Our Baby is turning 3

I can't believe our baby boy is going to be 3 next week. This little man is a ham bone through and through. He is always "sending us to Walmart." He's got the potty done pat these days and he's writing his name, also writing Mom, Dad and the start of Abby.
He is asking that we skip singing "Happy Birthday" at his upcoming party and that we don't take any pictures.
The party started earlier this week when his present from Grams arrived, he was so excited.

 He's first Ninja Turtle book and there are little action figures inside that he carries around in his pockets.

 Grams also made him a new fullsize Robot quilt. It's awesome you can tell he is one happy kiddo.

Olympic Training

We've been letting the kids watch a lot of olympics and they've decided they are going to be Olympians not really sure what event this is so let's just call it training.

Pain in the Butt

Last night while jumping on the trampoline Abby got an attitude with Noah. Abby is very much the oldest sibling i.e. she's bossy. And last night she was laying it on thick with Noah. Telling him where to stand, how to bounce, when to bounce - the list goes on. Anyway I told her to stop, she didn't so I sent her upstairs. She was mad and Noah had to add his two cents as she was walking up the stairs.
"Mama, Abby is a pain in the butt"
Oh how hard it was not to laugh. He's just calling it like he sees it. I reminded him it's not nice to use those words and he said "ok, what about goodness gracious."
I told him that was better.

The Dirt Pile

We got 6 tandem dump truck loads of dirt delivered from a local pool installer.  We're putting it in the back of the yard to build it up a little bit.  This will insulate us a bit from the road noise and make the backyard more usable.  The only problem is that we couldn't get the truck back there to dump it.  Therefore we had to have them dump it in the side yard and I have to move it back by wheelbarrow.  It's probably about 60-70 yards worth.

The kids love the dirt:

You can only see two of the six loads in this picture:

The dirt pile has kept them (especially Abby) entertained for more than a few hours.

It's hard to get an idea of scale, but this pile is BIG.

And the work begins.

First wheelbarrow of many.  I have estimated it will take around 450-500 wheelbarrow loads.  Each wheelbarrow has an average of 34 shovels of dirt.  Yes, I have done all the math....a man has a lot of time to think shoveling that much dirt.  That's about 16,000 shovel-fulls of dirt.

I'm currently about 2/3 finished.  I've basically cut a huge path through the middle and one side.  There's only about 1.5 of the original piles left.  I'm waiting for warmer weather to finish.  Here's what it looks like today:

Abby the superhero!

Garden Glow!

Peggy got free tickets to the Garden Glow at the Botanical Gardens.  It's a good thing they were free, because it was cool, but not $20 per ticket cool.

Geez, they're cute sometimes.

It was very difficult to get good pictures without a tripod.  Plus it was quite dark.

You got to make your own snowman.

There was a maze full of lights.  They held hands through the whole thing.  So cute.

There were also a bunch of trains inside.  Noah was in heaven.  He just ran from train to train.  

A Willy Wonka Birthday

I used cake for most of it and rice crispy treats for the tall part of the chocolate river.

Adding the chocolate river.

Adding the grass alone took about three hours.  We had barely enough icing:

After waking up from nap, Abby was eager to help me finish the cake with candy.

My rule was she had to try every piece of candy before putting it on the cake.  

She didn't mind:

The finished product:

 

I think she had candy in her mouth the entire night.

Trouble.

Cutting the cake.  It was delicious I hear.  I didn't have any because I was so full.

Just being Noah.  I love that kid.

The chocolate fountain was quite a feat.  We spent over an hour getting it to work properly.  The chocolate was too thick for some reason.  As it turns out, the fountain had a big air pocket that was preventing the chocolate from being pushed out the top.  I was just about to throw in the towel when I discovered the air bubble.  And suddenly, the fountain was saved!  It worked great after that. 

Chocolate wasted.

Peggy wrote all this out: