James' 3rd Birthday

James turned 3 on Friday! We were so excited for his birthday because he LOVES birthdays. So first thing in the morning he woke up and saw his birthday sign. He loved it because it had a stop sign on it, which he loves.

He got to open a present before Dad went to work, then we had to take Dad to work so we could stop and get batteries for it.
That morning I finished James' cake. I have to say I am really proud of how well it turned out. James really loves Mickey Mouse so it was a big hit. When he saw it he said "It's Mickey Mouse cake. Where's Minnie." A few minutes after I took the picture I found James putting candles in the cake. Luckily he missed Mickey and just messed up the white frosting.
James helped get ready for the party. Yes he is wearing a black trash bag as a cape.
He got to have his favorite dinner, Brinner (breakfast for dinner). And while we were all still eating he went out and started opening a present. So we brought it in the kitchen and he finished opening it. It was a "boom mike" (scooter) from Grammy and Grandad. He was really excited about it.
After dinner we went and opened the rest of his presents. We got him a bike and he was so excited to open it.

After that he was done opening presents and the rest of the opening of presents was sort of like pulling teeth. So we basically opened them for him and he got to look at them at his own time.
After presents he got to plow out candles. This is his favorite part of birthdays so we were really excited.

My battery died just before he said his signature "Happy Birthday" so I was sad that I missed that. But he loved having the cake.

Once things slowed down and he had time to explore everything a little more he loved all his presents he got for his birthday. We love this little 3-year-old. He adds so much happiness to our lives.

Loving the Warm Weather

Since I last posted the entire family got sick, all on the same day. We thought it was something we ate but we couldn't figure out something we ALL ate, so it must have just been a bug.

Unfortunately Doug and I had to keep going with our lives, work and taking care of the boys, but James got to spend an entire day doing this:

And this:
He got that balloon as a reward for having such a great day, balloons are his favorite, and the next day he was sick. I thought the bath would be a good idea since both boys love them so much, but there is a lot that can go wrong when you are sick. Things like being too close to brother, James started crying so Michael started crying, basically it turned out not being such a great idea.

Now we are all feeling better and loving the warm weather. We have spent so much time outside this past week.
We put a fence up in the backyard (it is not quite finished in this picture) and it has made such a difference in our lives! I can just leave the back door open and James can go out and in as much as he wants. Also we don't have to spend our entire time chasing him around when we just want to sit out back and relax.
This week we have done a ton of yard work, went on our first bike ride, put up the fence, played outside every second we could, and went to the sand dunes to play in the sand, and also take a few buckets home to put in the boys sand box.

My Favorite Parenting Moment So Far

I can probably count on my two hands the number of times James has interacted with Michael. He has NEVER been the instigator of these interactions, until yesterday. That is why this is my favorite moment as a parent in the 3 years that I have been a parent.

Michael had crawled into the laundry room, which I was aware of, and I was somewhere else in the house. James came and got me, pulled me into the laundry room and stood expectantly by Michael. When I didn't do anything he grabbed my hand and put it on Michael, then I knew I was supposed to pick him up. So I did thinking James made a new rule that Michael was not allowed to play in the laundry room. We then followed James to the couch where he sat down and held out his arms to hold Michael! Woa, I never expected that. So I put Michael on his lap and this is what happened:

To explain, James is saying "My Feed Michael" I think that is because whenever I am feeding Michael and he tries to come and get me I tell him no because "I'm feeding Michael" also if you listen VERY carefully you can hear James tell Michael "don't put it in your mouth" when he pulls his thumb out. Some days are just really good days to be a parent.

The End of Birthday Season and Easter Fun

Doug's family came for their Spring Break last week. The Saturday that they got here was great weather, everyone that was outside got sunburned. Then the rest of the week had awful weather! Monday was my birthday and the end of birthday season. Too bad for James, he loves birthday season. Doug and the boys got me a dehydrator, which I love and already made two batches of beef jerky, and a gift card to my favorite craft store Porters, I am also very excited about that.

We had a fun week with Doug's family despite the weather. James loved going to the bouncy castles with his uncles, and Michael loved all the attention that he got from everyone, except he started this annoying habit of crying every time Mom came in sight. Oh well, it's nice to be loved.

Sunday was Easter. The Easter Bunny came and hid a bunch of candy for James. He didn't really understand that he should look around the room for candy, so eventually I just moved it all to the floor in plain sight and he picked it up and put it in his basket.

The Easter Bunny also brought a toy for me and Doug. Ok, it was actually for James, but I think he brought it because he knew how tired me and Doug were of constantly blowing bubbles!

One thing I want to know is why they put a handle on the bubble blower? Do we really want to encourage the kids to carry it around? One weird thing was that whenever we turned it on the reception on the TV went out. So we were excited when it ran out of bubbles and we could just watch conference on the TV without interruption.