Hijacked!

I got out my camera today and it appears that the kids have been playing with it. How can I tell?




I think Haley was the talented photographer. That looks suspiciously like her knee.

More B-Day Fun...

...because you can never have too many pictures of yourself in a giant sombrero.

Though my b-day was last Tuesday, Brad and I had planned to go out to dinner to celebrate on Friday (we do this often when one of us has a b-day on a week night.) So it didn't come as a surprise to me when he said he'd made plans for us to meet the Humphreys (Shelley, Brad's sister, and Jerry, her hubby) for dinner Friday night. What did surprise me, however, were the 30+ friends waiting at my favorite Mexican restaurant! How Brad pulled this off without my getting wind of it is beyond me! It was definitely a SURPRISE party! And the biggest surprise of all might have been the sweet toast he stood up and made to me. For someone who doesn't love "mushy stuff" that was pretty impressive!

SUCH a fun night! SUCH a great husband. I love you, Bradley Kyle.

Happy Birthday, Haley!

Today is Haley's 13th birthday! She's been looking forward to 13 for some time now and for several reasons:

1) It's the age we let our girls begin to wear make-up,
2) It's the age we told her she had to be in order to read the last two Twilight books and,
3) It's a friend-party year (our kids only get to have big b-day parties e/o year...for our sanity.)

Haley decided she wanted a to have a swimming b-day party, so we picked up a suburban full of giggly 12 and 13-year-old girls and went to the YMCA swimming pool. The girls forbid me to 'capture the moment' while they were in their swim suits, so I opted for an on-the-way-to-the-pool shot instead.


After swimming, we drove the girls back to our place for pizza, cake/ice cream and general b-day party fun. They jumped on the trampoline, played Band Hero and talked about boys a lot (I eavesdropped).




Haley chose cheesecake for her b-day cake (a girl after her mama's heart!) She requested two of them. Here she is pretending to be "31" instead of "13".


She seemed to have a great day - lots of fun with her friends, lots of being catered to by her family. She got her make-up, got her Twilight books and even a few other things on her wish list.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HALEY! WE LOVE YOU!

St. Patrick's Day

Had a fun St. Patrick's at the Nielson house! Everybody but Alyssa wore all the green they could get their hands on. Alyssa had a plan. She wore no green, but then painted her nails with green nail polish. Her hope was that others would be tricked into thinking she was wearing no green and pinch her, at which point she would triumphantly show them her fingernails and deliver the customary retaliatory TWO pinches. Jacob, on the other hand, was so nervous about the prospect of being pinched that he was reluctant to even go to preschool. He had a green shirt AND a green St. Patty's button on his chest - definitely no shortage of green on the boy. But still he was afraid that someone would somehow miss all that green and pinch him :)

For dinner I decided to go nuts with the green food coloring. We had Shepard's Pie (with green mashed potatoes), green salad and I made green rolls. I couldn't bring myself to color the milk or the salad dressing - felt I had to draw the line somewhere.

A Message Of Hope

Yesterday was my 40th birthday and, while I haven't had any huge anxieties over turning 40, I definitely didn't expect to get through the entire day without cringing a little. To those of you for whom 40 is around the corner (and you know who you are!), I thought I'd better go public with the fact that my 40th b-day was one of my best ever! It's not so bad and even pretty fun!

I woke up in the morning and the house looked like the birthday fairy had paid a visit...or, more realistically, the birthday fairy AND the grim reaper!



There was even a yard sign on the front lawn to alert the neighbors and random passerby of my advancing age.


I spent the day with friends and family, didn't lift a finger, ate out every meal, was spoiled with gifts, flowers, cards, chocolates, calls from old friends and just generally soaked it all up and loved every minute of it! So if 40 is in your immediate future - do not despair! In my opinion, 40 IS FABULOUS!*


*Author is not objective and her mind, and therefore opinions, may have been adversely effected by the aging process.

Alyssa

Each student in Alyssa's class had the assignment to set an academic goal for themselves. Once the goal has been achieved, the students are to write a letter to their parents letting them know that they have accomplished what they set out to accomplish. We got the following from Alyssa last week:

Cute Brothers

The other night I asked Danny and Jacob to get into their PJs, brush teeth, go potty and I'd meet them in their room to tuck them in. After a few minutes, I realized it was far too quiet - never a good thing with those two. What a treat to walk into their room and see them jammied, brushed, pottied and cuddled up on the top bunk, Danny reading a story to his little brother. So sweet (and so rare!) that I had to sneak quietly out and get my camera.

Father/Son Cake Contest

Danny got invited to this year's Blue and Gold Banquet because he'll be eight this year and old enough to enter into the scouting program. The highlight of the dinner (by FAR...it was a long, drawn-out evening!) was a father/son cake decorating contest. The rules were that each father and son had to bake and decorate a cake with no outside help - especially no mom help - and bring it to the banquet.

I have a distinct memory of my brother, Scott, and my Dad participating in a similar event once when we were little. If memory serves, they did a predictably sloppy job on their cake, but then topped the cake with sought after Star Wars action figures and stole the show! I mentioned this to Brad and Danny, but they already had their own plan in the works:






TA-DA!

Preschool

Jacob's preschool had a little presentation for the parents a while back (meaning...months ago, but I still haven't blogged about it yet). It was awfully cute - they show the parents all the things they've been learning...

The Pledge of Allegiance...

...cute little songs involving numbers, shapes and colors...

...and the difference between their right and left hands!

I was really proud of Jacob, who sometimes struggles with shyness, for being willing to participate! Unfortunately, at the end of the performance, he accidentally stepped on a classmate's hand in his heavy boots, made her cry out in pain and was mortified to have an entire audience of grown ups to witness his apology! He ultimately blamed his boots for the entire gaffe and has refused to wear them since. So if anyone wants a pair of bad, evil boots (Striderite, size 12M) let me know!