice the bottom of the cast...yeah, the cast shoe is missing and she just peg-legs it wherever she needs to go.  Whatcha gonna do?!

Betcha didn't know lawn chairs could be used this way...

Zekeyism

A few mornings ago, I made some hot tea for the kids after their breakfast and I overheard Zekey, in contemplative thought, saying, "There are real hiccups in my tea."  He, Braden and Lerloo were all trying to make hiccup sounds.  Apparently, the culprit for all of the "real" hiccups was the tea.  Gonna have to watch out for that tea, I guess. :)

Zekeyism

Is a mohawk where you mow all the hair off of your head? :)

Ailey and scissors and somewhere in between

Ailey found a pair of haircutting scissors that I had totally forgotten about in one of the drawers in the bathroom and decided she needed to give herself a "little" trim.  I think the normal response to seeing your child give themself a mullet is to come close to tears.  I had to try hard not to bust out laughing.  She is just following even further in my footsteps.  I nabbed a pair of my granny's sewing scissors when I was right around Ailey's age and got under the kitchen table and went to town on my nearly waist-length long pretty locks.  My mom apparently didn't take it well. ;)

I took some pics first and then set about trying to fix it the best I could...

 Self-inflicted mullet :)

 pixie cut...I tried to leave her with bangs, but there was that large chunk missing and no amount of combing over worked....

 So, I went with bangs just a tad longer than her cut line.  Little stinker looks cute with her hair like that. hmph.

Others who were in attendance of this event...

Welcome to the Gun Show!

Its free admission and everything!

Lately Zekey has been showing his muscles and asking me if I can see how strong he is. I don't know where he got that from except that it may have to do with Braden "training" him in exercises. ;)  Anyway, when he does his little muscle pose, it cracks me up so much, that I just have to showcase it here.  I didn't have time last night, but I told Zekes to remind me today and we'd take pics and he did not forget. :)  So, we went out and had ourselves a little gun show photocumentary.

First up was all three olders workin' their muscle poses:

Then, Ailey went solo....

As you can see, she couldn't handle the tough face for long. ;p

Braden was up next:

This kid is cut!  He has been since he was 2.  No joke.  I just live vicariously through his 6-pack. :D

Now here's the boy-o that started it all.  His faces are priceless!  He's all serious about his posing, too:

Hope you enjoyed all the big guns!

Zekey making me roll!

The other day, Zekey went with me to get dinner and as we were driving along, he was busy pondering.  He has been in 1 million questions mode lately. ;)  He posed this question to me:  Does God make everybody?  I told him yes.  He asked me if everybody gets made at night....  I laughed out loud and told him that yes, I supposed most people are made at night. ;p

Bradenisms return!

Sam and I were just sitting on the couch and Braden was at the dining table.  He turned to us and said, "What if girls were sumo wrestlers instead of boys.....?"  I said, "That would be disturbing."  Then, he said, "That would be silly because their overall thingys would show."  Sam asked,  "What did he call it?"  And Braden replied, "You know the little thingys that cover their bosoms."  Sam and I started laughing uncontrollably and Braden continued on..., "Then their bellies would show because they couldn't wear a shirt."  We laughed a good 5 minutes after that until I was able to stop enough to get up and get a tissue to wipe my eyes and write it all in this post.