The girls are officially FOUR and they KNOW it! We have had a pretty crazy couple of weeks! Lets back up about two weeks. August is always a busy month, Brett and I celebrated our 7th anniversary on August 4th. We had made plans to just go out to eat as a family, but I ended up playing softball that night , so we went out the following night...oh well! The up side to that was that Shilo volunteered to watch the girls for a couple of hours and Brett and I actually went out to supper by ourselves....the last time we did that was in March. Thanks Shilo!
Then I began cleaning my house for the upcoming company....easier said than done! I tackled wood blinds that needed done, couches and the basement on top of the regular cleaning. For I knew that during the week of the girl's birthday, every available spot in our house would probably be used and therefore seen. Although I didn't get every project done that I wanted to, time was up August 12th and I had to stop.
The morning of the girl's birthday (12th) Grandma Harsh and Gavin got here about 11:30. They feed the girls lunch and we headed to the Dr.'s Office for the girl's annual exam. It had been a year since they had been seen except for Kaylee's tetanus shot at the end of July. They checked out just fine. Both weighing in at 34 lbs, Jaylin slightly over and Kaylee right on. Their height was Jaylin 39 7/8" and Kaylee 38 3/4". Looking at them you would think there was a significant difference, but when you get them on the scale and against the wall they are pretty close. The only thing we are concerned about is they both still suck their thumbs and Jaylin chews her nails. Otherwise they appear just fine!
Grandma and the girls went back to the house for a nap while Brett, Gavin and I ran errands. We went a finally purchased the girls play set that our families had put money towards since their 3rd birthday. Thank you to all that contributed, the girl's absolutely love it! We finally had a yard (mostly) and Brett had the entire week off and hoped to get it put up before their party on the 16th. After supper, I finished a few projects that needed done before my family got into town. I also made a few cupcakes for the girls on their birthday and we sang to them. Nothing huge as they knew that their party was coming soon. (Side note: You will see that we have the "famous" game of Hungry Hungry Hippo and the girls love it. They now have about 7 games, some as gifts and some from garage sales that they love to play. Mom and Dad enjoy playing them as well...good family time!)
Josh, Misty, Cole and Grandma Becky rolled in very late, but they made it. That made for 5 extra adults and 1 extra kid in our house for the night...crazy, but we managed. We have two air mattresses and Grandma Harsh brought two down with her. Unfortunately only half of them stayed air up during the night. Grandma Harsh ended up sleeping on the tumbling mat that isn't very soft for the night and the girl's bed was pretty flat by morning as well. Sorry Grandma and well the girls are young, they will live. The bad thing is that we don't even have carpet to give some padding when the mattress goes down....it is either hardwood floors or concrete! This begin the week of sharing our room with our kids and sharing our house with lots of family and it was a fun and crazy week. We loved having everyone down and have some fun pictures to share with everyone. I didn't label each picture, but may go back and do that, just wanted to get this posted as it took long enough to get it this far!
Wednesday was a day to just hang out and the guys (Brett, Josh and Gavin) started on the play set out back. Well they didn't get very far as the main board was damaged. They spent most of the day messing with that and didn't feel like they got much accomplished on the play set. The girls (all 6 of us) and Cole just played, swam and messed around the house. The girl's got dressed up as princesses and Cole was Batman.....Batman was saving the princesses...very cute and very funny!! You can't come and spend a lot of time at our house and not be asked to read...the girl's love to read! Grandma Harsh enjoys reading to the girls and Jaylin enjoyed listening.
Pam and Gavin went on to KC to stay with Uncle Nathan Wednesday night and stayed there the most of the week. Wednesday was also Grandma Becky and Josh's birthday....so of course we had cake and French silk pie to celebrate!
Cole celebrated his birthday on Sunday the 10th, turning the big 3. He was disappointed that Aunt Libbi wasn't there to sing to him, so we did several rounds of "Happy Birthday" to each of the birthday people! Then it was time for bed. While the guys were at Wal-Mart, Brett picked up a new mattress for the girls. When we aired up the mattress it smelled like cigarette smoke and of course it didn't stay aired up over night, so again the girls woke up to a flat bed and our bedroom smelled awful. I hate that smell and we don't tolerate it well at our house....gross!
Just putting one of the professional pictures on here, as I don't think we "have" permission to do so, even though we purchased the CD with all the photo's on it.Thursday we attempted pictures of the kids in KC. Misty had gotten pictures of Cole in Colorado and they turned out really good. She found the same company in KC, so we decided to give it a go. Brett had to be in KC for an appointment with our life insurance guy, so he was already there. Pam, Gavin, and Brett met us at the Legends for lunch at Chipotle. Cole has severe nut allergies and he is very limited at the places he can eat, but we were able to grab lunch there and then we headed to get pictures taken. That took most of the afternoon and then we headed back to Legends to shop and the guys all went to Cabela's. It got late enough that we scouted around for a place to eat other than Chipotle and just happened to stumble across a place that guaranteed that there is no cross contamination of nuts. Wow....that is a rare find and we were happy to find it as the kids were starving and it was an hour drive back. Supper was good and we had a good time with everyone.
