Girls' Day

One of Lilly's best friends, Avery, turned four on the 14th of this month. To help her celebrate Lilly and I thought it would be fun to paint some pottery together. Tania, Avery's mother, and I decided to add brunch and make it a hole Girls' Day Event.
Here are the girls at brunch. They each ordered a pancake and a scrambled egg. They each ate exactly half of a pancake and half of a scrambled egg. Next time we'll know. At least Tania knew to bring coloring activity sheets. Here are the girls displaying their work.
After the long and drawn out process of choosing which piece of pottery to paint the Lilly and Avery picked their colors (which actually only took a few seconds) and then got to work painting.

Avery really concentrating on her castle bank.

As her second piece Lilly chose to paint a very nontraditional rainbow on her rainbow bank.

The unfinished finished products before firing. Avery's are the castle and the horse. Lilly has the butterfly box and rainbow bank.

So proud of their work.

I picked the pottery up a week later and we tried to get a picture of the girls displaying their works of art. This was pretty much the best we got. They mostly just wanted to play with Avery's toys during the pottery drop off and photo shoot.

So, we just put the pottery on the dining room table a take a picture. That worked a lot better. Pictures are substantially easier to take when there are no children in them. But, nowhere near as cute or funny.

Cowboy Birthday

Like all good birthdays, we celebrated Jack's 1st for exactly one week. David Jack Traylor turned one on Thursday, November 10, 2011. But, we got a jump on the party the weekend before. Bryan's parents, sadly, had to miss the party so they decided to come up the weekend before and make a mini birthday party. It was great. It gave Jack a chance to practice opening presents...although Lilly had to give him a brief lesson. Very excited about his new blocks.

The next day we went on a walk at Starkey Park and threw some rocks in Eagle Creek.

Now that he is a year old Jack has graduated to the backpack carrier.

Lilly chose not to walk the entire time.

Walking makes Jack very sleepy. Even though he didn't do any walking.

Later that night Jack got to blow out a candle on the Traylor's traditional first birthday cake: A lamb covered in coconut. Bryan's Nana has used the same recipe and mold to make a lamb cake for everyone in the family's first birthday since anyone can remember and she reins to Jo when Lilly was a year old.

On Jack's actual birthday I planned a nice dinner that I thought he'd enjoy, bought a little cake at the grocery store and had everything ready for our little party. However, due to a glitch in communication and planning Jack and I had to take Lilly to gymnastics at 5pm. That made it almost impossible to follow the plan. So instead, on the way home from the gym we stopped at the house, picked Bryan up and headed to El Rodeo. Jack was just as happy with his birthday beans as he would have been with beef stroganoff. We stopped by Target for some last minute party supplies and then headed home for cake.

Jack did exactly what he was supposed to do with his cake. We sang and Lilly helped blow out the candle.

Then, Jack smooched his little hand into his cake, rubbed it all over his high chair tray,

and his face.

At this point Jack was all warmed up and ready for his Cowboy Birthday Party! Or so we thought. The party started at 3pm. I planned Jack's nap accordingly, but somehow at around 2:15 he was cranky and sleepy. I put him in his bed and he rested for about a half an hour and woke up ready to party just in the nick of time.

Jack and Grandma inspecting the balloons.

The cake....and Jack's little smash cake.

David Jack and Grandpa David.

Just walking around in his cowboy shirt.

Playing with the girls.

Gifts for Jack. He even opened a couple.

Goody bags for the kiddos.

Jack was not as enthusiastic about this cake as he was the first one. In fact, after we sang to him he looked around and immediately started crying.

Finally eating a little bit of his cake.

Jack opening his gifts. Bryan did not have this crazy look on his face during the entire gift opening time, but this is the only picture of Jack actually helping open a present. Bryan and I along with some of the other kids had to open most of them.

This drum filled with assorted musical instruments was that gift. It was very popular with all of the kids, and almost none of the adults.

I was at the party too...and helped open some gifts.

Jack's favorite thing to play with was, of course, this little plastic piece that was part of the packaging for one of his new toys.

