Nathan's 5th Birthday

Number 5 is the party year...so I asked Nathan...what kind of party do you want to have...and in the end we came up with a LEGO party!  So, here are the pictures of Nathan's Lego Party for his 5th Birthday:

The cake was supposed to be lego creations...Nate wanted a Lego town!

Blowing out the Candles!

Jonny wanted in on the fun.

the kids...

And more kids...(good thing we have a BIG dining room,
the adults were in the living room)

 On to GAMES....pin the Lego on the Lego Man...

Cousin E taking his turn...

Andy H. 

The stinker birthday boy got 'scared' and ran upstairs...
we had to coax him down to play the game...now that I think about it...did he ever play?

Colton H taking his turn

Cousin W

Oh...here he is...giving it a good shot!

Abi

 Now it Present TIME:

Nate got lots of LEGOS...lol!

Reading a card that was made for him...

Cousin A decorating the birthday boy!

"What ever should we do with all these LEGOS!"

Dump them down the center of the table you say....Good Idea!

Working Hard on a creation!

Add caption

After a while of creating and playing, Daddy got the horse out and many of the kids went to ride on the Strawberry or play outside on the fort/merry-go-round.  Overall, I think Nathan had a super Great Birthday!

Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated with us!

Nathan's 5th Birthday CAKE

Okay, so Nathan requested a "Lego town" for his cake.  Yeah right!  Well, this is what I came up with...in hindsight...I can see how it would have looked more like "lego's" if I had put M&Ms on top of the pieces so that you saw the 'raised' bumps...but Nathan LOVED it so hey...

A barn, building, car, jeep, and truck.

See...I even put the steering wheel in the jeep!

Apparently the dump truck has flat wheels...LOL

Oh Wait...they all do...that or they are buried in the snow...HAHAHAHA!

I was fortunate enough to get a picture of the cakes BEFORE Jonathan decided he wanted to taste test the frosting!  Yes indeed, I had to try to 'fix' his finger indentions before the party!

Our Pink Porch!

Having boys is always an adventure....some more welcome than others!  On this particular night, our adventure started at about sundown...the boys were sent outside to play and occupy themselves for awhile before dinner.  

I was alerted to a problem when I heard a rather large WHOOSH which sounded like liquid being dumped and the scurrying sounds of children running to hide.  As I came to the porch door I was HORRIFIED to find PINK PRIMER DUMPED ALL OVER THE PORCH STEP!

I didn't even know what to do or where to start!  The boys were completely covered in paint...there was even evidence that they had 'driven' their tractors and trucks in it!  I couldn't even get OUT without stepping in it...I rolled up my pants put on my shoes and hauled the two vandals into the house...stripped them down and sent them to the tub while I cleaned up the mess outside!  I didn't want to leave the paint too long because it was KILZ Primer tinted with RED!  

Now you may be asking where they got the can of paint...well, I have to admit it was sitting on the porch with about 4 other gallons of paint waiting for the project in which it was to be used...these gallons of paint were tucked away under the coat box and they children were told MANY times to leave it alone.  As to how it got OPENED...is another question...I was told that Jonny threw the can of paint and it popped open...but SOMEONE had to have POURED it in order for me to hear the WHOOSH sound and I didn't hear a THUD like it was thrown or dropped!  And though I didn't get a picture of what it looked like BEFORE I cleaned the step...it was CLEARLY spread EVERYWHERE!

Well, after I got the villains in the house, I went to trying to get the water hose and wash off as much as I could...but when I got to the hydrant...one of the villains...probably the youngest had taken the washer and nut off the hydrant and lost them in the grass so I had to go find ANOTHER set that fit...by the time I did that and got the hose drug over to the house...the sun was setting and the paint was drying!

I let the water just run full bore on the step while I went to scrubbing with hot water and soap on the house...it was splattered all over the WHITE siding...After all my scrubbing...this is what was left:

notice the paint can to the left...and the NOW decorated pumpkins

Here you can see the 'tire' tracks from the trucks being driven
through the paint and ground into the sidewalk. (the sidewalk not only had rocks, pumpkins,
and regular 'dirt' but the boys had dumped SAND all over to mix with the paint)

Here are the villains' clothes which were totally RUINED!
No getting Pink Primer out of them!

This is what the porch looked like the next morning...
I had no clue it had gotten so painted

And the porch step the next morning!  Beautiful isn't it!

Fortunately I was able to get most of the paint off the siding even though I was doing it in the dark the night before!

Updated:  Three months later...and we STILL have pink residue under the snow!

Our Fly Plague

This year the flies were TERRIBLE...literally...we had a plague!  It wasn't bad for EVERYONE but I did hear many stories of others having issues with flies as well.  At first, I thought maybe it was because we had had the kittens on the porch earlier and thought maybe they had left enough of a scent that it drew the flies in...but then I bleached the entire porch and they STILL came in swarms.

I tried to put fly killer on the porch but apparently it smelled too bad and that was dispensed of!  So we just swatted and swatted and swatted!  This is just ONE picture of the flies we had...but honestly, I remember times when the ceiling was covered at least 3 times worse than this!

I finally got some fly fog that killed the flies more efficiently but it still was terrible...we even had them in the VAN!  We couldn't WAIT for the freeze to come so they would all DIE!  I guess this was our closest experience to what the Egyptians felt during the plagues back in the Biblical times!