Grant’s 6th

Grant’s at the age now where he really anticipates his birthday, counting down the months, weeks and days. He has a lot of expectations for his 6th year. In the past couple of months, he has made a couple of predictions:

• “When I’m 6, I’m going to take ballet”
• “When I’m 6, I’m going to be a football player”

(When I reminded him about the ballet, he said “I’m going to do both!”)

• And last night “Now that I’m 6, I’m going to drink Pepsi.” HA! 

Because it had been April since Mom and Dad been here and I’d done absolutely nothing with my flower beds, we had to do some last-minute landscaping on Saturday. If I don’t at least weed the flower beds, it is impossible for Mom to keep from doing some weeding while she’s here; she’s powerless to stop herself! So, the girls helped out a lot by weeding the flower beds, while I got some flowers and mulch.

Here are before and after shots:

Nothing too dramatic, but it’s amazing what a difference a few petunias and some mulch makes!

So, back to the Birthday Boy. Here he is, descending the stairs in all his glory. :-) I had to be quick with the camera – it’s a little blurry because he was moving so fast!!  Ha!

We had barbecue chicken, mac ‘n cheese, rolls and salad. The girls decorated nicely with streamers and the good dishes. One of these days, I’m going to try to be more on the ball and get a picture of the decorations and the dinner table! We’ve got 2 more birthdays to celebrate this year so here’s hoping.  :-)

He also requested “chocolate cake,” which around here translates to Mocha Layer Cake. (Grant: “No, I want chocolate cake.” Me: “Mocha Layer Cake is chocolate cake.” :-)

He raced us from the cake to the gifts. Yes, he was excited.  :-) Grant has been in a Spider Man phase lately. He’s not seen the movie – I don’t think he knows there is a movie – but is intrigued by the idea of Spider Man.  :-)  So, I bought several Spider Man gifts and also splurged on Spider Man wrapping paper, which you can just barely see in the next picture.

 

And here is the one gift I got a picture of Grant opening: a Cars coloring book. Why did I only get one picture? Because my camera battery died! Grrrr!!!!

I put the batteries in the charger and we watched him open the rest of the gifts, ate the cake and ice cream, then went outside to play for a while. We did this partly because his final gift couldn’t be wrapped and had to be brought up from the basement and set up. In order to capture this, I grabbed the partially-charged battery and started snapping away. Drum roll please (yes, I did that on purpose ;-)

 

Oh there’s been lots of excitement over this gift! I was at a Once Upon a Child back in March or April with the boys and Grant actually spotted this drum set on a high shelf. He pointed it out to me, but I smiled and said something like “that’s neat,” but inside I was thinking “No way!!”. When I told Mick about it that night, he said “Did you get it?” “How much was it?” So, I went back to the same store a week later, just intending to shop for Sarah’s birthday and I noticed it was still there. I spent about 15 minutes contemplating whether or not to get it before I finally decided to. It’s been hidden in our basement, covered with a tarp under the ping pong table ever since.

 

Contrary to my fears, he has NOT played the drums day and night, nonstop. :-) Like all the rest of the toys, he plays them in spurts. And if I do say so myself, he actually sounds pretty good!  :-)

And lastly, a stroll through the years …

   

 

 

Happy Birthday?

Goodness, this picture makes me laugh! Friday was Grant’s 6th birthday, and what a “memorable” birthday it was. This picture was taken moments before we dashed out the door for the full dress rehearsal of our ballet school’s “Nutcracker.” Notice the following details in the picture:

1. Courtney, Erica, Sarah and Claire are wearing heavy amounts of makeup.

2. Brooke is being blocked (on purpose!) by Claire.

3. Brooke’s hair is being brushed by 2 big sisters. What’s remarkable about that is that she has very thin, straight hair; hardly seems necessary to have 2 people brush it, right?

4. Trent is looking a little unsure.

5. Grant is smiling happily in his brand new, grow-in-the-dark Spiderman t-shirt (he wore that shirt at least part of the day on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday).

So here’s the scoop: May seems like such a wonderful month to have a birthday. The outdoors are finally warming up and greening up (Grant’s birthday was an absolutely beautiful day); schedules begin to lighten up; there’s the excitement of the Indy 500 being held just south of us. And speaking of the race, here’s a little Worley Indy 500 trivia: Mick and I met at the Indy 500, were engaged at the racetrack during qualifications, our first boy was born on Carb Day and brought home from the hospital on race day. This year, his birthday fell on Carb Day again.

As of May 2012, May has also become the month of The Recital. Our ballet school has a recital every other year and it is scheduled, apparently, right around Grant’s birthday, which is May 23rd. Our last recital was Sleeping Beauty and the dress rehearsal for that also fell on Grant’s birthday.

So back to this funny picture. Since Brooke was playing the part of a “Party Girl” in the Nutcracker, she was required to have curls rather than the usual ballet bun. As I mentioned before, Brooke has very thin, straight, and might I add beautiful hair, as is evidenced by this picture.

 

So, we needed some serious hairstyling to achieve curls … or so we thought. We learned of this technique for curling hair and had actually tried it out before for the Scottish Ball on a couple of the girls, with good results. It’s an interesting process of twisting sections of hair and securing them with terrycloth ponytail holders, like so.

