Our First "Real Kid" Birthday Party

I have to say a lot of thought and worry went into whether or not we should begin having a real kid birthday party. What I mean by that is a party at a child related place, invitations to several children that are not related to us, presents my husband and I didn't have to buy, the whole deal.

Well, I need not have worried.....IT WAS AWESOME!!!! We have some friends at church who have a little boy born the same year M was on the same day no less! (They just happen to be "boyfriend and girlfriend" to boot!) She and I had discussed having a "real" party last year and maybe doing it together. Well, this was the year we were talking about some short 12 months ago. I brought up the subject in January to see if she still wanted to go the "real" party route and if she wanted to do something separate or together. She was all for doing it together, so we went to work. Actually she did most of the work, she ran around looking at places in town. We wanted something more than just Chuckie Cheese's. More of an activity place or the kid's museum in town. We finally decided on Bounce U!

Let me just stop for a minute and sing the praises of this wonderful place. They took care of everything! You can opt to do as much or as little yourself as you want. We decided on letting them do cake, juice boxes, and balloons. You can add decorations for the table, pizza, cokes, gift bags, you name it! It just depends on how much you want to spend and what all you think your party needs. We thought cake and juice was enough for our age group and time of day. 3:45 is a little early for dinner, too late for lunch, and since we HAD to have cake there is only so much a 4 or 5 year old is going to eat with so much excitement. We had right at 25 kids and a lot of parents stayed and played too. (Adults are free and can use all the equipment too!) Everyone had such a great time.

They gave us "helpers". You usually only get two with the party package we chose, but we got an extra since one was in training. These college age girls were very helpful. When we first walked in, they helped get the kids onto the equipment. We had several younger sisters and brothers there who were too small to play on the equipment alone and they jumped in and took the little ones to play and have fun. We got to bounce for an hour and fifteen minutes and then moved to the party room for our Madagascar cake and juice boxes. Logan and Madalynn shared a cake and each had 5 candles on one side. We sung to both of them. After all the eating was done, we moved on to presents!

Madalynn and Logan were so cute. They took turns opening one present and Logan would just watch Mady and oooh and aaaah over whatever she unwrapped. He is such a little doll and will make a good husband someday!

I think this was a glimpse into the future for Jeremy. Our little daughter had no qualms about holding Logan's hand while standing beside her Daddy. Several times she went down the slide in her Daddy's lap holding Logan's hand!! Jeremy was caught between shock and wanting to cry.

I need your prayers! If she has the guts to hold hands with a boy at 5 WHILE sitting on her Daddy's lap, Lord help us at 15!

Overall we had a great time and I would highly recommend Bounce U to anyone looking for a place for a birthday party! The best part is we got to split the cost! The kids and adults for that matter had a great time. I would definitely do it again.

5 Years Ago

This is the year that my beautiful, outgoing, creative, loving, dramatic, talkative little girl turns 5! Five years ago tonight I was staying in a hotel waiting for 5 am to roll around to go to the hospital. I was a nervous wreak! I am tearing up as I write this. She shouldn't be this old! The time has gone by too fast. Is it normal to want to scratch and scramble and get those years back? I just seem to flash forward to when she is 10, 15, off at college. I don't think I am ready. I know nobody is ever ready for their babies to grow up.

This is the year that all the days fall the same as the year she was born. The year she was born Valentine's Day fell on a Saturday and it was snowing in Guthrie, Texas. Monday, the 16th that year I had a doctor's appointment in Lubbock and had gone ahead and taken the day off from school. I had been having high blood pressure and was supposed to be on bed rest anyway. (I disobeyed doctor's orders and just sat and taught rather than waste my precious maternity leave days on me instead of my little girl.) We lived so far from the hospital we were inducing anyway. My principal already knew that depending on what the doctor said, my maternity leave might begin immediately. I had everything all set up for the sub that would cover for me.

