Prizes and Birthdays

AUNT JENNI! THANKS FOR OUR PRIZES!! WE LOVE THEM!!

Now please bring Will and Sarah over for a visit soon.

On to posting!

The first order of business: A shout out to alllllllll the February birthdays. (how the shortest month has the most birthdays I will never know) Happy birthday to...
-Matthew
-Will
-Drew
-Grandma
-Brian
-Matt

Shew! Thats a lot! In honor of Grandma's birthday we went up for a visit with the golf cart Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Ginny. It was great! They had planned a special surprise party for Matt while we were there so we did a double birthday party...with some of the best fudge cake we've ever had (thanks mom!)-there were some leftovers Grandma sent home with us and I nearly lost a finger when I tried to take a piece. Apparently Matt doesn't share his fudge cake.

While we were there we got to do so many fun things. Grandpa gave Caitlin one of her favorite things...a new puzzle. She LOVES puzzles. This one had 300 pieces and together they finished the whole thing before we left. Matthew and daddy practiced a little baseball-both kids are signed up for Spring ball so we've been trying to teach them the basics. Unfortunately Caitlin and Matthew are on different teams which means that now our lives are baseball. They each have one practice during the week (on different days) and either a game or a practice every saturday from now until the beginning of May! Thats a lot of baseball. They are excited though.

In other news...Tomorrow is Matt's birthday! I already gave him his birthday present-which we are both going to enjoy...(me because it means fewer calls from the middle of Atlanta, "honey!? where am i? can you get me out of here?"). He is going to take Friday off from work to enjoy his other birthday present...sod for the back yard! Which we get to lay!! Im SO looking forward to that! Though thankfully it will be a little easier (i hope) than the last time we laid sod together...(Dad...you are so lucky you are out of town. Otherwise you would be helping us lay sod this time :)) Anyway, the sod is hopefully going to cut down on the amount of red clay that gets ground into our carpets on a daily basis.

All right...thats about all our news. Here are a couple of pictures:

Doing Puzzles with Grandpa

Practicing with Daddy

In case you forgot....

This is what they look like:

(expressions were their choice....)

That is a long tongue!! (Gene Simmons anyone?)

So it's been almost 2 weeks, and Matthew hasn't missed his beebee a bit! I know I keep talking about this, but I had spent the two months leading up to the big byebye beebee event dreading the effects it would have on him (he won't sleep! he'll cry! he'll give up his afternoon nap!! he'll be traumatized as an adult and never forgive his mother for taking away his beebee!) Luckily none of these things happened-and frankly Im still in shock..I mean, that kid LOVED his beebee. Never spent one night without sucking on it...and the stinkier the better! I have no idea how he did cold turkey, but he did...so hooray for that.

On to other things. Matthew's party went very well...we ended up having 24 kids come-and no drama. I really enjoyed having it at Pump it up..they took care of EVERYTHING-setup, clean up, cutting and distributing cake, loading up our car at the end..they even made a list of who gave Matthew what so I could do thank you notes (hooray! what fun!). Anyway, it was a bit pricey, but in the end, Matt and I said we'd do it again...which is a good thing because Caitlin is totally expecting a Pump it Up party next year.

Many, Many, Children

Even with all those other kids there, Caitlin and Matthew still wanted to play together

He kept looking away while we were singing "Happy Birthday"

If you look closely you can see that he has put goldfish on his birthday cake (and of course he said his favorite thing, "you will not like this, but I will like it"...and he did actually eat it all...

Party pooped!

Speaking of Caitlin...in all the Matthew news, I haven't done too much Caitlin news-I guess her latest piece of news is that she got her hair cut-shorter than we've ever cut it. After waiting so long for it to grow in the first place Matt and I have been hesitant to cut ANY of it off, but this haircut looks really cute on her...I think we'll try to maintain this length. She continues to thrive in preschool-she's making friends and really coming out of her shell. Also she is just starting to actually read. The other day she read an entire story almost by herself (with the exception of two words: monkey and fly) I think she is as amazed as I am that she is reading...so she tries to read absolutely everything.

She is also in this little phase where she asks WHY about everything! Even if she knows the answer (which is 90% of the time)...it's like she needs reassurance about why things are as they are...and it DRIVES ME NUTS!! I usually have no idea the answer, so I have to make something up ("why is the wind blowing mommy?", "Because the giant in the sky is whistling") which almost always comes back to bite me ("mommy, my teacher said there is no giant in the sky. why did you say that?") I'm this close to banning the word "why" from her vocabulary. These days she is also trying desperately to talk her way out of afternoon "naps" which are really just quiet time for mommy the babies. Very important you know. Right before I put her to bed she will say something like, "Look mommmy! Don't you think Im getting tall? I mean, too tall for taking naps I think." Unfortunately for her though, it's not working. She's actually in the bed right now taking a notnap.

Hannah is growing and growing! She has started to laugh and can bring her hands together (I KNOW!! Isn't it exciting!) She's not doing any rolling over, but im sure that will come. I can also now put her in the bjorn facing out which she loves-something about being able to chew on the outside of the bjorn while watching the world go by really seems to thrill her. Who cares that the bjorn is all slobbery now? (seriously, can you wash those things?)

We still call her "Pea" so I had to take her picture in this outfit.

For some reason I thought this picture was funny...

Lets see...I think Im going to just post pictures now...Im about out of news and I must have about forty million...so enjoy!

Grandpa flew the Mooney(!) over to see us on a very windy sunday afternoon...we had cheese sticks and VERY EXPENSIVE cokes at the papa johns. It was (as always) great to see Grandpa.
Matthew was invited to a party at chuck e cheese (shudder) last weekend. Please don't make me talk about it (warning: shameless plug for my other blog coming right...NOW) You can read all about it on my other blog which is still going despite my desperate attempt to quit: http://www.fullhandsmom.blogspot.com/

Chassie plotting revenge against The One Who Took Her Place.

Hannah and Allie, hanging out at the Pump it Up.

The Victory picture...we made it (mostly) unscathed through our first children's party. See? we even have lil' gold badges to prove it.

Party animals :)

Daddy and the birthday boy

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATTHEW!! P.1

Today is Matthew's fourth birthday! One of the first things he did was to go up into the attic and put his BeeBee's away for good. No more stinky bee bee's for him! (thank goodness because those things were quite disgusting).

Here he is...

...with the beebee's.

Headed up to the attic...

No more Beebees!!

Today he also got his present from Nana and Dee...NEW AIRPLANE ROOM THINGS! A new bedspread, curtains and pillows...also a new toyshelf to help keep up with the bajillion airplanes he has. Here was his reaction when he saw it:

Um, yes he loves it!

(that's a lei he's wearing from his pretend trip to the beach at preschool)

This is what the new room looks like:

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 of Happy Birthday Matthew....