Birthday Cake

So, as per normal, I made myself a birthday cake.  If I didn't no one would.  Now, I personally think if I am making my own cake that I should get to decorate it the way I want.  The boys didn't agree and rather than the coconut pecan icing on my red velvet cake they decided I needed chocolate icing with LOTS of sprinkles.  They were so excited to have some that it wasn't even cool when we had to ice it and then it was their bedtime snack with a little bit of ice cream on the side.  I asked what they thought of the cake and Jay replied, "It's the bees knees!"  I laughed but also made a mental note that maybe they have seen too much of Disney's Princess and the Frog. (I do not have a picture, sad I know but I am sure you can all imagine how 3 boys, the oldest being 5 would decorate a cake!)

Jay's car and the 'piglet' brothers

Jay "driving" while pointing & talking to grandma, describing his car

view from the car's front 

At preschool Jay's class built cars out of cardboard boxes.  While telling grandma & grandpa about his car grandma asked if it had headlights.  I quickly explained that lights on the front make it so you can drive at night.  He leaned forward while "in" his car to see the front and responded to grandma's question with, "no, no lights, just letters."  I thought I would hurt myself laughing.  I also love how the kids 'talk' on the phone and try to point and show what they are talking about like the phone is actually a camera.
         While Jay was busy with his driving, Nathan and Carson were pretending to be pigs... I don't know why but here is the evidence!

Nathan Piggy

 Nathan likes to tell me to take pictures of him when he is being silly.  Today he didn't ask for pictures, I just had to take some.  The nose is off of Jay's piggy bank.

Carson Piggy

Report Cards - brought to you by the letters D & M

Friday was report card day for Carson.  Clarke and I had both gone to pick Carson up from school. On the drive home Clarke asked how the report card looked as I was browsing through.  I said he's got a couple of D+'s and Clarke panicked.  He was not aware of the reporting system of D for developing, M for mastery, and NA - self explanatory.  He obviously didn't read the last report card either if he didn't know the system.  Hmm.  Anyway, happy to say there were improvements in every category, although M is the top so I was just happy we didn't have any M-'s where there used to be M's.  In summary, Carson is acing Kindergarten and has 2 girls in his class who want to marry him!

Sunday afternoon entertainment - "Snow" Cones in March!

When we pulled in to the garage from church on Sunday afternoon Nathan said he wanted to eat snow for lunch.  Last spring we bought the boys a sno-cone machine so I broke out the cones and sent the boys outside to get their snow.  I let them add 2 flavors and now they have asked for "snow" cones every day.  Thankfully the temperatures got warm today and things started to melt so hopefully we are now in the clear for "snow" days!

As you can see they all were happy with their selections!

Alberta Peaceful Demonstration - self explanatory...

If you can't see the sign, it says, "If you have had enough cold and snow, please... raise your hands."

The Adventures continue...

Sharing a pillow

I finally have proof... Jay and Nathan can share and theoretically get along while doing it:

It's really sad that they had to be asleep to accomplish this, but it does prove it can be done.  Nathan sure knows how to push Jay's buttons and make his little life miserable.  This in turn makes me not such a happy mommy at times but then look how cute they are asleep!
     Today was family day in Alberta.  Although Clarke is working right now I thought it would be fun to take the boys tobogganing today.  Nathan was very excited to go "Bonky-Bonky" which is apparently how 2 year olds say tobogganing!  Clarke decided we should go out and ride the ski-doo.  Sadly it was a little windy where the ski-doo now lives and much of the snow is off the prairie with the blowing that we haven't got in town.  Jay was too cold and wanted to stay in the van, Carson wanted to play with the cats and Nathan wanted to ride the 'little doo' that the Williams' family has (we store our sled out at one of Clarke's friends houses in the bald prairie).  We didn't get very many rides in and Carson decided he wanted to go with mommy and he wanted to go really fast and over a jump.  Short story - we flipped the sled and the biggest injury Carson got was that his glove got buried in the snow.  Mommy was stuck trying to lift the sled off of her so that Carson could get out and then Clarke and the other two boys came racing down in the van.  As we got in the van and I reversed it up the drive while Clarke went and parked the sled, Jay, very proudly announced that he had come "to the rescue!" followed by his somewhat evil sounding laugh.  Thanks, Jay!  Don't know what we would have done without the rescue!  Next time maybe he'll get out of the van to see if we are okay!

