My Family Loves It » Family Activities

Our birthday month!

Heather — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 21:57:04 +0000

October is a fun month around here with four of us having birthdays! Ethan was first and he had his second annual Lego party. Then it was me, John and now my BABY Jillian is about to turn three! I am prepping for her party tomorrow and I hope she is happy with it. She has been planning her “princess wand” party since our other birthday month in July! Its hard to wait through your three sibling’s birthdays when you’re so little! Maybe someday I will blog again about the parties I throw my kids because I LOVE party planning and parties. Seems I’m in the minority when it comes to always throwing my kids big friend parties every year and that is currently my biggest pet peeve! AND yes some years I have actually thrown TWO parties for a birthday because they are only young once and you can never have enough fun! Jillian is actually having a second present-free mini party on Monday morning with her old school buddies because that is her real birthday. So here is my birthday girl Jillian:

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Hexbugs are a HUGE hit at our house!

Heather — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:42:09 +0000

Ethan’s birthday party was last weekend two weeks ago and we were lucky enough to have been given a Hexbug Nano party kit for the kids to enjoy. We had the party at the gym in our local town hall and it was a great great great great party (according to the birthday boy). It was a Lego themed party but we set up a big Hexbug Nano table and it was a very popular spot at the party. We had 18 kids total so the Hexbug table was never empty! A few of the boys said they had some Hexbugs at home but I think Hexbugs were a new thing to most of the boys because several moms were asking me where to buy them! In case you haven’t heard of them either, Hexbugs are a neat little “bug” that is sort of like a toothbrush head that buzzes around and you can run them through neat tracks and have them battle one another (I know they have them in Toys R Us and I bet they can now be found in other toy stores as well). We had a huge Hexbug track system set up for them at the party. Well actually the kids made and remade and remade again a huge set up! At the end of the party the kids were excited to get to bring home their own Hexbugs and Lego figures. Now that the party is over, we have the Hexbugs on the coffee table in our family room and they are actually playing with them now as I type this review. I’m late posting this because our Mac died after the party, John got it fixed but we lost some of our recent pictures and it annoyed me not having good pictures from the party. But back to the Hexbugs, I am really happy with them because they keep all 4 of my kids busy, they are holding up extremely well and we haven’t even had to replace any batteries yet, the tracks are very well made and the kids love building new track layouts. They are a cute toy but also let the kids be creative constructing the habitats for their bugs. These Hexbug Nanos are such a hit at our house and Hexbug also makes other types of “bugs” that look fun!

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my BABY is TWO!

Heather — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 21:35:48 +0000

Happy Birthday Jillian! I can’t believe that you are 2 today! I am not crying about it like I thought I’d be but I really wish you could have stayed a little baby a lot longer. Instead you are the one who grew up the fastest. You have been out of diapers for months, are so independent and you talk a ton. What a grown up little girl you were crawling through the big kid tunnels at Chuck E Cheese today. Love you! Just wish I got a video of you singing “happy birthday to you ME”.

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HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY BEN!

Heather — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:40:15 +0000

Oh Ben I can’t believe its your birthday AGAIN! How are you growing up so fast? I love you tons. I hope you enjoy the day even though I am a rotten mom and am breaking our cinnamon rolls with a candle birthday breakfast tradition because I didn’t go to the grocery store this week. I will get them before Sunday so you can have them the morning of your party but I will feel incredibly awful tomorrow morning. Not awful enough that I am going to the store at 11:34 pm to go buy some but really close. Anyway I love you Ben and here are some pictures of you as you finished up being 5. It’s going to take me some time to get used to this 6 thing!

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Jamie is FOUR!

Heather — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:28:10 +0000

Wow Jamie turns 4 today! She actually stayed up on the 4th of July until after midnight last night and we sang happy birthday on the car ride home (we had a lot of fun at a friend’s house and it was hard to drag the sleepy kids away). Today we kept with our cinnamon roll birthday breakfast tradition and later we will be heading to Chuck E Cheese for more fun. Her Tinkerbell party will be on Sunday (she has been looking forward to it for MONTHS). This will be Jamie’s first solo party since normally we combine it with Ben’s party. She is inviting her closest preschool friends and her one other close girlfriend that she has had for years. I’m excited for the first super girly party I get to throw! The birthday girl is growing up so fast. John measured everyone recently and Jamie grew 1 3/4 inches since December! I love birthdays but I’m not such a fan of the kids getting older part! Good thing I have all the party stuff to distract me (we’ll have Ben’s party exactly a week later).

Jamie’s current favorites:

show- Caillou

toy- “Super Bunny” & Dino

food- grilled cheese

flavor- chocolate

friend- Greta

animal- goats?

color- purple

desert- birthday cake!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMIE! You are the best little 4 year old and I love you!