Cute little face.

Dylan is eyeing Jack's new Little Red Rocket ride on toy that Bryan and I got for him. I'm sure D will get a turn. Kristy and Samantha.

As the party died down the kids decided that they were hungry for more than just party snacks. So, I served up some good old fashioned peanut butter and jelly, veggie straws and cottage cheese. Clearly, Georgie takes his meals pretty seriously.

Thank you everyone for helping us to celebrate Jack's first birthday! And, a special thanks to Tania for taking all of the pictures.

Happy Birthday Jack! We love you.

Halloween IV

Halloween was a lot of fun this year, mostly because Lilly started getting excited about it several weeks in advance. It was also the first year that she was able to choose her own costume. She started with wanting to be a ballerina, then a princess, then she saw a pair of wings and wanted to be a butterfly, then moved along to fairy, and back to ballerina. She paused briefly to consider a pumpkin, then wanted to be a rainbow. It was around this time that I regretted telling her in advance that Halloween was coming up. After several other ideas Lilly finally settled on a Rainbow Butterfly Ballerina Princess Fairy. I had her sign a contract agreeing to this. Then, after having it notarized I started work on the costume.
Jack didn't care what his costume was so I decided that he should be a dragon. When I went to get the dragon costume I saw this adorable monkey costume...and it was on sale. That was a lot easier than the Rainbow Butterfly Ballerina Princess Fairy.
On the Wednesday before Halloween we took the kids to Boone Village for the annual Halloween Party and Trick or Treat event sponsored by local businesses. Lilly entered the costume contest and won second place in her age group. We didn't enter Jack because his costume wasn't homemade and I didn't think that was fair, but later regretted it when the winners for his age group were all store bought costumes and our little monkey was much cuter. Lilly was very proud of her trophy and was reluctant to let me carry it so that she could finish trick or treating. Which didn't seem right to me...since it was kind of my trophy...cause I'm the one that actually made that costume...

On the following weekend in a rare twist of events I was invited out with some friends for an adult Halloween night out. Clearly, we dressed up as famous

characters from cereal boxes. We had Corn Pops, Lucky Charms, Tony the Tiger, Shredded Mini Wheat, Count Chocula, Toucan Sam, and the Cheerios Bee. Our plans for the actual day of Halloween were a little bit like last year's plans. Instead of driving around from house to house, we just invited everyone over to our house. So, Lilly and I thought it would be nice to make some Halloween cupcakes for everyone. Jack wanted to help too. He thought we might need some Tupperware to put the cupcakes in after they were finished. We didn't, but I had to wash it all anyway.

Lilly stirring the cupcake batter, even though the mixer already did it.

After a refreshing rest Lilly decorated the cupcakes with some festive sprinkles.

Lilly's wings and bun. She was equally proud of both.

Jack the monkey. We don't know if he liked his costume or not. This is the only facial expression that he ever really makes. But, most people agreed, he's pretty cute.

Lilly finally dropped the 'princess fairy' part of her costume. So, here's the monkey and the Rainbow Butterfly Ballerina together right before we headed out into the neighborhood.

The whole family. Crazy.

Lilly and her friend Georgie...I mean Woody.

Lilly and Avery. Lilly appears to actually be taking flight in this picture while Rapunzel poses with her friend Pascal.

Wes, Kristy, and Samantha the butterfly joined us for a little trick or treating. Samantha was disappointed when she realized that no one was handing out Enfamil.

At the end of the evening Lilly was worn out and ready to ride in the wagon. As we headed home we passed by a house with the porch light on and a friendly neighbor sitting out front. When Bryan asked her if she wanted to climb out of the wagon to go to the door she said, "No, can you just go get my candy for me?" We continued on home.

While we trick or treated my dad handed out candy at our house and my mom went for pizza. Mark, Debbie and Mandy DeWeese joined us for a mini Halloween party with dinner, treats and even delivered treat bags for Lilly, Jack and Samantha. Thanks everyone for all of the fun!