Hannah's 4th Birthday Party

This year we were able to have Hannah's birthday party on her actual birthday.  We hosted the part at our house and in our back yard.  We usually try to let the kids choose their own theme, and Hannah chose "Rainbow Dora".  Dora is of course Dora the Explorer, which Hannah loves.  She also loves rainbows.  So she just combined those two.  So it should be noted that "Rainbow Dora" is not a thing.  She just wanted a party with rainbows and Dora.

But I think we pulled it off.  Meghan made a spread of rainbow-colored food, including rainbow Oreos, and six-layered Jello cups with each layer being a different color (though you have to hold them up to the light to see them).  We also were able to rent a bounce house with both rainbow colors and Dora, which was fortunate.

I asked her what she wanted on her cake, and she told me she wanted Dora, and a rainbow, and a bounce house, and glitter and sparkles.  So... yeah.  That wasn't going to happen.  I briefly looked into how I would make a fondant bounce house on a cake before I realized I should just try to do my best and not make her exact request.  So I made a cake that focused on rainbow colors and Dora.  I acquired three Dora figurines (thanks, Craigslist), and came up with a simple design that would let me have a lot of rainbow colors without having an actual rainbow on the cake (which is surprisingly difficult to implement).  My figuring positioning idea was to have Dora and Boots on top with Swiper the Fox doing his normal sneaky fox activity by sneaking up on them from behind.  However, this was way more difficult to implement than I imagined, as I thought I could just jab him into the back of the cake, but it turned out he was too heavy for that.  So (in the middle of the night before the party, of course, because that's when I do cakes) I engineered a solution involving a harness composed of cut bamboo skewers, dental floss, and super glue, and that allowed me to position Swiper exactly where I wanted him.  It was the first cake I've done that didn't involve fondant, but I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out.


The weather was perfect, so people were able to enjoy the outdoors or hang out indoors.

She was actually slightly disappointed there wasn't a bounce house on her cake, but she got over it and was overall pleased with it.

After cake, we did presents.  She was excited to get her gifts, and Benjamin was excited to be the one to bring them over to us to open.  He tried to predict what each one was, and each time he guessed it would be a "race track", but it turns out he wasn't quite right on any of them, as no race tracks were received.  But it was cute that he was wanting to be involved.  We had a really fun party, and we were thankful to have our family and friends there to celebrate with us.

Benjamin Turns Three!

Today we celebrated Benjamin's third birthday at Julie and Andrew's house.  They had a Hot Wheels/cars/automobile theme.  It was hot outside, and there were a lot of flies, so only Joshua was brave/crazy enough to eat outside.  The other sensible kids ate inside.

We then went downstairs to open presents.  After opening his presents, Benjamin got help from others, although Kirk's intentions were perhaps more altruistic than Clara's, as I think she just wanted to play with the toy too.

                               Meghan and Hannah as well as Joshua and I both ended up wearing similar outfits.

                                                                We got some good family pictures.

                                Mom and Ron made sure to get some pictures with Baby Daniel.

                                                                       Lucy was displeased.

Daniel was amazed by this birthday party thing and was probably wondering why he doesn't get one.  Be patient, little guy.  You'll get one in the spring.

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.

Brothers Golfing

 When my mom married Ron, I ended up with two new brothers. That could have turned out poorly. After all, I was going to be spending a lot of time with these guys for the rest of our lives, and there are many people who can't stand their family members. But it couldn't have worked out better. Matt and David are great guys. I love them as my brothers, and I also really enjoy hanging out with them. My sisters expanded the group of us guys by bringing Andrew and Kirk into the fold. Again, I struck gold. The five of us are the guys in our generation of the Nicholl clan, and I feel so blessed that I really like every one of them.  Matt and David will each have daughters by the end of this year (Matt sooner, and David later), and Andrew will soon have another son, so I wanted to organize an event for all of us to hang out before everyone's lives get busier.  Kirk is still in Houston with Joanna (for now - thankfully they'll be moving back some time this summer), so I knew it would just have to be me, Andrew, Matt, and David.

I'd heard good things about Topgolf, so I thought that would be a fun activity for us to do.  So tonight was the night that worked for all of our schedules.  Topgolf is really fun, because you don't necessarily have to be good at golf.  You play in a bay that looks out over an expanse of turf that has multiple targets worth different point values.  So even if you don't hit it very far, or if you slice it or hook it, there's still a chance you'll end up with some points.  We played for a couple hours and enjoyed some surprisingly good food and some frosty beverages.  We talked about random topics, and those of us with babies offered advice to those of us without babies.  And we smashed tons of golf balls all over the place.  Andrew started off really well, David was steady throughout, and Matt finished strong and held off a last-minute comeback attempt by me to win the title for the night.  It was a really fun night, and I'm really happy we were able to squeeze it in.