The only hang up was when we went back to get the ice cream that came with the kids meals. I have NEVER witnessed anyone being treated the way we were treated by the cashier when we asked to look at the containers of ice cream to see if they were safe for Cole. They were so we requested our 2 ice creams and wanted to pay for an additional one. She was screaming at us....shocking!!! Apparently they give you the ice cream when you pick up the meal and she was sure that she had given us ours already. Well, she hadn't and was VERY rude about it. Misty, my mom and I each had one of the kids with us and I am sure that our jaws where on the ground. We even offered to pay for all of them again and she still would not let up, finally her manager stepped in and told her just to give us the ice cream and yet she still had attitude.
Anyway we got in late and didn't feel like messing with the girl's air mattress so I made a bed of blankets for the girls...three nights/ three different "beds"!!
Friday...guess we better start getting ready for the party. I baked the cakes, one chocolate and one white. Then I put the meat in the oven to let it slow roast all day long. While Misty and I finalized the grocery list, Brett and Josh (he read to the kids before heading out)went to work on putting up as much of the play set as they could without the main support beam....they got a good jump on the tower with the slide! Grandma Becky was in charge of the kids....that is her favorite job anyway, below are pictures of the kids on the neighbor's "play park". Misty and I headed out to the stores after lunch and didn't get back until about 5, everyone was sleeping but the guys who were still working on the play set. Thanks guys, that is a long day! We made supper and Misty actually bought Gator at HyVee and so we had Gator and ribs with potatoes and whatnot. Cole had been asking to eat Gator and Misty heard an announcement over the intercom while we were at HyVee about it. I thought she was joking, but she bought some and we all tried it....well everyone but Misty (she is vegetarian, but she buys and cooks meat for her family...even strange meat). Actually it wasn't that bad. Not cheap meat, but not bad tasting if you eat it right away. It got tough as it got cold. It tasted better than the ribs I made....I have attempted ribs twice and while this time was better than the last...they just weren't great.
I don't remember what we did after supper, but after I made the girl's beds for the 4th night in a row, I began cooking and trying to get things ready for the party. Once the kids were in bed we did as much as we could before we crashed for the night. I am not good at a lot of things, but that doesn't keep me from trying again. I wanted to make and decorate the girl's cakes this year. They wanted chocolate and I had bought an Ariel topper to put on the top of the cake. I found a cake I liked on-line and was going to used the same idea, but make it a little different. I started icing the two layered chocolate cake first and it was a disaster. I never got it in the freezer and cakes frost much better when they are frozen. So after a while, I gave up and covered them both back up and put them in the freezer for the night. After a few more things, I finally went to bed late and set my alarm for 7 the next morning.
Saturday, we were just rushing around trying to get everything done for the party. We did take some time to let Cole open the gift's from us since we weren't at his party. Just having his and then being at the girl's was a little confusing for him. The last two years he has had a party with the girls back in NE. The first one he had one by himself and one with the girls and then last year we celebrated them all together.
I am not going to list all the details...but want to say thanks to Misty, Grandma Becky, Brett, and Josh for all your help during that week and the morning of the party. Even Blake and Derek got put to work when they got here. Grandma Harsh arrived and took over the kids so we could finalize things. I had given up on the two layer cake and set out to make the white cake look good. Misty who has more patience with cakes (she has made all of Cole's)....didn't give up on the two layered cake and with some creativity (using mints and sprinkles), we ended up with two cakes that looked pretty good all things considering.
12:30 came and everyone piled into our house. There was a lot of us in a small place. We decided to set up all the tables down stairs, serve the food upstairs and then have everyone eat downstairs. Good thing that it wasn't very hot that day b/c some had to eat outside on the neighbor's picnic table that we pulled up under the deck. It worked. The pictures were mostly taken down stairs in the unfinished basement so it was kind of dark, but that was the only place that all 25 of us could cram into! Things got a little crazy when we started opening gifts, but at least we did it downstairs with all the other toys and they kids could just start playing with them and they other kids had something to do while the girls opened gifts. The girls had fun and I hope the guests did too. Some of the pictures taken were when they were eating....sorry for the way some of you might look in them! We didn't attempt a pictures of all the kids as that would have been crazy, but you should see all of them throughout the photos! Thanks to everyone who was able to join the girl's in celebrating their 4th birthday.
Most of the guests left that day/night and a few stayed a bit longer. That night we let the girls hit the ball off their tee and play in the portion of the play set that was completed. The girl's even convinced Grandpa Doug to get into their tent that Grandma Harsh had given them. Amazing what grandparents will do for grandkids!! Grandma's, Uncle Gavin and Uncle Derek stayed at our house that night, while Grandpa Doug stayed with Uncle Nathan in KC.
Sunday, most of the guys went golfing, Derek headed towards home stopping along the way to see a friend from highschool in Manhattan and the girls went shopping before Grandma Harsh headed home. Grandma Becky stayed until Tuesday. Last week(19th-24th) was not nearly as fun for lots of reasons, but that will have to wait until another post.
Hope you enjoy the pictures!
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