Alex's 4th Birthday Party!

It was Bob the Builder theme this year. He watches it occasionally on TV, but overall I think it best fit him this year. since Bob the Builder is out of print I had to utilize Ebay and some creativity for decorations. I bought one item at a time from many people to piece things together.




My mom brought these great cookies.


Playing circuits with Aunt Bernadette, there is one that you can make it "sing" Happy Birthday"


Building as usual


Very focused


Grandma telling him about the gift he opened.






Grandpa showing him his DVD player. He loves to watch "home movies" on the computer. He kept calling it his computer to watch movies on. Funny thing is, he has never watched more than 20 minutes of an actual movie. The fact that it came with a charger and remote is definitely a plus.


Wow, this is pretty cool.


Dramatic opening, the pillows that Grandma Porter made


Playing with Rob




Grandpa Phibbs gave him this truck that comes apart, goes back together, makes noises and runs on its own. I think it will keep him busy, a long time.


Luke playing "where's Luke" with Rob


Luke and Grandma


Luke taking a turn with the fishing pole


Alex is getting over a cold, so we used the big cookie Grandma Porter made to avoid coughing and blowing all over the cake.


Pretty happy boy!


I hear a lot of people complain that boys are so boring, but I had a lot of fun making this cake. Alex just smiled and smiled to himself as he giggled when he saw it in the morning. I think it was better than he imagined it would be.


It was checkerboard pattern, to match Bob's shirt!


Me and my birthday boy, a typical 4 year old pose.


This one is a little better

Chocolate!

While Alex was at school, Luke "helped" me make the frosting to decorate his birthday cake. As soon as he saw it was looking like something chocolate, he continued to say "lick, lick" and become more and more desperate. I tied him over with some chocolate chips, but as soon as I turned around to get a bowl to put it in, his tongue was on the beater! He loves his chocolate.




YUM!

"Fat Tuesday"

I have the week off. (Perhaps why I'm posting these on the days they were taken.) We were going to go visit one of my friends today, but Alex has been fighting a cold and she has newborn so we stayed home with our germs. We went out while it was snowing, which was a good thing because it was all gone in a few hours.







After lunch, Theresa came over to visit. She typically sits on Tuesdays and the boys go through withdrawals if they don't see her every week. She brought over some paczki. Luke loved it and Alex thought it was okay. Luke definitely has more of a sweet tooth than Alex by far.


What is this thing?


Delightful!


Too full, to fit anymore in, but it's just so good!

Alex and his Wubba

Alex is better at giving the cats appropriate pets, but also just as bad at chasing them around the house and making them crazy (literally). Lily is now on Prozac to hopefully stop her crazy behavior. She is a little mentally unstable, I think overstressed and not able to sleep soundly from the constant ruckus in the house. She is not smart enough, like Tessie, to go find a quiet place to sleep. She is so stubborn and demand to sleep on the couch where she had before the kids were born.

Fun Boy Play

A newly made circuit. Connecting the circuit through water. It sounded an alarm and lit up.


A tower built, pretty sure Kris helped with this one. Looks kind of dangerous to me.


Kris' photograph of his work.

Valentine's Day

This is the card Alex made for Kris and I. This if very typical of Alex artwork of the current period. He does not like to color, but prefers to glue small pieces of paper in a big pile. I'm not sure how tall he would make it if allowed. Tape makes it even better. Theresa helped him with this card.


Alex made these for his classmates. For whatever reason we had to make one for every child in the school. So, we had to make 45! I made them very simple so he could help. Like I said he doesn't like to color. He does like to punch shapes and glue. He was mostly in charge of punching the hearts. He also decided on his own that he would use the scraps and cut them all apart to glue on. He is just learning to write his name. There was no way it was going to happen 45 times, so I helped him with that. There are actually 3 Alexs in his class. Alex loved getting a bag of Valentine's from his classmates. A lot of them included things like candy, tatoos, stickers, erasers, pencils. My favorite idea was another Alex melted crayons into a heart shaped crayon. Good idea, but Alex doesn't color so, wasn't much use to us, but still cute.


They both got treat bags from mom and dad. They enjoy picking a piece out after dinner. We gave treat bags to our sitters too with candy and oatmeal cookies shaped like hearts. (That was Alex's idea to make cookies, he likes making them more than eating them.)


It wouldn't be a holiday without making cookies with Grandma Porter. We went to her house the Friday before Valentine's Day to make these heart shaped cookies and brought some home. They were gone before Valentine's Day, but that's okay because Grandma brought a whole other batch of heart shaped chocolate chip cookies on the day she came to watch the boys.

Snap Circuits

Alex got the snap circuits from Santa for Christmas. He built this one on his own this morning. Sorry to say I know little about circuits and I was surprised to see it worked. I have a feeling I will learn more than I wanted to in the near future. This one is with a fan, but there is also a speaker, some light bulbs and other things that effect the speed/sound etc. Kind of complicated for me to explain, but he loves it.




This is after the fan lifted off.

Smiles

Bath Time for the Boys

4pm Fireplace Photo Shoot

These pictures were taken and this title was named by Kris. You should have heard the other names, crying laughing.