Brady turns 5-Years-Old!

My baby Connor isn't a baby anymore....Connor turns 6!!

It has been hard to believe that I have a kindergartner and to think that I now I have a 6 year old! Connor has matured into a very smart, curious, creative, intuitive little boy, I mean little man!

Following is a glimpse of Connor's first 6 years! I showed this video to him and he loved it! I thought he was going to cry at the end, but he instead asked me to save the video forever. I teased him that he needed to stop having birthdays...it goes by too fast!

Happy Birthday Connor! The big 5!

My baby boy turned 5 this month! As everyone knows and always says, it goes by so fast! We celebrated Connor's birthday with family and friends at our house (as requested by Connor). We had coloring pages from Connor's favorite show, Dinosaur Train, and trains and dinosaur toys out for play. The kids ran wild throughout the entire house, the adults visited, and Connor was happy that he had a nice birthday.

Thank you to all of our friends and family for making it a special day for Connor and for the great gifts!

Happy Birthday Tyler!

On Sunday, we celebrated Tyler's 2nd birthday (and Chris's birthday) with my family. We went to my sister's house for dinner (I think she made 12 frozen pizzas) and then we had the birthday celebration. When she announced dinner to the kids, the adults slowly followed and were greeted by all the kids sitting and eating quietly. It was a sight to see! Tyler was old enough this year to get into gift opening except for the overwhelming part of it. He received lots of presents and had lots of kids wanting to help him out. Let's not forget that during the celebrations, Shane provided the entertainment.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

On Friday night, we celebrated Daddy's 35th birthday with his family. We had it at our house so the boys could run free...and boy did they ever! They were having fun showing Mimi, Papa, Aunt Julie, and Uncle Marx all their geography artwork. It was a nice celebration! Happy Birthday Daddy!

Happy Birthday Matthew!

My baby brother is 25 years old! We celebrated his birthday with dinner at my parents. The kids ran around like crazy and there was even an incident with a smashed finger that ended the evening quickly. I hope Matthew had a great birthday regardless!

Happy Birthday Ethan!

November is a month full of family birthdays, so we celebrated another birthday two weeks ago - cousin Ethan's 6th birthday! The kids played and everyone ate their fair share of pizza. We then had the usual celebration with a chocolate cake and lots of presents for the birthday boy. Happy Birthday Ethan!

"Like Father, Like Son"

Happy Birthday to me!

For my actual birthday (which was a fun-filled day of work meetings), my boys decided to surprise me with a small birthday celebration at home. They were hiding when I got home and yelled surprise! After dinner, they had a Coldstone Creamery cake for me that they had specially picked out (Daddy said that was a fun process trying to get the boys to decide on a cake). The boys both sang Happy Birthday to me, I think 3 times. After cake, I got to open my present which was some maternity outfits and a necklace. I got lots of hugs and kisses from my boys. We had a nice quiet evening at home...a nice end to an exhausting day. For some reason, it was also a very emotional day which I will blame on pregnancy and not the birthday blues.

I got my own cake this year!

For several years now, we have celebrated my birthday and my nephew's birthday together since they are only a couple days apart. There has been some interesting cake creations from my sister in an effort to show a theme appropriate for each of us. This year, she made two cakes so I got my own cake! We did however still share the birthday celebrations. We went to my parents for a Sunday afternoon visit and all the kids played outside in the leaves for awhile. We then had pizza, cake, and ice cream. It was a nice end to Sunday and I got to open a few presents. My favorite was the bag of Reese's cups to take to work for me and only me!

Vroom Vroom...Look who turned 3!

For Brady's 3rd birthday, we had a celebration at our house with our family and friends. When asked what Brady wanted for his Birthday, he quickly said Lighting McQueen (Cars theme) cake and presents. Makes sense since that is his latest obsession!

The countdown to the party at 2pm the day of his birthday was torture for Mr. Brady. He kept asking when everyone was going to get there so he could eat cake and ice cream and open presents. He was just sure there was going to be Lighting McQueen gifts. He wasn't disappointed...we had a great cake for him that came with a toy Lighting McQueen and he got several Cars themed gifts. In addition, he got some fun games, puzzles, books, and outfits.

Thank you to everyone for joining us in our big boy's celebration of his 3rd birthday! Happy Birthday Brady!

Brady's 3 Year Picture Slideshow!

This Saturday, Brady will be turning 3 years old (always goes by so fast)...here is our picture session where he did a great job (as usual)! You will notice pictures with a Soccer ball...this is his latest activity that he really enjoys. Afterwards, Connor jumped in for some fun brother pictures.

Connor's Birthday Party - All Aboard!