As I sat on my couch the morning of February 16th, 2004, I dozed and took a little nap before I had to get ready for my hour and a half drive to the big city. I thought to myself this would probably be the last time I got to nap when I wanted.

I got to the doctor and found out my blood pressure was still elevated (Yours would be too if you were a first time mom that had to take at least a half day off work and drive 3 hours round trip each time you had a doctor's appointment.) and I was starting to dilate. My doctor said she would call and get me scheduled to be induced the following day. So a little later I made the call to my husband back at the Mare Barn in Guthrie to tell him that he would need to get my bag and everything together because...we would be having a baby tomorrow!
To say that I wasn't ready and that I really would rather have gotten everything together myself was an understatement. It just didn't make sense for me to drive all the way back and then us drive back to Lubbock again. He did really well though. He had a list of things to do and pack about a mile long and the only things he forgot were my hair dryer and my wedding ring. ( I hadn't been able to wear the one for months and let's just say the horrendous hairstyle I had at them time looked the same + or - the hairdryer.)

We began the process at about 6 am on Tuesday. As I was pushing, she would move back up a little bit after each push. I still figured this wasn't anything out of the ordinary. After an hour and a half of pushing, our little girl came into the world; all 7 lb. 11 oz of her. She had the cord around her neck and this was the reason she kept sliding back up as I was pushing. I had a "reaction" to the epidural and was somewhat out of it. This was really a blessing in disguise because had I had all my faculties, I would have realized that I should be really worried. I remember thinking to myself "She looks like a little grape." Not necessarily the color fruit you want associated with your newborn!

We each got to hold her and then they took her off to the nursery. I had never done this before, so I had no idea of what "normal" was. She was born at 3:11 pm and I would not see her again until about 9:30 pm. By that time I was coming around and thinking she shouldn't still be gone. Jeremy had been back and forth to the nursery to see her since then. I finally made him go ask when they were bringing her to the room. Finally, after more than 6 hours they brought her back. She had so much hair. Not like a crazy amount of baby hair, but alot. I remember I just stroked it over and over.

I still doesn't feel like Jeremy and I should be old enough to have kids. Now we have not one, but two. I hope to someday have another.

So to my firstborn, I love you so much. You know I love you now, but you won't really get it until you are holding that new baby of your own. I want so many things for you. I pray every day that you grow up and become a good Christian girl and that you make good decisions. I pray that you get to live a long healthy, happy life. I want you to go to college and get a job you enjoy that makes you a good living. I want you to find a great Christian man that loves you more than life. I hope you are blessed with children that are healthy. At the very least, I hope that your life isn't always a struggle. I hope I am around to get to see and spoil grandkids! I know you are too young to understand all this, but I just felt like writing it anyway.

Happy Birthday Mady!

I'll update you on the first real "kid" birthday party we had over the weekend. It was great!

Another Busy Day

OK, I realize that I am not doing as well at keeping my blog up to date as I had hoped. This has been a busy week!

M has school 3 mornings this week and J goes on Tuesday mornings. This is the first time in about a month that she has had school all 3 days! Hallelujah!! (As I mentioned previously, we have not had good weather lately to say the least.) I didn't know what to do with myself. I thought I spent too much money all those days it was too cold to go outdoors and there was no school. Let's just say I cyber-browsed a lot at Gap, Target, etc. Not so much browsing as buying. I do have some great black (and brown) boots to show for it though!

Well, I thought the cabin fever spending was bad until today when I made a trip south to Hobby Lobby. Not a good choice for my pocket book's sake. I had a long list of places I needed to go in the 4 1/2 hours the kids were at preschool. I dropped them off and started with the place that was the furthest away- Hobby Lobby. I planned to stop in for a few minutes and then move along.

Well, I arrived at 9:30 am and did not leave until.....12:00 pm!!! That is terrible! Do you have any idea how much you can spend in 2 1/2 hours in a beautiful place like that? ALOT! I did however pick up some good stuff for the shelf above my front door, a great idea for a certain 5 year old's birthday, and a lot of half price ribbon. I am majorly feeling a crafty streak lately.

