Batman Birthday!

Joseph is 5 now! Even before he turned 4, he told me he wanted a Batman cake for his fifth birthday, so we've known for a long time what we'd be doing for his birthday.

Unlike last year's 2-party billion-kids-invited extravaganza, this year's affair was quite a bit smaller.

We started the day with presents and breakfast. He got some transformers and Magna-tiles from grandparents that have kept him busy and happy the past few days, as well as a few other toys we've acquired the past few weeks. After breakfast, we went over to a ward member's house to pick up a pinata she made and then over to Walmart for candy to fill that pinata.

While Joseph watched a show, I decided to make him a new Batman cape out of a cheap T-shirt from Walmart and a new mask from some felt. It went a lot faster than last year! I then finished decorating his cake. I almost thought this would be the year that I would use fondant or at least piping bags to decorate his cake, but once again I opted to just use my fingers and various utensils. It worked.

Then, because I didn't know if that would be enough cake for both our family and all his friends (I really have no clue what kind of crowds I was expecting, as usual) I made brownies to take to the party as well. I tried something I saw online to give it a Batman theme, but it wasn't working as well as I hoped so I gave up halfway through.

Joseph just told me this picture looks a little good, but not really.

Joseph was happy to decorate the brownies anew. If you squint you can see Batman.

After a quick photoshoot, it was time to go to the park!

I used the same skyline as last year's. We had brought it with us in our move because I believe in the life-changing magic of having useful stuff. Also, that 5 balloon came from a friend who was out of town all week! Such a fun present!

Kevin was able to get off a little early so we went to the park with brownies, pineapple, and the pinata. The forecast for the day had changed about 6 times, but we were lucky that it didn't end up raining at all while we were there! It was a great afternoon to be outside. After we had some brownies and pineapple and pulled the strings for the pinata, the kids just played and played and the adults just talked and talked well into dinner time.

The kids loved the seesaw almost as much as the parents were terrified by it.

For dinner, we went straight from the park to nearby Chick-Fil-A. There was someone in a cow costume saying hi to all the kids. Matthew was so happy to wave to the cow from a distance, but the minute it got close his face froze in abject terror. It was pretty funny.

I never caught his terror face. This was his wary face I think.

And then we came home and had birthday cake. A tiny bit. We were pretty full.

And luckily for us, we had a barbecue Sunday where we could get rid of the rest of the brownies and redo the pinata to get rid of most of the candy.

It was a great day for a great kid! We love having Joseph in our family. He is inquisitive, thoughtful, patient, funny, and a great older brother.

Here are a few fun facts about him right now.

• He still likes to wear a different superhero shirt every day (with corresponding pants, underwear, and socks), which is actually starting to drive me crazy. I've tried to get him to wear other clothes, with mixed success. What works best is acknowledging the day but getting him to wear a different shirt. For example, today is a The Flash day, so he is wearing a Barry Allen shirt (the alternate ego of The Flash).
• He loves learning about just about everything. He is always asking how CDs work, or how various car parts work, or how parts of his body work. He told me the other day, "I know how they make underwear. They find a really soft fabric and then sew it together to make it into underwear."
• When he chooses to, he can read pretty well. He can sound out words pretty well and knows plenty of sight words. He also likes math pretty well, which of course makes me really happy.
• We've had fun lately with a YouTube channel with art tutorials (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5XMF3Inoi8R9nSI8ChOsdQ) and he's really liked having instructions to help with his drawing. I'll probably share some pictures in another post.
• He loves Primary and gives good answers there.
• He still likes to build things and take pictures of them so if they get knocked down he can rebuild them. The digital age is magical.
• He still has sweet dance moves and encourages me to exercise with him.
• He is good at playing by himself but prefers to have company. He often tells me "I just always want an adult there."
• He's reached equilibrium when it comes to foods. We haven't had to worry about losing foods much lately, nor have we gained many. That's okay.
• He is generally very patient with his little brother, which is sweet to see.

Basically, he is one awesome kid and we are so lucky to have him in our family!!!

Secrets

This afternoon, after Joseph used the bathroom, he came up to me.

"I want to tell you a secret." He then whispered in my ear, "I used soap."

I nodded with approval. Kevin asked if he could hear the secret too, so Joseph decided to whisper it to him, too.

Then I thought for a second. "Do you normally use soap?" I asked.

"Yes. I just don't want to tell you about it every time I do it."

Phew.

I guess we've sort of got an atmosphere of secrets around here. Christmas time is always like that, and this year Kevin's birthday had more secrets than usual.

I had decided to throw a surprise breakfast birthday party for him in honor of the big 3-0, and it involved a lot more secrets than I was used to.

"Kevin, with your birthday coming up, make sure you don't accidentally look at my email, okay? I'm coordinating with my mom a bit." I mean, I guess that was true, but in the end all he got was a phone case. What was really being protected was all the emails from guys in the ward.

