Happy Birthday, Nathan!

Nathan turned 7! I can't believe we have a 7 year old already. They just grow up too fast. We've had a serious battle with the flu over the last couple of weeks. Every single one of us got it and it basically took us out of commission for two solid weeks. Nathan's birthday party had to be delayed, but he was a real trooper about it, and the party was a lot of fun.

Nathan invited all of his buddies- there were about ten kids his age and about six or so littler kids. He loves Legos, so that was his theme this year. The kids guessed how many Legos were in a jar (133: we had guesses that ranged from 2 to 1007), did a Lego relay, and took some shots at a Lego man pinata.

I found a Lego ice cube mold so we had colored Lego bricks to go in Sprite. That was actually the biggest attraction of the evening. Each child picked a couple of colors and then watched the Sprite turn colors.

The party was in the evening, so it was dark when we did the pinata. One of our friends turned the lights on his pickup on and then all of the kids got to have a flashlight. (They were so excited that they got to keep the flashlights.) The Lego man ended up a lot bigger than we had envisioned, so it sort of looked like a dwarf was swinging from our tree. We had the first Lego figure lynching, I guess. At any rate, the kids certainly seemed to have a fantastic time.

Probably Evan: Justin and the Blame Game

Well, Justin is 2 and very mischevious. He is, quite literally, into everything and he's very impulsive. The other day he ran past me in the kitchen and next thing I know, he's sprawled out across the top of the washer, just laying there. I have no idea why. He's like that- he just does things that must make sense to him on some level, but they certainly don't make any sense to me. (If that story's not convincing enough, I've also found him climbing up the hood of Bryan's car to the sun roof. Instead of the usual cat paw prints, Bryan actually had little barefoot Justin prints on his windshield.)

At any rate, because of his nature, most of the things that happen in the house can eventually be traced back to him. Now, for my other kids at this age, they weren't savvy enough to really lie to get themselves out of trouble. That came later. Justin, on the other hand, is already perfecting the finger-pointing art. If something goes wrong, Justin, before I've even had time to demand an explanation, is pleading his innocence. "I didn't do that. SOMEONE did." "Someone," I think, is Justin's alter ego. If I ask for more details, as in, "Who is someone?" Justin's reply is invariably, "Probably Evan."

So, our conversations go something like this: Two keys are missing from the laptop keyboard. Justin says, "Oh no! Look at that. SOMEONE did that. Not me. Probably Evan." The greatest comment came from him yesterday. He had wet his pants. "Justin, did you wet your pants?" "No, not me. SOMEONE wet them." "Someone wet your pants for you." "Yes, probably Evan." And then he flashes his little impish grin and throws his arms around me for a hug. "You silly, Mommy."

Yes, almost as silly as trying to blame THAT on SOMEONE.

Happy New Year!!

We managed to take pictures of the kids to send out with our New Year's letter. We got a couple of cute ones before general mayhem erupted. These pictures were taken at the back of our property. I love the look on Carsten's face at the end of our photo session: "AAAHHH!!! NO MORE PICTURES!!"