      As mentioned Clarke is working right now.  He works four on, four off.  This photo was at the beginning of his four on.  He was playing with the boys just before heading in to work.  They were doing a dog pile on daddy and Nathan insisted that I get a picture.  I told him it was okay, that we didn't need one.  He climbed off of Clarke and went to get the camera.  He then instructed his brothers to climb back on daddy and for me to take the picture!  What a goofball.
Nathan will often ask me to take a picture of him or of the other boys doing something or other.  It is interesting that he really seems to have connected that this is how to preserve some memories.  It is interesting as well the things that he chooses to preserve in his little head.  As Clarke headed off to work as well on this tour Nathan asked him why he had to go to work.  Clarke tried to explain that if he didn't go to work that Nathan wouldn't have any toys to play with.  For the last 2 days now I have heard how daddy is at work buying Nathan toys and Jay wants to know why daddy is only buying toys for Nathan!

Of 'scabs' and other entities - Nathan's quotes of the week

So, this week at church Nathan is standing on the pew beside me and I absent mindedly scratched my right arm.  I happened to scratch off a scab that I didn't know was there.  I turned my wrist over and found where I had scratched it from when Nathan noticed the scab on my finger and says, loudly, as only a 2 year-old can do, "Booger, Mommy!?!?"

    Earlier in the week we were having another not so effective effort at potty training.  Nathan decided that he wanted to put on underwear to wear to bed.  Hmm.  He won't go to the toilet during the day and he wants to be in underwear at night.  Okay.  So I let him put on some underwear.  Mater and McQueen underwear to be exact.  (Hand-me-downs of course but he hasn't clued into that fact yet.) I put a diaper on him overtop.  The boys were watching movies on my bed - I am not stupid!   It was still about 2 hours before bed.  About an hour later I asked him if he had to go to the bathroom.  He said no but things weren't smelling too good in the bedroom.  He had filled his underwear.  I was not impressed.  Thankfully however, this was not mushy stuff and I was able to remove said underwear and its contents without making a mess and flushed it all in the toilet.  I went back to Nathan's room to put a clean diaper on him and he asked where his underwear was.  I asked him if he had heard the toilet flush and he burst into tears!  His eyes got big and he put his right hand out in front of him and looked like an little Italian speaking with his hands.  Bouncing his hand up and down in front of him he told me through the tears, "I wasn't done with my underwear yet!"  I burst out laughing at how cute he was and that he seriously thought I had also flushed the underwear instead of tossing it in the laundry basket as I had walked past on the way back in to his room.  I assured him that we would get him some more underwear when he was ready to wear them.  In the meantime, I need to figure out where the Italian came from!
      With it being Valentine's day tomorrow, the boys and I made some sugar cookies to take to Clarke at work last night.  I made some for the nursery kids to be able to decorate as a filler activity for the end.  Nathan told me he made 2 cookies, one for me and one for Clarke 'for tomorrow'.  I told him what a good job he did on them.  I asked which was mine and it was one with pink icing and red sprinkles.  Clarke's had jelly beans and sprinkles that Nathan actually calls sparkles.  Anyway, he then proceeded to lick the jellybeans and leave them on the table and then he licked the icing off of both cookies.  He then took Clarke's cookie upstairs and put it on his desk for him to find when he gets home at 3am.  He took a bite out of mine and then set it on the counter for me.  What a honey!  I waited until he went downstairs to play with his brothers to throw away the jellybeans and the cookie.  Clarke's is still waiting for him though!