Happy Birthday Dex!

 

Last weekend we were invited to Dexter's birthday party. Dexter's Mommy and I went to graduate school together, and it was nice of them to invite us to the party. They invited us last year too, but this year LM was much more into it, of course. Here are some photos:

This is Dex.

Like last year, he had his party at a great gymnastics center that allowed the kids to run and play on all sorts of things. In that photo, Dex is showing off the rings. 

This is Rachel, Dex's sister.

And, just a bit older than LM.

And this is LM, having fun.

I was convinced those balloons would pop.

I don't think they ever did!

I wish this wasn't blurry!

Less blur, still cute.

This bin was full of all sorts of balls.

LM and Rachel emptied it.

This dad did a great sword fight.

And he fell on the ground to his death in a way that deserved an Oscar.

The cake.

A fun time was had by all. Thanks again for the invitation! 

We have a few things going this weekend, but not crazy busy, which is good. I still have class stuff to do, and you know, general "life" stuff too. I hope your weekend is a good one.

See you soon.

Cloud Dough

So, there are endless opportunities on Pinterest. But, at least for me what happens is I pin a bunch of stuff and then hardly ever get around to DOING them. An exception to this would be our little experiment with cloud dough. I found it on Pinterest - there are a million links - I followed one of those worm holes to learn about cloud dough.

It's a mixture of flour and baby oil. It is a little like sand, but also sort of clumpy and sticky. I made 1/8th of the recipe, because we were just trying it out and I didn't figure we needed eight cups worth of it. I put it in a disposable casserole dish and we took it to the front yard to have fun.

For a brief period of time, the boy actually played with the cars I put in the cloud dough, as I sort of imagined he would. Then he decided it was more fun to pick up the dough and throw it out of the pan. 

And it was at that point that I was really glad I decided to do this in the front yard. No mess to clean up! It just got dispersed in the grass!

A bit blurry, but I was trying to get the clenched fist full of cloud dough!

Turns out - no surprise really - sifting through the dough and throwing it is more fun than cars.

Which we repeated until it was all pretty much out of the pan.

Where we played with it in the grass!

And put the pan on our head!

Turns out, cloud dough can REALLY cake on a pair of jeans.

It was a fun activity.

So fun, we had to go tell Dad.

Then we went to get cleaned up.

So, cloud dough, I would say, was a hit as a Saturday craft activity. It had a sensory element to it, and it was also fun for some benign destruction, shall we say. We'll make it again sometime.

See you soon.

Hideaway

If we're outside around the house, LM's favorite place to roam is over between the fence and the garage. You can see the fine paint job is holding up nicely on the ol' garage, huh?

OMG, he is Mini-S.

"No I'm not Mommy, I'm LM!"

"Silly Mommy!"

"Pay no attention to the dirt on my hands"

"Cause I'm gonna find some more!"

See you soon.

Lunch with Friends

LM and I went to meet a friend of mine and former co-worker, Kerry, and her granddaughter Abbie for lunch the other day. Abbie is two, so she is an older woman. We met at the kid friendly Chick-fil-a, where LM, upon seeing Abbie sit in a regular chair, refused to sit in a highchair. In fact, he has refused since then a couple of times too. Good times.

Anyway, the kiddos played in the little play area afterwards. Not only was Abbie very nice to LM, there was a brother sister pair, I'm guess about 8 and 6 years old, who would shepherd LM to the top and on the way back down. They were so sweet to him I had to go over to their mom afterwards and tell her what good kids she has. Here are a couple of photos...mostly a bit blurry, done with the purse camera, and on a too low ISO until I noticed way too late:

Abbie in all her cuteness!

Coming down the slide, brother on the right, sister behind him.

Going up, up up!

You can see the slide was, well, a favorite.

It was so nice to catch up, and because we had such good older helpers, we DID actually get to talk for a while! And the kids had fun too. Good fun all around.

See you soon!