Joshua's Outdoors & S'Mores Birthday Party

On October 15th, we celebrated Joshua's birthday with a party at the Oak Shelter at Black Hoof Park.

He had said he wanted a Batman party.  I didn't do a fondant cake for Hannah's party, but the best design I could think of for a Batman cake worked a lot better with fondant, so that's what I did.  The skyscrapers on the side were a little rushed, as that was the last thing I did, so they weren't the best, but I was pretty happy overall with how the cake turned out.  I combined that with black and yellow cupcakes, and black (and gray) and yellow plates, plasticwear, and napkins, as well as some hanging decorations in the shelter to complete the theme.

The shelter was a great venue.  One thing that they don't do well is make it clear when it's reserved.  We had the shelter for the whole afternoon and evening, but when I showed up to decorate prior to the party, there were a couple other groups in there, including a pretty large wedding party.  But  I needed to get set up, so I let them know that we had it reserved, and they relocated elsewhere, which was kind of a lengthy process  This left me scrambling to make up for lost time, but thankfully Kirk and Joanna showed up early and helped me finish the decorations.  As you can see, the shelter was large, which we needed, since we had invited his whole class from school in addition to a few select kids from church (Grayson was the only one who could come), and his cousins, the Hansons, and Alex's kids and Alaina's kids, and the adults our family and also Halie.

Ron helped out by doing all the hot dog cooking, and Matt helped manage the bonfire, both of which were a huge help to me, as I had to manage many other things as the night when on.

When it was time to do cake, all the kids were drawn in like bugs to a light on a summer night.

And speaking of summer nights, even though it's October, the weather was unseasonably warm, so it was a very pleasant evening.  And speaking of lights, the lights in the shelter apparently come on automatically, and it seemed they came on way later than they should have.  It was quite dark for awhile, and I was getting concerned that the lights might not come on at all.  But finally they did.  In the meantime, one of our coolest decorations had their chance to literally shine, as we had some light-up balloons hung throughout the shelter.  They were regular balloons that you blow up, but they have little lights in them to make the balloons glow and flash in the darkness.

When we asked Joshua what  kind of party he wanted to have this year, he said he wanted it outside at nighttime, and he wanted s'mores (likely remembering the kids' joint party from last year).  That's what led us to Black Hoof, as it's a park we already like to go to, and one of the shelters they have, the Oak Shelter, has a huge firepit.  Again, thanks to Matt making sure it was ready to go, we had a nice fire in the firepit, which allowed us to cook s'mores (thanks to Halie for managing the s'more station).  They were a hit, because everyone loves s'mores, of course.

Finally we opened gifts, and Joshua got a lot of cool new toys and activities that he's very excited to get to play with and use.  It was really a pretty great party from every perspective.  The weather was great, and everyone had a lot of fun, especially our birthday boy, Joshua.

A Big Fourth of July Day

We has a really big day today celebrating the Fourth of July.  As usual, I tried to get some pictures of the kids in the outfits.

The first event of the day was the neighborhood bike parade.  We all meet at the pool, and then ride around the neighborhood on a route back to the pool, where the kids (and adults if they want to, which I did) get red, white, and blue bomb pops.  I took Hannah and Clara, because Joshua lost his privilege to go because of some decisions he made earlier in the morning.  Later while playing in the back yard, Joshua found a grass spider.  He always asks me if a spider is okay to hold and this one was, so I let him, which made him very happy.

We then had our traditional lunch of hot dogs (it's American!) and also some blueberries, and then we headed over to Mom and Ron's house, where we met up with the rest of the family.  Benjamin and Daniel were there, and Benjamin was excited to play with his cousins.

Here are two really cute pictures of the five cousins from the Leach side.  When we were ready to take pictures, Clara instantly declared that she should be the one to hold Baby Daniel, and we all agreed that she was the right girl for the job.

Clara made the rounds socially, as she tends to do.  Here she has fun with Grandpa Ron and then appears to be having some sort of dramatic conversation with Uncle Brent.

I took a few pictures of the Fouts family, and then we had our celebration of Ron's birthday (today) and Mom's birthday (a week and a half ago).

