Taking the Scenic Route

She was so excited to bake her cake, I couldn’t resist grabbing the camera to memorialize it.  She chose Strawberry flavored cake and, although we helped her with measuring ingredients, she is the one who did most of the mixing.

My proud little baker.

We sat around the table, laughing and telling stories for a few hours. It was magical.

And, on her last evening here, Zane snuggled up with her on the couch. Zane doesn’t do this with very many people, so it was a really special momment.

We had SO much fun. We smiled and laughed so hard our faces hurt. It was a dream come true for me.

#192: Happy Birthday Zach! (take two). This is the first time my whole family and Zandra got together. It was also the first time Steve and Zandra met each other. The kids seemed amazed and very excited to see everybody together, and the two Grandmas had a ball, laughing heartily and giving each other the giggles. These are the only grandchildren for both of them. They agreed that they were the best grandkids in the entire world. (they are ya know). lol. It was absolutely wonderful. A day I dreamed would happen, but didn’t ever think would actually come to pass.

There are a crazy number of photos of supper. The first one was taken by the waitress and is annoyingly blurry, but I think I got enough to make up for it.

Then, we went back to our place for birthday cake….to be continued.

#192: Happy Birthday Zach! Zach was excited to spend his birthday with his mom for the first time in years. It was a lot of fun. In the evening we went to Carrabbas.

Naturally, I couldn’t stop with one picture. lol.

#15 “A relaxed evening on Facebook”

His is about 4 months late, mine is a few days early. It was great. Mom and Dad took us to Olive Garden and we had a lot of fun talking and joking.

My handsome brother

Scrunching up her face in response to an offer to try a lemon wedge

Grandma sat in between her two favorite (only) grandkids, and they kept her busy during the meal.

And, when we got back home, in Zora’s attempt to get us to go back out again, put on every piece of jewelry she has. Silly girl.

From the 23rd

Zora’s birthday party was fun. She has been talking about her birthday party for weeks already, insisting that she wanted balloons, cake, party hats and presents. (although she was never specific about the presents part, which made me giggle a bit). She decided she wanted a “Dora” party. Party guests included: The 2 Opas (although she is starting to call Grandma “Oma” now sometimes…but she is still an “Opa” most of the time) and Robert’s family. We had pizza and cake and ice cream, then opened the presents.

Dad’s hat cracked me up

I think she was as excited to give the gift as Zora was to get it. (Polly Pockets)

Zane helped pick out a Leapster for Zora. He thought she would like the green more than the pink one. For some reason, he was really intent on her opening his gift. As soon as it was opened, he wanted to test it out for her. (we got it primarily because she keeps running off with his handheld games and it really upsets him, so now we have something to bargin with.)

From Grammie Z, a music/treasure box. The writing on it says: “Discover your world ~ my barefoot child ~ your dreams will take you there ~ your heart will guide”. She loves to open the little drawers and watch the horse turn when it plays.

From Grandma & Grandpa, a ride on bear (that Zora calls a dog) that both of the kids love.

We also got her some Polly Pockets, and both girls went to work playing intently with the dolls.

It was fun, but I can’t believe it has been three years. As always, it is going too fast.

Zane wanted a Mario theme for his birthday. I could not find any Mario themed birthday stuff anywhere, online or otherwise. When I was at the Party Store (where I get balloons and plates and stuff), there was another mom there with a boy who was turning 6 on the 27th also, who wanted a Mario theme for his birthday party and we lamented the lack of Mario stuff. In passing, she said something about how weird it is because it seems like kids always want the same themes at the same ages. I know it was just a passing comment to her, but to me it almost made me bawl. I remember another time standing in line with my Thomas themed stuff and another parent was commenting that her 2 year old liked Thomas too. It is so cool that he likes stuff that is age appropriate. I know that might not always be true in the future, but I enjoyed the comment anyway.

Anyway, I got “Mario” colors, plus orange (his current favorite color), and some stars (there are stars in the games) and hoped that he would see a theme in it. He did. When I asked him which hat he wanted at his place setting, he wanted “Mario Party Red”. Score!

Usually I do the cake decorating if we don’t order a cake (which we often do simply because the holidays are too busy for me to have the energy and patience to decorate cakes), but since Zach is better at drawing Mario, he wanted to do it. It was the first cake he has ever decorated. We ran into several problems along the way, the main one being that we didn’t get enough icing (and I really didn’t want to make icing), so we had to cobble together several of the leftover cookie decorating icing with the stuff we got for the cake. I was also reminded that our oven is not leveled, which resulted in one corner of the cake being about a centimeter thick, and the opposite corner being a good 1.5-2 inches. The thing that made it worse was that the second cake wasn’t quite as uneven, so even when we moved the layers the other way, it was still really uneven. (and I did not really want to go to the work of cutting off the top to make it more even because I don’t really have the appropriate tools to do it easily). It was a little goofy. By the way, Zane wanted Strawberry cake, so we were also dealing with an odd color to try and cover up with frosting.