What we were hoping for was something like this:

However, for whatever reason, what we got instead was … well, the word “frizz” comes to mind. “Tangled mess,” too. And all of this unfolded just minutes before we were ready to walk out the door … Oh, and sing “Happy Birthday” to Grant. So, we’re frantically trying to brush out her hair, while she’s fighting back tears of pain and frustration (“All that for nothing!” she wailed at one point), and I’m trying to get Grant and Trent to come to the kitchen, so we can rush through singing one verse of the birthday song to him and he can blow out the candles that Sarah had quickly stuck into his “birthday cake” of chocolate donuts. Oh, it was something else, quite a shining Mom-of-the-Year moment.  And yet, in spite of that, I could see the hilarity in the situation and grabbed the camera. Several of the girls (including Brooke!) thought it was a terrible idea, but I told Claire to block her from view and told everyone it was a part of the birthday memories for Grant’s 6th birthday.  Indeed it was.  :-)

The P.S. to the story is that we grabbed the curling iron and headed down to the rehearsal. Rachel had plenty of time to curl Brooke’s hair the traditional way and spray it heavily with hair spray to keep it all in place. Surprisingly, that held throughout the night and she looked beautiful!

And so what of our Birthday Boy? Well, Friday, May 23rd was exciting for him! Daddy: (1) took the day off from work, and (2) mowed the grass! Either of these things would make for an exciting day for Grant. Put them together and, well, that is a great day, as far as he’s concerned! Ah, simple pleasures.  :-) 

And the birthday party – the one when Grandma and Grandpa come and we have a nice meal and a proper birthday cake and he really turns six – is in the works. :-)

Quotable cuties

 

Me: Grant, you can come out of Quiet Time now.
Grant: OK. Are you going to come up and clean up the glass?

Thankfully and miraculously, there was no blood. I think he was trying to see if one of the Little People could fly. It made it all the way up to the ceiling fan! I’m thinking of installing a hidden camera in his room during Quiet Time...

Grant, 3yo

I really don’t post these cute little quotes often enough. I’m afraid I’m going to forget them! I read something I’d posted on FB a few years ago about Claire, who was 3 at the time. It was this:

This morning Claire (3) sitting on my lap, hugging me, kissing my cheek, giggling ... looks at me and says "Wouldn't this make a cute picture?!"

I had completely forgotten that she said that. When I read it, I had a vague recollection of it. So glad I wrote it down then, but I need to be better about doing that here! Who knows, Facebook may be a distant memory by the time our kids are grown, kind of like 8-track tapes or home doctor visits. Although they promise us that whatever we put on there will be saved forever … {cue scary music}.  We’ll see.  :-)

Here’s a picture taken of Claire right around then.

Trent is at that age where he has a quotable quote a couple of times a day. I just need a personal secretary to follow me around and help me out with things like this. :-)

How much longer?

 

I wonder how much longer will Grant come down the stairs in the morning holding onto his stuffed animals? For a long time, I hope. But I took a picture this morning just in case I’m wrong. (While I was taking this, Rachel wondered if I would take of picture of her if she came down holding her stuffed animals. Absolutely! Just try me!  ;-)

For the record, their names (from L to R) are:  Fuzzy Wuzzy, Whiskers, Gingery and Friend.

Little boys

Several years ago, after Grant was born, Mom and Dad got Mick a book called “What Little Boys Are Made Of” for a Christmas gift. It’s filled with little poems, scripture and words of wisdom about little boys.  The cover looks like this:

The book is filled with pictures that are similar in style to this cover. For years now, I’ve wanted to try to take some pictures of Grant that were modeled after the book, but just haven’t taken the time to do it. With the start of a new school year, I’ve been more aware of how much the kids are growing, especially Grant, since he is now 5 and will start kindergarten. So, I took advantage of a free evening with nice lighting and shot some pictures.

Typically, I prefer close-up shots because I love to see facial expressions, but I liked this one a little further back so the old barn door would be included.

He was a very cooperative model, especially considering the fact I had changed him out of his swim trunks into this outfit right before he was heading out to swim with the girls.

This next one has a fun Picasa filter applied to it called “Cinemascope;” I think he looks like a silent film star here.  At this point, he was looking for bugs, lost in his own little world.

Now, look closely at his expression in this next picture and imagine a light bulb over his head. This is the moment an idea came into his 5-year-old, little-boy mind.

I think it was just before this moment that he became aware of the sound of the shutter clicking and remembered I was there taking his picture. He looked up at me and smiled this smile and I snapped it real quick, thinking what a nice smile it was. Immediately after I took the picture, he broke into this completely silly expression and froze.

Right away, I realized he was posing for me. So, I took another one as fast as I could … and he did it again … and again, giving me every silly face he could conjure up.

 

I wish we had video of this because I think even the pictures don’t completely capture the hilarity of these moments. In spite of each huge grin or outlandish expression on his face, he was completely silent and frozen between each picture, waiting until he heard me take the picture, and then he’d make the next face and freeze again.

 

Inwardly, I was absolutely dying with laughter, but I held it together long enough to keep taking the pictures until he was all faced out.  :-D

 

I loved these so much, I had to crop each picture to be able to see his expression more close-up. Just imagine a completely silent, frozen boy making these faces and you pretty much have it.

    

   

   

I’ve looked at these pictures many times and they still make me smile each time. :-)  After all these crazy- face pictures, it might seem like an abrupt change to end with such a serious expression, but I love this last one. It’s my favorite of the group. Or maybe the Cinemascope one. Or the smiley one. Maybe I should just look through them all again. ;-)

Singin’ in the Rain

Earlier it start raining pretty hard and I looked out the window and saw Grant with one of the girls’ umbrellas. He was clearly enjoying the experience and I thought he looked so cute I grabbed the camera. Of course, Trent followed me onto the porch.

When Grant spotted Trent, he made a beeline for the porch, eager to share this fun experience with this little brother.

He passed off the umbrella, pleased as punch.

Trent made it about halfway down the path and apparently had second thoughts about walking under an umbrella during a driving rain.  :-D

So much for that!  :-D