"Why do you want to go shopping on my birthday? Is there something going on Saturday?" he asked once, his eyes narrowing.
"I want you to have Snickers for your birthday, and I may as well get other stuff while I'm out." I did get Snickers, but I also got supplies for his party.

Of course, I had to have reasons for those supplies.
"Did you mean to buy so many eggs?" he asked.
"I'm hoping we don't have to go shopping before our trip to Utah, so I got a lot."

"Why are you asking so many questions about what to make for breakfast Saturday?"
"I just want to make you something you'll really like."

"Why is there so much apple juice?"
"I really really like apple juice right now."

"Why are you vacuuming right now?"
"It has just been so cluttered all week and I want things totally clean for once."

"What are you looking for in the freezer?"
"Peas to cook with the hashbrowns. I can't find them." I eventually did find the secret stash of bacon though.

I had prepared an answer for all of his questions, but I still felt like the spider Joseph brought home from preschool on Thursday. He had had a lesson on honesty, and he had made a paper plate with yarn weaved all across it to look like a web, and in the middle was a spider. "Don't get caught in a web of lies!" it read on the spider. Good thing Joseph had other sources to learn honesty from this week besides me, I guess.

But finally this morning the secrets would be over. After a lackluster birthday for Kevin (I was gone for a Relief Society activity, for example), I was finally going to make his birthday feel special. A few minutes before 8, we heard the doorbell.

I answered it and there was one of Kevin's friends. Kevin looked at him in bewilderment.

"Surprise! You're having a birthday party right now! He's here to play games with you and eat breakfast." Kevin began to laugh. "Okay."

More people began to show up, and before too long there was Lord of the Rings risk in the living room and Dominion in the kitchen. They paused for some food and then kept playing til almost 11.

First time planning an Elders Quorum Activity was a success

He took the game very seriously.

After they left, Kevin turned to me with understanding.
"So that's why you put on jeans this morning."
"That's why you bought all the apple juice and eggs."
"That explains all the cleaning last night."
"That explains why I couldn't look at your email."

I explained that I had originally planned to have the party on his birthday at like 6 in the morning, and maybe arranging things so that he had to drive kids to seminary. Then he'd come back to a bunch of guys there to celebrate. But no one was keen on that idea, so we went for a Saturday party instead. 8 am was still pretty early for a party, but at least he wouldn't have all day to be suspicious.

"I had considered having you run to the store to get some orange juice or something so you'd be surprised when you got back, but I guess it sort of worked for you to just be surprised when the doorbell rang." He agreed.

All that had been secret had finally been revealed. The web of secrets and deception was finally dissolved.

Well, I guess there's still Christmas. And every time Joseph uses soap.

Nifty Fifty

Last month, the boys and I headed to Utah for a week to celebrate my mom's 50th birthday. Everyone not on a mission managed to be there, so it was a lot of fun.

I've talked before about how awesome my mom is, and my sister did a fun tribute to her as well, so this post will be more of a recap of what we did while we were together.

Here are some highlights:

• Not being on an airplane anymore.
  

  

  This was such a lovely, welcome sight . . . for the last 20 minutes.
• Sitting on soft Kentucky bluegrass. Seriously the stuff feels like velvet compared to the poky grass in the Midwest.
  

  

  
  

• Joseph surviving this slide.

  

  
  

• Meeting my 9-day-old nephew G., who is pictured here, but only sort of.

  

  
  

• Enjoying the lovely Logan River trail at its loveliest.

  

  
  

• Hanging with my niece (and soul sista) K., who mistook me for her mom enough to not be scared of me.

  

  
  

• Seeing Kaylie laugh at this sign.

  

  
  

• Going to a splash pad and running into our friends the Tanners there! (not pictured. oops.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Taking pictures of beautiful baby G.
  
  
  
  

  

  There are about 40 other pictures but I figured you couldn't handle the cuteness overload.

• Heading up to Utah State with my dad and sons. Kevin's train is still in safe hands.

  

  
  

• Watching my talented brother-in-law Matt win a few matches of tennis. He's pretty much famous.
• Sending Joseph to the backyard to go camping for two nights. (The other nights he slept diagonally in my bed, so this was really nice!)

  

  
  

• Dealing with Joseph going to bed at 10 pm Mountain Time and waking up . . . too early. (Actually, this was not a highlight . . . it was part of most every day. My poor child.)
• Seeing all my family members sleep-deprived, stressed, not feeling well, etc. and still trying oh so hard to be polite and patient with each other. And mostly succeeding.
• Attending the temple when my brother received his endowment. Spain is going to get an awesome missionary!
  

  

  
  

• Vacuuming a lot.
• Reaping the blessings of having a sister on the mission such as being able to borrow her swimsuit. (And lots of her other clothes made it home with me.)

