Happy 5th Birthday My Littlest One!!

Do you remember when you turned 5?  Did you have a party?  Was it a big event or a quiet family one?  Or was it both?  I can't remember when I turned 5.  I know I lived in Utah.  I believe I had a birthday party, mainly because there are pictures of it!  I know it was at my house and since I'm a summer birthday, water and swimsuits were involved.  This I know because of the pictures.  

Now days I don't think very many kids have birthday parties at home.  If they do it's pretty rare.  Last year we did two parties at home for Sydney and Noah.  This year is Jacob and Abby's party time.  They are turning 5 and 10.  Pretty big days.  Anyway we asked Abby what she wanted for her birthday and she chose gymnastics.  They do parties almost everywhere these days.  So for $125 Abby and 11 of her friends and family can play in the gym for and hour and then have goodies and open presents for 1/2 an hour.  It was perfect and not expensive.  And just the right amount of time.  I didn't have to entertain anyone and the kids had a blast.  I also didn't have to clean up after either!  Awesome!!!!  We have done some of these kinds of birthday's in the past and I have to say so worth the money and so easy!  That leaves me the question of are we getting lazy?  But that's a question to answer another day....why?  Because this party was a blast!!!

Jacob taking a swing on the rope.

Jacob climbing the rock wall.  Big shock there.  He has loved to climb since he was a little kid.  I would find him climbing the door jams and the pillars in the house.  Which makes it really hard to clean since he'd go to the ceiling.  

Noah sitting on the wall.  Oh wait he's on the trampoline.  

I love this picture of our nephew Jack!  That is pure joy.  He is flying!!

Abby's BFF (best friend forever) Megan, from school.  

Ah there is the birthday girl.  so cute.  

Not sure if she's saying "I'm cool" or "I hurt my butt", either way Abby is hurting her face in the back ground.  Yes those are my daughters.  

Abby's friend's brother.  Yep we had others get in on the action too!

Jack levitating.  He's magic!

Cousin Lucy swinging on the rope.  Looks like fun!!

Megan's turn on the rope!  It'll hold I promise.  

Syd made it to the top of the rope climb.  Good job girly!!

Abby's friend Brynley.  The trampolines were a huge hit!

Megan on the trampoline.  I wish I could still jump.  Now I get a little motion sick.  Getting old isn't fun!  Turning 5 is super fun!! 

Abby rocking the beam.  

Cousins and friends.  

Swinging!

Posing and swinging!  Girls are so different than boys!

Still swinging!  Let someone else have a turn already!

There we go!  Everyone loving the rope. 

Jacob.  Hi Jacob!

Yep there were Hula hoops too.  Maybe some artistic gymnasts?  

Lining up to check out the other side of the gym.  

Noah in the bar pit!  The perfect place for the big guy!

Mom's and dad's got in on the action too.  And little brothers!

Apparently it's never too early to fly! 

Jacob proving he can climb the rope while it's swinging!

Sydney showing her skills at casting.

Coming out of a back hip circle.  Nice job girly! 

Not to be outdone by her sister Abby showing some bar skills. 

Posing, but still super cute.  

The other favorite the foam pit!  

go Jacob!!  He likes to run and see how far to the end he can go.  

Abby's friend Decker!  

Bar pit swinging!

Dave has always called Abby little frog.  Now you know why!

Still climbing things.  Such a monkey.  Abby said she wanted an animal party.  She got one with Jacob.  

Swinging! 

And swinging...there were two ropes. 

They had to try out both.

Syd doing her front flip into the pit.  

Lucy showing some skills on the beam.  She was taking dance but I think there might be some gymnastics talent there. 

Finally some cupcakes.  The sheep cupcakes were the favorites.  So cute.  

Opening presents.  She got so many great things.  She loved everything.  The funniest thing was after we got home.  Dave and I had to run to the store to get food for dinner and we get a call from Noah asking when we will be home.  We can hear talking in the background and ask what's going on.  He tells us that Abby opened both the ferby's she got for her birthday and they were currently talking to each other in "furbish".  Noah couldn't wait for us to get home.  The bad thing about ferbies?  There is no off switch.  They can talk for hours.

It was a fantastic day and everyone had a wonderful time.  I can't believe my baby is 5.  I sure do love her!

The Pinewood Derby from January!

Nothing like being 5 months late in posting!  Here is the pinewood derby that was in January.  Jacob was our only entry this year seeing as Noah is now in the 11 year old scouts.  Jacob wanted to have a cool but fast car this year.  He decided he wanted to have a mario kart car.  

Dave and Jacob worked very hard to make his car look just like Mario's with the exception of the J on the front.  If you can't guess which one it is... It's the one with Mario driving.  

Look at Mario ready to go!!  Everyone had some big smiles on their faces.

As you can see Mario beat pokemon in the battle and came in first in that race.  

My two boys.  Noah got to help run the cars from the finish line to the start.  It was lots of fun for him since he didn't have a car this year.

Mario did pretty well.  He placed 8th out of 20 cars.  That's pretty great!  It was a fun night for all and everyone really loved Jacob's car.  I'm not sure what he is going to do next year, but it'll be hard to beat his great car this year.

Finally!!

I finally downloaded the pictures!!  Now I have to go thru them and find the ones I want to post.  But really I downloaded the pictures!!!

 Here is a little sneak peek.  We have these windows that are just below the ceiling in our bedroom.  They don't have blinds on them so when the sun comes up, our room lights up.   One morning this is what I woke up to.  It looked like the sky was on fire.  I looked out the window and the trees were glowing.  It was crazy and gorgeous.  Truly amazing this world God created for us.

 

Then it being Washington the sky clouded over and it was gray all day.  But what an incredible sunrise.

A little note from the worst blogger ever!!

Wow I have been stinktastic at keeping up with the blog this year.  I need to make it a little bit more of a priority.

As usual with a family that is large compared to most, we have been super busy.  There are a few things going on that have been trying our patience.  Last year, in I don't know what month we put an offer in on a 2 acre piece of property on Cottage Lake here in Woodinville.  They accepted our offer and we were super excited to hopefully live on a lake.  We then started the feasibility on the lot.  That here means that we have 60 days to make sure we can build the house that we want where we want.  It also means they have to test it for wetlands, and see where the best place to put the drain field is, since everything here in Woodinville is on septic.

Well it took a few months but the county (good old king county - the turds) decided that if we wanted to build the house we wanted on that lot we had to plant tons of wetland plants and pay 25,000 bond to basically protect the wetlands and then they were going to monitor us for 3 years.

It was such a pain and it turns out we still couldn't build what we wanted so we pulled out of that lot.  Thank heavens for feasibility studies.

Well the same day we took our offer off the table we put another offer in on another lot.  This lot is actually owned by King County.  I know glutten for punishment.  This lot is bigger and on a prime spot here called Hollywood Hill.  It has been in the works since November.  We should find out no later than June 15.  This has caused us to learn patience.  I have always been ok at waiting, but I really don't like the feeling of being in limbo.  Not sure what I should work on or where I am going.

Anyway just about 6 more weeks to go.  It's kind of like a having a baby.  Just counting down.  But we are excited to build the house of our dreams and settle down.

On a weird little side note I have been using the word super more than I should.  It's like the word "like" that everyone uses for me.  I may need to get some help.  So sorry if you get stuck in the "super" crossfire.  I'm working on it.  Super hard!!