Jacob's First Birthday Slideshow....

A little commentary before the show... the hit of Jacob's birthday was an Elmo Birthday balloon that Daddy brought home. He LOVED it, I wish I had my video camera ready when he saw it for the first time. His eyes lit up, he squealed, and got so excited. He hugged it repeatedly and kept bouncing up and down. You'll see in one picture he was holding on so tightly with a look in his eyes that dared anyone to try and take his balloon! The rest of his gifts paled in comparison. He drug it around all night and was so excited this morning to see that it was still here!

As for the cake, Jacob wasn't really into making a mess with the cake. He touched it, tasted it, but there was no hardcore head smashing, up the nose, in the hair kinda action.... at lest from Jacob. Hannah and Ashley; however thought putting a face in the cake was fun. Ashley was the subject of a cruel joke by mommy and was too upset to have her picture taken. After watching them put their face in the cake a few times ever so delicately, I decided to push her head in a little further. She didn't think it was so funny. I felt really bad afterwards... Hannah tried to make her feel better by letting me do it to her, but it was too late. The damage was done.

Anyway I wanted to try this out... take a look as I'll probably make the photos in flikr private in a few days. I have no idea how to fix the order... so they aren't sequential, oh well!

It's my party... and I'll cry if I want to!

Happy Birthday little man! I can't believe a whole year has passed since he was born! I feel like it was...well, yesterday. For breakfast, we made pancake birthday cakes and sang. We're trying to get him ready for the messy cake tonight. I don't know if he'll be into it or not. Anyway, we failed miserably at using the heart mold to make heart shaped pancakes... but still had some pretty darn good pancakes nonetheless! Unfortunatley, Jacob has been sick with a cold all week and his eyes are still tearing. So he was not really crying, but still looks a little pitiful!

And here's one with Ashley... it was her idea to make the pancakes (and yep, she and I have a cold, too-- we're pathetic).

More of the day later!

World Thinking Day

On Sunday, Hannah's brownie troop participated in World Thinking Day. It's an event where each troop picks a country and presents it to the other troops (yep it's mostly the parents doing the work, but the girls did help). The toops rotate around to all the countries, making crafts, tasting food, learning facts, and getting their passport stamped at each country. Hannah visited 16 countries on Sunday. After a few rotations of learning and crafting, the girls got a break to spend their coins at the food table tasting food from selected countries. It was really cute! She had a lot of fun, but she was exhasted when it was over!

Here's her troop with their Italy sign before the opening parade.


Here Hannah is making a noise maker at the Kenya table.



Here she was making a paper lantern at China.


At South Korea, she smelled the kimch'i. I don't think she liked it!

Here the girls were learning about New Zealand.

After they were done, we asked them what their favorite country was-- they all agreed it was the "food table" (although Hannah later said it was Barbados because you could wear a bathing suit there). Such a fun day!

Our First Geocaching adventure

Geocaching is a high-tech, treasure hunting game where you use a GPS to hide and seek containers. Some containers have simple logs that you can sign to show that you were there, others have pogs or treasures that you can take, others allow you to take something but leave something in return. You can find treasures close to you on this site:

Geocaching

We chose what we thought was a simple hunt... but since we didn't quite know how to use our GPS it was more difficult than we anticipated. A beautiful day turned windy quickly so we had to bring Jacob home. After some lunch we tried again. We went to the spot, but convinced ourselves that the tree containing the cache had been cut down. Luckily, Hannah is a good detective because she is the one who spied the cache in a nearby tree. It was fun and got us out of the house! Here's our detailed account of the hunt:

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We start out at a local ballpark, the hint was that it was close enough to the park to be a challenge to find if there was a game going on, but secluded enough to still be able to find it without interfering with the game.

Marc realizes he's not quite sure how to work the GPS.

Shortly after this, the wind picks up and we go home for lunch. Marc downloads some updates to the GPS and we go back...

Here Ashley is ready to give up.

Hannah finds it!

This is what it looked like:

And here's the whole gang (minus me)!

And just the girls!

Free Rice for the hungry...

My sister-in-law introduced me to this online "game" that tests your vocabulary and allows you to help the hungry at the same time. Read up on it, it's legit, and a lot of fun.

Free Rice

... and since I can't post without a picture... here's one from when Jacob was first learning to eat, what else, RICE! I thought it was appropriate :) Have a great Monday!

Paper Crafting...

So my girlfriends and I have started a "craft night" to be held once a month. It is really an excuse for us to get out of the house, chat, drink wine, and hopefully learn something new. To kick things off, I signed up to teach the first one. In honor of Valentine's Day, we made these cute paper topiaries as found on my new favorite blog, Heather Bailey's "HELLO my name is Heather" blog. She is just oozing with creativity and talent. So here's the link to the Globe Valentine Ornaments, but if you click on the "How To" tutorial link in the right column, you'll find the directions for the topiaries which aren't limited to Valentine's day, they're very cute for anytime.

Paper Globes

This globe turned out so cute (thanks to Trace-Ann generously giving me some of her beautiful paper) that Hannah wanted to take it to her teacher... she was so proud walking it to school today!





And the cute Valentine's tags can be found at Heather Ann Designs:

Valentine's Cards and Tags

We printed 10 to a sheet, cut them out, punched a hole in the edge, and tied them to little paper treat bags that the girls put together for their classmates. I know, I somehow turn even the simplest things (buying store bought Valentines and signing a name would have been too easy) into a project :0 We had fun, though!

The first ride on the swing!

Today was pretty nice weather-- surprisingly! So we went to the park down the street for Jacob's first ride on the swing. At first he wasn't too sure about it. I actually pushed him a little too hard and it scared him-- poor baby, bad mommy! Once we got the speed under control, he was hooked. When it was time to go get the girls off the bus, he kept pointing back at the swing-- that's his way of telling us what he wants, the kid may never need to speak! Of course I had to post a couple more from the slide (although you can't really tell he was on the slide).

Oh and here's one of those natural and real shots when siblings are really enjoying each other. It is rare to catch two smiling at the same time at our house. One's usually having a laugh at the other's expense.