Clone Wars Party!

Saturday, we hosted a Star Wars Clone Wars premiere party for the kids and some of their friends. About a month or so, I heard about something called Houseparty.com I signed up and just a few days later I was invited to participate in the Clone Wars premiere party! They sent us a big box full of free party favors, a new Darth Vader light saber for Xander, and a DVD with the premiere episode of the new Cartoon Network's Star Wars series. I think the series will premiere on tv in a week or two.

It was a lot of fun! The kids destroyed chalk deathstars, and then did an obstacle course where they knocked Darth Va-bear down the slide, zig-zagged through the bubbles, climbed to the highest tower to rescue Padme, and then defeated Darth Vader in a light saber battle! Actually, more than half of them were too scared to confront Darth Vader. After the games, we had pizza, watched the new show, and then they had fun trying on the masks and playing with their light sabers!

Wild Zoo Animals

The lions weren't the only wild animals we found at the zoo! Marie had a lot of fun being free to walk around and pointing to all of the animals she saw.

At the Park

When my parents were in town, we went to a nice park with a little lake. The plan was to get some nice pictures of the kids with their grandparents in a scenic area. Getting all 6 of them looking at the camera without looking goofy was hard.

This is one of the better ones:


When we weren't taking the group pictures, we had fun feeding the geese and ducks, climbing trees, exploring the banks, and playing on the playground next to the little lake.

Separated at Birth?

I was flipping through some old pictures of Xander to do a birthday post. I thought at around 2yrs old he looked an awful lot like a much photographed celebrity baby. What do you think? Ok. I know the other baby is a girl, but Xander was a very pretty baby! Funny, that she doesn't look anything like Xander's actual sisters!

Xander:



Other Baby:

More From the Gardens

Marie wasn't the only one being cute at the Botanical Gardens! Grace and Greta were also posing nicely. The girls love the gardens. They love flowers, fountains, pools of water, and all the pretty things. Xander's smiles that day, however, were a little forced.

Japanese Garden

Jon's mother brought us a special dress to take a picture of Marie in. It was a dress she had worn as a child that had been bought for her in Japan during WWII (I think- Sandy?). We thought it would be neat to take her to the botanical gardens' Japanese garden to get the pictures. The dress is a little big for Marie but I think some of the pictures still turned out well!

Lion Cubs!

We saw the zoo's new lion cubs for the first time last week. The mother and 3 cubs were out together. They were mostly napping but we got to see the mom bring a couple over for a quick bath and then nurse the babies. I think they are about 3months old and while they aren't teeny babies anymore they are still really cute!Xander missed seeing them because of school so we'll have to try to go back sometime soon when school's out. I think the grown ups were more into the babies than the kids!

1st and 7th Birthday Parties!

Xander and Marie had their first and possibly only joint birthday party the end of July. We had it at a local jumpy place and just kept it small with a few of my friends and their children that know and play with both Xander and Marie. Everyone had a great time and we appreciate them coming out for the kids. Xander had a Ben 10 theme and Marie's was the Baby's 1st Pink Poodle in Paris. Xander is too big and cool for me to dress up anymore, but I had fun looking for a special coordinating outfit for Marie to wear to her party.

Starfish

We went to Charleston to visit Nathan and Kelly the end of July and spent a lot of time at the beach. On the last day, Greta found a starfish on the beach. We all thought that was pretty cool and after showing it to all of the kids, we threw it back in the ocean. Greta was sad when we threw her starfish back in and wanted to find more. I told her it was pretty special to find a starfish alive on the beach and we may not find another one but I said we could go look. We ended up finding a tide pool full of starfish! We probably found at least 8 of them- all alive as well as a conch with the sea snail still alive. I've never seen so many starfish on a beach.

Here's some pictures of our starfish beach day! And that last picture with Marie? A minute later she had picked that starfish up and was running across the beach away from us with it! Poor starfish. He looked like he was mostly ok when I pried him out of her fingers while she screamed! I'm not sure if she wanted to keep the starfish or throw it back herself but she did not want to give it away!

First Birthday!

The first week of school for Xander, Grace, and Greta was also the week of Marie's first birthday! What can I say about this baby? She is still such a sweet, easy, happy girl and we have all been having so much fun with her!

Her check up was a few weeks late but by the end of August, Marie was 14lbs 7oz and 26.5in. She's small but very fiesty and the Dr has no concerns about her. She is walking and talking and trying to be a big girl. Her favorite foods are everything. Or at least almost everything- she's not too picky. She only likes to drink water from a cup but is very good with her cups and even drinks from a straw just like a big kid. Her favorite things to play with are her dolls. She loves to find her babies, feed the babies, and drag her babies around. She loves her babies! I think she may have chosen one of her babies as her lovey/security object because she has been wanting it with her and has been asking for it a lot lately. She saw a baby just like hers in the store this weekend and was very upset about her baby being stuck in a box! She also really enjoys looking at books and her current favorite is a book my mom bought for her last week- Spotted Yellow Frogs by Matthew Van Fleet. She can follow 2 and 3 step directions when she wants and she chatters all the time. We can't understand it all yet, but some of the words we hear consistently are Momma, Dada, kitty, ball, book, that, whee, slide, no, baby, and bath. She also has developed a very assertive and fearless personality- she is the Queen Bee of the baby crowd!

On her birthday, we just had some cupcakes and ice cream at home and let her open some presents. Here's the birthday girl:

And here she is in the same outfit she wore in the hospital! She's definitely grown!