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Sprinkler and water balloons

Heather — Thu, 27 May 2010 22:01:01 +0000

The weather was HOT and humid the last 2 days. Yesterday I kept the boys home from school because I thought we could use a day off and it was a great day. Today we were back to school and it was Jamie’s last day of preschool for the year. After we picked up the boys from school we stayed at the playground like we normally do but there were hardly any other kids because it was too hot. I held out as long as I could and then brought them home to do the sprinkler and water balloons. It was crazy fun and educational too -Jillian worked on her colors. I tried to keep Jillian’s wheelbarrow stocked with one of each color and she said the names with me as I filled all the balloons. My fingers got pruney from all the filling. Its been my side mission lately to get all 4 kids in pictures together and I was able to get some goofy ones. Good afternoon but I didn’t make dinner yet and I’m on the computer now instead feeding Jillian. Oh well, John hasn’t left work yet anyway! Maybe I succeeded in tiring them out enough that I can give them a fast dinner and early bedtime?

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Sesame Place tips from our fun visit!

Heather — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:34:36 +0000

Thanks to Mom Bloggers Club and Sesame Place our family was given tickets to the opening day of Sesame Place’s 30th anniversary season!

We have never been to Sesame Place with the kids (and I’m sure its very different from the one time I went as a little kid) so it was a big adventure for us. The weather was hot and the kids were happy to alternate between the fun water rides and the dry rides and attractions. We hit the roller coaster first (3 times in a row) and the 3 bigger kids LOVED it (even 3 1/2 year old Jamie which surprised me). From there just went where the kids lead us and really didn’t do any planning with the map. I’m not sure that we saw the entire park, we never made it to any of the shows and we only saw a small part of the parade but I have no regrets since the kids didn’t know we missed anything. It was very nice that our Mom Bloggers lunch was the only planned thing on our agenda. We had a great lunch break under a pavilion with fans where we rehydrated and recharged for more fun. The kids really had fun until the last minute at 8pm when Oscar told us to go home! We were there over 9 hours straight and by the time we hit the road to drive home the kids were ready to get some rest. Oh its hard to sum up the trip in one post so I’m just going to end with tips for people who are planning a trip.

Our Sesame Place tips:

bring the kids dressed in their bathing suits and swim shirts, swim shorts like Jamie’s for girls are much better than regular girls bottoms (we packed the kids extra bathing suits in case they wanted to be dry but they ended up wearing the same ones all day)
bring your own stroller for kids 6 and under, they get tired and you want to have them use their energy on the fun stuff not having to keep up with mom and dad (and its great for storing the things)
water shoes or crocs (flip flops fall off too easily and you want something that can get WET)
SUNSCREEN multiple times (little face stick is handy and the spray kind for everywhere else so you can get it over quick and get back to the fun stuff)
your kids will get cranky when they are tired, be patient and ignore some things you wouldn’t normally put up with (can’t stand those parents that take the kids somewhere to have fun and scream at them the whole time!)
if a ride has a wait come back to it later, there were always good things open with short lines and by later in the afternoon some of the ones that were busy earlier were practically empty
plan to stay the whole day, it was long but so worth it and by the time we made our 3 1/2 hour drive home the kids were happy to be in the car sleeping!
try to go to the Counts Splash Castle during the hottest part of the day, it was the best thing for cooling off the whole family (except in our case we discovered 1 1/2 year old Jillian currently has a fear of water!)
John and I split up several times and it was nice to have our cell phones to text each other so we could easily find each other, we should have brought some zip lock bags to put his phone in for the wet rids though (I lost him a little while when I was keeping his phone safe when he took the boys on a wet ride)
if possible I think going during the week would be good so it is not as crowded but considering it was packed on opening day we really didn’t have trouble with that many long lines
HAVE FUN, we definitely did!

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Jillian is 1 1/2!

Heather — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:23:32 +0000

I don’t know how it happened but my baby is 18 months already! In honor of her 1/2 birthday yesterday we ate 1/2 a cake (and then finished the other 1/2 for breakfast today along with some cut up fruit). It may have just been a 1/2 birthday but the kid made a FULL MESS!

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Our woods

Heather — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:17:54 +0000

I love our little woods! I have to confess I don’t take the kids back there enough.

Its tough with Jillian so little and it makes me nervous to venture too far back without John, but Friday was was gorgeous and the 6 of us plus my father and brother took a little adventure through our stream and into our woods. I love it in the spring before all the weedy plants pop up and its all dried leaves and fun little deciduous things and moss. Lots of deer poop and even an owl pellet right on the lawn/woods border. Owls so close to our house is wonderful! Next spring Jillian will be 2 1/2 and I think that I will be able to take all 4 kids back there solo a lot more. After the woods/stream we stayed out in the yard playing and I got this cute picture of Ben in the sandbox but wow the boys need haircuts so my mom and I are heading out with them as soon as John gets home tonight (and of course IHOP after).

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Eagle Spotting

Heather — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:50:59 +0000

Yesterday on our way home from Lego club we decided to drive to a nearby reservoir to see if the Eagles had come home for the summer. I took the boys there 2 years ago and we had a fun little adventure, but didn’t see any eagles. This trip we hit the jackpot. We saw about a dozen bald eagles in total. At one point we counted 9 in the air while others were hanging out on the ice. We even saw 2 locking talons. The eagles were too high for good pictures, but we got a few decent ones.

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