For Connor's 4th birthday, we had a celebration at our house with our family and friends. We decided that a train theme was most appropriate since Connor is a train fanatic these days. The boys dressed up as train engineers, we had the train table available for play, and we had train themed art projects. There were 14 kids ranging primarily in age from 1 to 6 and we also had a 1 month old join the party. I had high hopes that the kids would gather around the table doing art projects and stay in the "main" area. I also hoped to get pictures of Connor with each child so that I could print them off as a souvenir. Who was I kidding - my dad even joked about my plans! It was pure chaos (what kid party isn't), but the kids had a blast playing in all the play areas of our home and several did not want to leave. I will take that as a good sign that they enjoyed themselves.

Connor loved the fact that he got to celebrate his birthday with his friends and cousins and was all tuckered out when everyone left. He also got several great gifts from our friends and family. He said he is going to pretend that Saturday was his birthday since that was the day we celebrated - we'll allow that (if that means a quiet Sunday)!

Thank you to everyone for joining us in our baby boy's celebration of his 4th birthday! Happy Birthday Connor! Some pictures from the party...

Connor...growing up way too fast!

Tomorrow our baby boy celebrates his 4th birthday! We have seen a huge transformation in Connor to a "big boy" over the last year (even though there are some days you don't see it). The last year was an eventful year for Connor - glasses on his 3rd birthday, potty training success, road trips and family adventures, swim lessons, sleepovers with his cousin, moving from daycare to Montessori Academy - just to name a few. We have seen a huge amount of learning this year with his identification of numbers and letters and writing his own name being the newest milestones. He is on the fast track for growing up way too fast, but we are so glad to be a part of the ride!

Just a glimpse of Connor's last 4 years....

Happy Birthday Daddy!

The week before Christmas, Daddy always gets to make the rounds for birthday celebrations. This year, Daddy and the boys started out the celebrations on Thursday by going to Papa Terry's for dinner and birthday cake. All the boys had a blast playing with Papa Terry's train set that was set up around the Christmas tree. Also, Connor made sure that he was prepared for the celebrations by making a birthday card for daddy at school that day. On Friday, we went to Mimi & Papa's for a birthday celebration. The boys loved playing with Mimi afterwards and were rather wild.

Below is a picture of daddy's birthday present from mommy and the boys - Yamaha Digital Grand Piano. The boys are really looking forward to hearing daddy play. Connor has already made special requests for "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".

Update: Robin's Cake Creations

Update - turns out that mom has "outsourced" the cake creations to Robin. These are her cake creations. See below for this year's creation.

Per my Happy Birthday blog, I mentioned that my mom has gotten creative in the past with the birthday cakes when combining my birthday with my nephew, Shane's. This year, we will be combining mine with Shane's and Ethan's. See below for one of her more creative masterpieces. A couple year's later she went pro.

Happy Birthday to All of Us

November is the month of family birthdays! There are 10 family member birthdays within 10 days of each other. We had two birthday celebrations this weekend with family. Saturday night, we celebrated my birthday along with Papa and Aunt Julie's birthday. We had a nice night of visiting, pizza, chocolate cake, and gifts - yeah! Sunday night we had dinner with Papa Terry and Gma Donna, where the boys enjoyed the visit and we had MORE chocolate cake. Next Sunday, we are celebrating my birthday and my 2 nephews' birthdays with my family. My mom has gotten really creative with the cake in the past when combining birthdays - so this should be interesting to see what she does this year. My only request is no more chocolate cake.

On my birthday, Connor asked me how “many” I was and I said 33 – he held up three fingers and said “like me”. I said no, 10-20-30 plus 3 (using my hands to signal the count of 10s). He said – that’s a lot and walked off. Gotta love the toddler’s viewpoint! Happy Birthday to all my family and my friends that are also celebrating birthdays this month!

Time flies - My baby boy is 2!

My youngest baby boy celebrated his 2nd birthday this week - it just seems like yesterday that I was spending the summer on maternity leave with him and settling into our new house. He started his birthday out with a nice fall at daycare that resulted in a busted lip - that wasn't going to stop him from enjoying the festivities! Friday, we had take home pizza and then headed to the drive-in movie. The boys lasted until about 9:30 watching Kung Fu Panda before climbing into their car seats to go night-night.

The next day was the official "Blue Clues" themed birthday party where we had lots of friends and family over to celebrate. He got lots of great gifts to play with - water table, fisher price dump truck just like daddy's from the 70's, swim toys, and more. Later that evening, some of the family stayed for an extended visit where we enjoyed the nice weather outside. It was so nice to see everyone and to end the birthday celebrations on a good note!