The most important thing to know here is that Zane loved the cake. Even Zora loved the cake and was excited about it. Had we paid for it, it would be a candidate for Cake Wrecks, but since it was lovingly made by a Dad who had never decorated a cake in his life (and declared “frosting is a lot harder to work with than paint!”), I think it is a masterpiece and I love it.

The guest list was the same as Zora’s party, except that Robert’s wife stayed home.

Zane was a little overwhelmed after the week of festivities, and then the blow horns I chose happened to also be noisemakers (unbeknownst to me…I know, stupid, but I didn’t realize those things could make noise) and the other kids were blowing them like crazy. I finally had to put a stop to it and they were kind enough to stop it for him. He took refuge with Grandma, snuggling with her for quite a while when everybody else finished eating the pizza.

Time for the cake!

Grandma & Grandpa gave him a Caterpillar backhoe like Grandpa drives and Zane had fun driving out at the farm.

There was also a completely unplanned “Star Wars” theme to the gifts. We gave him a Star Wars lego game, Robert’s family gave him a comic book and action figure set, and Grandma & Grandpa gave him a few action figures.

He got two games; the First Star Wars Lego game for GameCube (he enjoyed the 2nd version a lot) and Wii Mario Party 8, the game he wanted so much.

From Grammie Z we got him a block set. It reminded us of a big version of the blocks we brought back from Germany that he adores, and he loves blocks. It is a gift that remains in our living room and both of the kids, but especially Zane, really love building with them. (FTR, we chose the gifts from Grammie Z for Birthdays and Christmas from a generous gift certificate from her. We tried to choose more heirloom type gifts from her, especially for the birthdays)

It was a good birthday party. Zane wasn’t feeling his best…a combination of the week off schedule and a tummy thing he has had going on all week that seemed to really get worse starting on his birthday. He did enjoy the day though, and when weather looked like it might delay the party, he insisted we still held it. ( a good decision…the weather cleared and he was much worse the next day).

I can not believe he is seven. It doesn’t seem real. Seven sure isn’t what I thought it would be when I held him in my arms that first time, but it is precious none the less.

Saturday afternoon we went to a birthday party of a little girl turning four.

I have never really spent much time in the “girly” aisle’s at Target before and it took me a while to figure out what the heck to get her. I was a little overwhelmed with the creepy eyed dolls, both the people and the animal dolls. I had no idea that “My Little Pony” now came tiny, without the cool hair to brush, and had their own fashion boutique and outfits. I had heard about Polly Pockets online, in parenting forums, but was rather taken aback when my first glance at them was a package of disembodied heads, a bunch of torsos, and legs. It looked like “serial killing for girls” at first glance. I figured out later that it is the new thing…they come apart like that so that you just put them together like that to make new outfit combinations instead of having to dress them. Not all of the Pollys look like they have been hacked up into fashionable little pieces.

I ended up getting Zora a little Polly Pocket Stackable playset. They only had two there…a bathroom and a bbq on the deck set. I ended up getting the bathroom. I was slightly weirded out at getting her a bathroom, but really, it was better than the bbq. I hope to get her a little kitchen and maybe some other rooms too. I am in desperate need of something small that she can play with in the ST waiting rooms. I can’t exactly take those giant Little People playsets or the big wooden dollhouse with me, but she seems to like playsets. I looked for a while in the boys stuff to see if there was a cool hot wheels car playset, but they didn’t really have anything and I seriously don’t need another train set in this house so the take-along-Thomas set was out. I was hoping for those cool animal playsets (you know, with real looking animals, not creepy big eyes with blue eyeshadow and wardrobe “pets”) I have seen at Toys R Us, but Target didn’t have anything like that and I didn’t have time to make it to the other place before closing because I had just spent an hour and a half trying to figure out what to get the girls. lol.

Anyway, the party itself was much smaller and less chaotic than her big brother’s parties. We watched her open presents and then ate cake and ice cream. It was nice.

I snapped pictures of her opening the gifts, but the thing that makes this interesting is Zane in the background. Zach, who was next to him, said that he was making up stories and acting them out in the castle. This is something that we almost never see him doing, so it was pretty exciting. (later he had the castle opened up and had knights on horses tromping through)

Happy Happy Birthday,

That’s what we’re here to say

Happy Happy Birthday,

May All Your Dreams Come True!

Happy Happy Birthday,

From All of us to you.  HEY!

Yeah…too many years waiting tables…this is the song that goes through my head now days. lol.

After long conversations with each of his parents on the phone (they each live several states away), my folks invited us to Carabas for Zach’s Birthday.  Much to our suprise and delight, Steve and Joy were there too.  Joy looks a lot better and even treated us to a glass of some decent wine.  Yum. 

So very appropriate for my guy.

Zora’s first cannoli. 

She was pleased.