  

  
  

• Enjoying a beautiful day at Bear Lake, complete with some sugar-coma shakes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  This girl had no fear.

  
  
  
• Having my mom give my boys haircuts because it always looks better when she does it.
• Driving very fast on I-15 down to Orem and still getting tailed. It was crazy land! (But I was never scared, which was a blessing.)
• Getting to see most of Kevin's family!!! They were so kind to all meet up with us, even for just a few hours. I don't think I have enough good things to say about them.
• Watching Matthew love on Craig's shirt.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Watching Joseph play with his cousins.
• Watching Joseph play with second cousins.

  

  At one point, the three big boys all had their legs out and Matthew crawled through, but by the time I grabbed my camera they were just doing this.

• Seeing my grandma. She even fed us dinner!
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Attending my sister's stake play. I think this was one of my favorite versions of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Just the right amount of silliness. And it is the perfect musical to take a toddler to, even when it's way past his/her bedtime. (Especially with a child named Joseph.) And of course, Leslie was the most fun to watch of all the cast members.
• Talking with Spencer on the ride home about dating and whatnot.
• Not getting the gum and sunglasses stolen from my car.
• Not hiking the Wind Caves.
• Still vacuuming a lot.
• Not brushing my teeth with tap water from Mexico.
• Not buying my mom a tree because it was a rainy day. (We really did consider, it Mom!)
• Hanging out with Leslie.



The rain hadn't started by the time this picture was taken, but it started pretty soon after.

• Eating at Elements for my mom's birthday meal. (It wasn't actually her birthday, but we counted it.)
• Playing the "Person Game" with my family. We are hilarious.

  

  And cute.

• Celebrating K.'s first birthday with cherry chip cake. She ate a lot of it, and what she didn't Matthew ate off the floor for her.

  

  Happy cousin story time.

• Only being in the room for the cool parts of "Independence Day" when my dad was watching it.
• Being introduced multiple times at my parents' ward as Kyra Moon Moon (never by my parents, I might add). This never happens when I go to Duchesne.
• Losing a wipes box I had just found/claimed as my own/received as a gift from a friend who said she didn't need it anymore even though it probably wasn't the one I had lost. (I had been pretty excited to have it back, so it was funny that I lost it so fast.)
  

  

  Bright side is, I got to see him that day, too. He's cuter than a wipes box.

• Watching people make boats to sail down a nearby irrigation ditch.

  

  

  Joseph might have been cheating.

• Watching people extricate the boats from a long tunnel in the ditch using sticks and poles of all varieties.

  

  I think the milk jug was the main culprit, but there were others.

• Going on a walk with my parents again on the Logan River Trail, and having a picture taken by the Logan City mayor who was walking by.

  

  
  

  
  
  
  

• Watching the end of a really cool lightning storm.
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• Going through TSA Pre Check. It's been a while!
• Not being on an airplane anymore, and most importantly . . . seeing Kevin again!

It was a great trip, and at least 70% of the time it made me want to live in Cache Valley. (The other 30% of the time was probably when I was sleep-deprived and grumpy and trying to get Joseph to eat foods he didn't want to, so those probably shouldn't be factored into the statistics that much.)

Happy birthday mom! Thanks for letting us celebrate with you!

A Superhero Birthday!

Joseph loves Superman and superheroes in general. (Except Buzz Lightyear. Hard to believe, but it's true . . . he has said multiple times that he's not cool anymore.) So it was pretty easy to pick a theme for his birthday party.

I've typically been someone who's shied away from elaborate birthday plans, at least in theory (though I had no track record of simple parties since this was the first I'd ever thrown). I knew all along that all Joseph wanted was a Superman cake and presents from his friends. But then as I started planning the games, food, and decorations I had a lot of fun, so it ended up being a little more elaborate than what I would have guessed a month ago. I was able to keep to my rule that I wasn't allowed to do anything that I didn't really want to do, which is why the kids didn't get any party favors (more on that later).

Anyway, here's what I did!

Decorations

While Kevin and Joseph were at a Father/Son campout, I pulled up "Once I was a Beehive" and watched it while making a Superman cityscape. Hooray for construction paper and glue sticks!

They also came in handy for some birthday banners.

And of course, the streamers from my birthday were still up. Because we never take decorations down as a rule.

We also had some of these again since Joseph remembered them from last year.

Food

I hadn't wanted to feed people lunch/snacks, but as I thought about it I decided it would be more fun than hard.

Isn't the Internet great?

(Most of these came from Google, but I did come up with the laser vision carrots by myself. Unsurprisingly, they were not a success.)

Cake

As promised, I made a Superman cake. Actually 2 of them.

