September Birthdays

Well September is shaping up to be just like March in our family as far as birthdays are concerned. The weekend before last we celebrated my niece's sons birthday. This weekend we celebrated Syd's real birthday (she had her party over a month early so she could have a pool party), my nephew Caleb's and then my mother in law and my brother in law's birthday. The weekend was off to an early start Friday when I took Subway and cupcakes to Syd's school and had lunch with her. We enjoyed the silly antics of her second grade class as they sang Happy birthday to her. As I was preparing to leave her to finish out the day, I heard her teacher say she could give me one last hug. As I turn around she's balling because she wanted me to take her home. I told her I wanted her to stay and do her math that she was about to start. I left her unhappy but reminded her I was taking her to Libby Lu after school. I had told her I would take her and a few friends but due to our busy weekend and one friend's dance classes, we ended up with just one friend- not that I'm complaining.


We ventured out to Barton Creek mall and braved all the ACL traffic in plenty of time for our 5:00 appointment. Once there Syd and Hannah looked around until it was their turn to be pampered. It started with blue nail polish for Syd and pink for Hannah, then hair and makeup. Once the girls were glammed up they got to pick out 5 items to put in their backpacks and another accesory. The both opted for tiaras even though they had selected the "rockstar" hairdo. After all the selections were made, they got to pick a song to dance to with the staff. They picked some kind of shuffle and then off we went after picking out a few extra birthday gifts to California Pizza Kitchen. So let me just say that Hannah is only a few months younger than Syd but she is quite a bit bigger. She had a walkathon at school and she was very clearly making up for the lost calories. I have never seen a child consume food that quickly and she wanted dessert so we ordered fruit for our kiddos and a yummy brownie for her. Jake was thrilled because while we were at Libby Lu he got some cute new Vans with flames on them and a Star Wars Pez dispenser which he promptly ate all of one pack as soon as we were packed in the car.

Before After

Jake and his cool Vans!

Syd stayed the night at Hannah's on Friday and just as I was leaving drama errupted over what activity they would do. Syd wanted a fashion show and Hannah did not, the end result was a compromise with Hannah's mom helping clean her room and then the girls agreeing to put all the stuff away. Oh yeah I forgot to mention the debate we had over whether Syd could take her new makeup case with her to Hannah's. Happy to report that I won that one.

Saturday morning Syd woke up early to go to Hannah's volleyball game at the YMCA and then she met us at the T-ball field for Jake's first t-ball game. It was a great game, watching three years olds fight for the ball and very few tears. The only issue is that there is a quite aggresive child on Jake's team that was diving for the ball and he landed on Jake and another child at one point and also almost swung the bat and hit another child- when he was not actually up to bat. The child also happens to be almost twice the size of all the other 3 year olds, he looks like he's around 5 and of course the mom says nothing to the child and is oblivious.



After a quick trip to Barnes & Noble so Syd could pick her present from John's dad & Step mom, we ran to my brothers house for barbeque in honor of Caleb's birthday. I stuffed myself on everything from dove to ribs and yummy spinach dip, oh yeah and Scooby Doo cake. After that I picked up John and we headed to Playland skating rink to finish Caleb's celebration. Oh my gosh, I had not been there in oh so many years. It still looked like I remembered it when I last skated in it. Jake tried skating and quickly gave up. Syd skated the entire time but she was permanently affixed to the rail for support. She only fell a few times and I did not skate with her, John was the brave one, and I couldn't help Jake much while I was falling all over the place anyway.

Sunday was another celebration this time at our house where John grilled some burgers for his family and his mom's best friend. It wasn't bad other than the drama we have had with Rooms to Go over our new dining table that was shipped with no hardware to assemble it. It was delivered about a week and a half ago and after trying to get the right hardware, John assembled it with what he had and we ate on it. We just got a call today and they are going to be exchanging it. Oh and by the way, I don't know what I was thinking getting a glass table with young children. We spent quite some time trying to clean all the little finger prints off the table so I went out and bought a bunch of new placemats and it has helped some but not completely. Oh and we may consider leaving the plastic on the new chair for Jake because we also now have tiny little finger prints showing up on the chairs. Maybe we should have stuck with something that was a little more child friendly even though the salesperson promised the cleaner that came with the chairs would clean them. I guess it works but I also made one worse by leaving a large ring where I had been scrubbing... oops, at least I think we're getting new chairs when they exchange. If not I will have to keep scrubbing it. So to sum it all up, I think we're done with birthdays until November.