Anyway I spent so long there I had to bust it to get the stops I had to make done. M has a birthday party coming up Saturday so I was out buying her a new outfit for the occasion, plus birthday presents for a couple of her friends that have birthdays the same day and the day after. (By the way what do 5 year old boys like? Power Rangers I hope! )

This has also been the week for Valentine's day parties at school. I got the bright idea to make white chocolate dipped pretzel rods for all the teachers at our preschool at church and M's other preschool teacher. This was all fine and dandy until I figured out how long it took to melt chocolate, wait for the chocolate to cool down enough to actually stay on the pretzels, sprinkle pink, red, and red and white sugar on the ends of each one, place them in the freezer to ensure the chocolate stayed put, remove the first batch only to realize the baggies I had for this project were not long enough, and I didn't have enough pretzels for all the teachers anyway! Another trip back to Wal-Mart, more pretzels, different bags, and about 4 1/2 hours of hard work later, the teachers had a beautiful gift that screams thoughtfulness and too much time spent doing "projects" rather than housework!

Tonight I took it easy. I just did laundry, helped M decorate her Valentine box for tomorrow, hung some ironwork and things on the wall, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, cleaned out J's closet, cooked dinner, baked and decorated cupcakes for M's party tomorrow and updated my blog! And people ask me what I do all day!??!

How I got to this point

This is just an experiment.

I am sure I won't be able to keep up with chronicling all the things my little ones do on a daily basis. But I have decided to try. (Yes, I realize that I shouldn't begin a sentence with but. (or end one with but either)

There are some really great blogs out there. This is a new discovery of mine. In the past 10 days or so I have discovered the previously unknown world of blogging. Why does a mother of a 2 year old boy and a girl who is 5 going on 15 have time to read blogs you ask. Two words...winter weather.

I grew up in western Tennessee. (GO VOLS!!!) I am a "REAL" southerner. I remember one "major" snow in my entire childhood, as well as one big ice storm. When my husband entered vet school and moved us to the other end of the state, we got a few decent snows in the 3 1/2 years we were there. We lived in Texas for a few years and experienced a very cold wind many days, but usually only a light dusting of snow once or twice a year.

A few years ago, we moved up north. Central Kentucky that is. My husband and I have lamented before that you know we are living too far north when you can be in Cincinnati, Ohio in an hour and a half. You can be in our hometown in Tennessee or in Chicago in the same amount of time. In my world that just sounds crazy! Well, as all you geography buffs are well aware, Kentucky borders Tennessee on the north. Up until this point we have had relatively similar weather conditions. Not so this year! I am now enjoying week 2 of cabin fever. Last week it was 4-5 inches of freezing rain, sleet, snow, and a little more sleet. This week it appears that snow and lots of it are on the agenda. This morning when I left to take the kids to school, nothing. By 11 am the roads were covered...again. So in an effort for the three of us to make it home alive, I picked them up early from preschool. I had time to run into Gordmans, get my hair cut at Super Cuts, and quickly walk through a discount furniture store before returning to pick them up. I had appointments made and lots of errands to run. Instead, I enjoyed a scant 2 hours of "mommy time".

Tonight I look out on possibly 3-4 inches of snow. Just LOVELY! Now don't get me wrong, I like to sled as much as the next person. I own some great winter clothes. I even bought my kids snow suits. I do not, however, have the need for my kids to "get the wear" out of these snow suits. I have a need for a few "kid free" hours in my week. Snow/Ice = NO SCHOOL. So that is how I got to this point.

I go to my computer and read about other peoples lives in an effort to escape my own for a minute or two. ( I have also been doing some internet shopping, but let's not tell my husband.)

Just look at the snow drifts in the driveway, never experienced that before....