In the evening our family left to go to fireworks.  The Olathe fireworks show moved this year, as there is new construction where it used to be.  This year we parked at the K-State Olathe campus and walked a short distance to a place we thought would be close to the fireworks.  We weren't exactly sure where they would be shooting them off from, but we ended up with a pretty decent spot.  Next year we'll be able to position ourselves even better now that we know more.  In the picture of us, I'm not sure what's above Hannah's head.  It looks like one of the glow necklaces that's flying through the air.  Maybe someone flung it until the air right before I took this picture?  Yet it doesn't look like anyone did that.  I don't know.

This was an tiring day.  We did so many things and went so many places.  The kids were exhausted and all fell asleep on the way home.  But it was another great Fourth of July celebrating birthdays and our freedom.

Ron and Peg: 15 Years!

In 2011, to celebrate their 10th anniversary, Mom and Ron flew everyone out to Las Vegas for a huge celebration that involved everyone.  This year is the 15th anniversary, and while there was no particular event planned, Joanna decided to take it upon herself to leverage her newly accessible location (she and Kirk just moved back from Houston) to organize a surprise party for Mom and Ron.  She coordinated with all of us to come up with a plan that would work, which was no easy task, since it needed to be a surprise.  But she, and we, pulled it off, and today we all showed up at their house to surprise them.  Joanna had coordinated with us all to have us write messages to them, and she put them all in a nice book.
Joanna also was in charge of all the decor, and it looked great.  We even had a cake ready.

After we ate cake, we enjoyed the nice weather on the back patio and back yard.  Their expanded patio makes it easy to host everyone without anyone feeling cramped.

The most recent additions to the family, Lucy and Daniel, arrived ready to party!

The older cousins were a little more energetic.  And somewhat amazingly, they were all willing to stand in a line so we could get some pictures of them.   It was a really great party.  Joanna did a great job as lead organizer of coming up with the plan and then making it happen.  And we were all excited to celebrate the anniversary of the couple who made this awesome blended family happen.

Two Scottie Dog-Loving Girls

My heritage, like nearly every American at this point, is a mix. Mostly Norwegian, then Swedish, then Scottish, then Irish.  The Scottish part comes mostly from my Grandma Hall’s side.  She has always been proud of it, and I got the most exposure to it when we lived with my grandparents in ’88 and ’89.  I got to go to Robert Burns-related events, outdoor Scottish games (my first exposure to the awesome caber toss event), etc.  And of course my grandma has always had various Scotland-themed items around her house.  Partly because of this, I developed an affinity for the same things.  I think tartans are really cool.  Incidentally, K-State just unveiled their first official tartan.  And while I don’t know whether Scottish people think things like that are a nice homage to the Scottish heritage or an inauthentic, pandering knock-off, I thought it was pretty cool to have my school work to create something based on a part of my heritage that I love.  I’ve always liked tartans, especially after it was explained to me that they are all actually different and therefore are unique to each clan or whichever entity has registered it.  And then there are bagpipes.  Bagpipes are the coolest instrument on the planet.  I love hearing them any time the opportunity arises.  Aside from those, the thing that perhaps has most inundated popular culture is the Scottie dog (actually a Scottish Terrier).  People love Scottie dogs, and rightfully so.  

Hannah, as has been noted on this blog many times, is very picky about her clothing.  She flat-out refuses to wear many things.  But for the things she accepts, she latches on to some of them pretty strongly.  Meghan bought this Scottie dog outfit for Hannah at Costco. Hannah wanted it, but Meghan was worried she wouldn’t wear it because of the tights, but Hannah ended up loving tights and loving the outfit.  Hannah now wears it every chance she gets, which is any time she finds it in her drawer, which is immediately after it has been washed the previous time.  Every time she has worn it, I’ve thought about how my grandma would really like the outfit and would especially like that it’s basically Hannah’s current favorite outfit.  So today when Hannah wore it, I decided to drive the kids over to Grandpa and Grandma’s house so we could all hang out for awhile and also so Grandma could get to see Hannah in her outfit.  We had a good time there, and here is the picture of the two girls who each love at least one thing about Scotland.