Celebrate good times..COME ON!

Today we celebrated Brant's 3rd birthday party at McDonalds with our family and some of Brant's friends. Brant's cousins Molly, Hannah, Lynzie, Avery, Elissa, and Riley were all there as well as his friends Emily, Claire, Thatcher, and Elliot. Brant had a blast playing basketball and airhockey as well as playing in the play yard at McDonalds. He had a hard time keeping up with everything because he wanted to play with everyone, but couldn't figure out how to play with everyone at once since they all wanted to do different things at different times. The older girls all had fun playing the video games together and playing in the play yard. The younger kids all had the most fun playing basketball and airhockey. Thank goodness for Grandpa bringing along a lot of quarters to keep everyone playing and having fun. Denny and Caryolyn (our neighbors) came to Brant's party also along with his Aunts, Uncles, and his Grandma and Grandpa to celebrate with him. We are so blessed to have such a great network of family and friends and Brant's party just showed us all that. Everyone had fun and ate their Happy Meals had cake, and of course we opened presents. Brant had Bolt themed cupcakes that he picked out and the kids either had some of those or chocolate cake that McDonald's provided along with some yummy icecream. This party was a huge hit for Jason and I since they did all the set-up and clean-up and my house doesn't look any worse due to a party. I'm glad that it all went so well. Brant hasn't received his big gift from Mommy and Daddy yet, but he'll get it after nap today and I'll post pictures and hopefully video of that later. In the meantime here are some pictures and video from the party today.

Hoops Time

Cousin Riley

Thatcher (He learned to climb through the tunnels and slide, yay!)

Air Hockey

Playing with Grandma

Singing Happy Birthday

Blowing out the candle.

The Bolt cupcakes

Yum, ice cream!

Mmm..cupcakes too!

Licking the icing off the kitty from his cupcake.

Playing video games.

All the girl cousins on Daddy's side playing video games.

Opening presents

Admiring his new digital camera from Grandma and Grandpa.

Super Beasts Awards Cermemony

Brant has now completed another semester at the Little Gym. He will now be moving up from Super Beast to Funny Bugs and will be in a class full time without Mommy and Daddy it will be just his teachers. This semester they worked on gradually having us move out of the room to watch from the glass outside. He is doing really well, though some days of course are better than others with his listening skills like all toddlers. He really enjoys Little Gym, but this will probably be our last semester there, I think we are going to give ASI gymnastics a try this summer while I am out of school to see if we like it better. We took some pictures and video of the award ceremony and of him showing off what he can do after the ceremony and I'll post them here but they are kind of long. His expression during the awards ceremony was too adorable. I have really enjoyed watching him grow in this program and I'm so glad we had him enrolled in Little Gym. Here are some pictures and video.

Happy Birthday Batcher (Thatcher)!

Yesterday we went to celebrate Thatcher's birthday at McDonald's. Brant and Thatcher are just under a year apart in age and spend some time together since his mom (Angela) teaches next door to me. Brant and Daddy practiced singing the birthday song on the way and Brant had his own version he refused to give up singing consisting of singing "Happy Birthday to Batcher" over and over again. It was really cute.

Brant had such a great time at the party, and he is going to be having a party at the same McDonald's in just under two weeks and is already looking forward to going back. He played in the play area, played basketball or tried to anyway since it was too hard for him to reach the hoop eventually Angela and I put the boys up on the top so they could at least get the ball in over the barrier. He of course got his cheeseburger happy meal and fries and enjoyed them as well as the chocolate cake that was there after the food. Then it was time to open presents and Angela was going to let Thatcher open up the one from Brant first. Much to my dismay, Brant got all excited and started opening the present for him. In one of the pictures I'll post you can see it is open in the corner where Brant started it for him. Thatcher wasn't as interested in the opening though so it ended up being fine and all the kids helped him open the different gifts. They all looked so cute helping him open his presents since he didn't want to go after the paper like the other kids. Brant was also excited about getting a balloon at the end of the party and liked his orange balloon even though it didn't last long and ended up getting popped at at home soon after his nap. The party was a big success and I'm looking forward to Brant's party there in a few weeks. Here are some pictures from the birthday party.

Iced In!

Last Wednesday we had ice on the roads and school was canceled. We all stayed home in the morning together, and Jason went in to work around 11 when the roads got better. We took Brant outside to see what it was like outside since we don't get this kind of winter weather very often in Texas. He LOVED it he kept sliding side to side on the sidewalk on the ice telling us he was skating. I showed him the ice in the grass and he had a blast stomping in it and listening to the crunch and then investigated further and got closer to pick some up in his gloves. He also went out into the middle of the deserted street (with us with him of course) and did some "skiing" there too. It was so fun seeing him experience the winter icy weather, but we did finally take him inside after he kept trying to run on the ice, we didn't want to chance any accidents so we made him come in much to his dismay. Here are some pictures of our bundled up little man playing in the ice.