Turns out . . . I threw two parties. We are just so blessed to have so many fun kids all born the exact same year as Joseph, plus a few more the year before or after, that I ended up inviting almost 20 kids (with all but 4 showing up). And that requires two parties. (And even then, there were a few more who I wanted but I would start panicking about the thought of more kids and have to tell myself no. There's a point where the difficulty in inviting more children stops being logarithmic and starts being exponential, to put it in math terms.)

So yeah. 2 cakes. And then I worried that there wouldn't be enough cake, especially if some parents stuck around, so we had some backup cupcakes too.

Inside each cake was a layer of yellow cake (with a tiny bit of rainbow added from food coloring I threw in) and a layer of chocolate cake.

Costumes

Joseph has wanted a cape ever since he watched Incredibles (which seems backwards, but whatever), and we've usually just tied a blanket around. But for his birthday I decided to make a real one.

To make it, I cut the sleeves and front off of a medium T-shirt, added velcro to the collar, and voila!

Sorry . . . this is the best picture I've taken of it so far

To make a mask, I traced two pieces of felt, cut them out, and sewed a piece of elastic in between. Simple, right?

In theory, yes. But after a little bit of trouble with my sewing machine I ended up only making 4 masks. There was just no point, I decided.

But hey! Traced pieces of felt make great party favors for the moms!

Games

One tricky part about having two parties is planning for different weather throughout the day. The day before, there was a 50% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon . . . which meant I had to be prepared for anything! By the day of the party, I had a pretty good list of both indoor and outdoor games.

For Party 1, we started off with an obstacle course outside. They had to put on a cape and mask, jump from chalk circle to chalk circle to avoid hot lava, run on some zigzags, run through some trees, and then go through a tunnel made out of a cardboard box.

To be honest, it was a little bit of chaos. My friend described it as herding bumblebees. It was hard for them to wait in line, and when I added more chalk and more tunnels to make it go two at a time they just got more confused. But I think they still had fun.

We then had another relay race where the kids had to carry water from a bowl to some water bottles. The team that filled the water bottle first got to run over to the chalk fire and extinguish it. Again, the concept of racing seemed a little beyond them, as did waiting in line, so the kids who were interested kept at it and the kids who weren't found sticks and acorns to play with. No worries. When one of the water bottles was full (enough), we all took turns pouring the water on the chalk and ultimately grabbed the big bowl of water to douse it completely. By then it was 80 something degrees, sunny, and humid, so we were all glad to go back inside. I didn't think they would concentrate any more, so we just opened presents and had cake. And then it was time to be done!

Between the two parties, I cleaned a little, checked the guest list again, panicked when I realized I hadn't done a very good job of making sure other adults would be there, and read some Beezus and Ramona to psych myself up for the impending doom. (It turned out there were 2 adults there most of the time, and one of them took care of Matthew so I didn't have to. Phew!)

For Party 2 . . . well, it started a bit early since all but one of the kids were neighbor boys who play in our basement pretty often. (I have probably made it sound like they always hang out here all the time, but I think there's at least one house they frequent a lot more often, and 1-2 more that they play at a lot too. So it's a good system.) When 3:00 hit, they came upstairs for the party.

This time I started with an indoor game, even though the thunderstorm never materialized. I turned on some superhero theme songs and had them dance. When the music stopped, they all had to freeze except the designated superhero, who crawled through their legs to free them. He would pass the cape and mask on to the next kid, and we'd do another round. Some of them decided instead of dancing to find the other 3 masks that I'd made but hadn't found a use for, so before I knew it they were basically all superheroes rescuing each other and not doing very much dancing. No worries.

Then we went out and did the obstacle course.  In contrast to the first party, there was no difficulty getting them to do the course. Around and around and around they all went in a line of 7 boys. Across the chalk rocks! Along the zigzag! Through the tunnel! And again! I lost track of how many times they did it. After a few minutes they petered out and started to scatter. Time for the next activity!

The fire-extinguishing water bottle game went pretty well again, though it also seemed to go pretty fast. When I went inside I was shocked at how early it still was. Joseph opened presents lickety split, and it had barely been a half hour since the party started. Time for more games!

They didn't seem that interested in Hot Potato Kryponite (using a piece of crumpled up tin foil), so that lasted for maybe 3 minutes. Welp, I thought, time for cake and snacks. Once all of that was done, the party had only lasted an hour. There was still no sign of rain, so I said, "The rest of the party is a water party!" So they all ran back to their houses and put on their swim shorts and played with a hose for the rest of the afternoon. Really, that's probably what they wanted all along.

When all was said and done, we were left with basically two halves of the two cakes, nearly two dozen cupcakes, a lot of rice kryptonite treats, and a whole lot more presents than I was expecting since I put "no presents" on the invitation (edit: it only made it onto one invitation! Oops!). So, wins all around, right?

And Joseph was happy. So that's what matters most.

We sure like him.