Whew....

What a roller coaster of a weekend/week. Two birthdays, the "gaining of an hour", a pretty historic election, halloween, and a bid to be awarded the worst mother of the year....but that will be explained later. First the birthdays.

I already posted about Halloween and it was a lot of fun seeing the kids in their costumes and being at the church raking in all the candy. Avery's birthday is Nov. 1st. All Saints Day they claim, but let me dispel the first myth....those born on all saints day do not always act saintly on their birthdays. But more about that later (it ties in greatly to the worst mother of the year award...).

We threw a combined birthday bash for Isaiah (whose 7th birthday is today) and Avery, who turned 3 on Saturday. The day started off with me going into Avery's room to wake him and wish him a happy birthday. I was greeted with the response, "No, I not want it! I two! Isaiah birthday, Huston birthday, not Avery birthday." I must admit I found this really funny, my little boy having a midlife crises at the age of 3. (The mood would soon balloon to something much less cute, stay tuned). My brother and sister-in-law came into town (and brought their new puppy too) taking Avery on a play date; then the whole family met for lunch, after which Jason and Brook took Isaiah out for his play date while the rest of us went to my folks house and later everyone hooked up there for presents and cake and games. Here is Isaiah with their balloon bouquet - they had no #7 balloon for Isaiah so we had to get him 2 balloons, one that said "you're 2" and another that said "you're 5"....slipped a math problem in there on him.


They opened gifts and had fun with their newly acquired stuff. Avery was most interested in a musical card that my folks gave him that played this little hamster dance song. He spent quite a few minutes opening and closing that card.




Here is the new little pup trying to check out this tiny little baby thing that keeps crawling around on the floor...Lillie wasn't too sure about it either.


All in all the day went pretty well - but Avery was cantankerous a good majority of it, yet he was manageable...he certainly had a halloween hang over in a bad way. I have decided that throwing a party the day after halloween is not a good idea, ever. He finally laid down for a really good nap in the late afternoon, but woke up on the grouchiest side of the bed I had seen in a long time.

Here is where my nomination for worst mother comes in. At one point, after a long line of "we'll let it slide, it's his birthday" type behaviors, he ran out of my parents house without a word to anyone. Huston saw him and so like a big brother should, he tackled him to the ground to prevent him from wandering the neighborhood. My dad stepped in and pulled the booger back into the house at which point Avery turned and cursed him in baby/toddler screaming language. To me that was the end of the "let is slide" line and I proceeded to discipline. Of course Avery pulled out every hard-headed, strong-willed child trick in the books and I felt very strongly that if I lost this particular battle a very large piece of ground would be lost and would require many days of scrimmaging ahead to recover that valuable piece of respectability. So I didn't budge and in the end, since he refused after almost an hour of heated debate to apologize to grandad, the birthday boy had no cake. Yes you heard that correctly. So the next day at church when everyone cooed over him and wished him happy birthday and asked him "did you eat lots of cake?" I was able to relive the pain of the moment over and over. Nice, very nice.

So here is Isaiah blowing out his candle on the joint birthday cake with no Avery. (There is a redemption cake coming later...)

It was quite a day, enough to wear anyone out...

...a grown adult much less a new 3 year old. And let me now dispel myth #2 - you gain an hour at daylight savings time. Ha! It's been quite a few days of grumpy, tired children who will not sleep past 6:00 to pile on top of the already grumpy, greedy, candy and cake overdosed children that the weekend of festivities created.

Anyway, fast forward to Tuesday now, election day. I won't commentate on the results - no need to, history has been made, that chapter is over, plenty of other people have given their thoughts on both sides of the issues. I will just talk about cake. We have our church small group on every Tuesday night, and this week was no exception. I was in charge of dessert this week so I made this patriotic election day cake...


This cake would also be known as the cake of redemption. This morning, in honor of the two boys' birthdays we ate leftover cake for breakfast and sang happy birthday to both of them, with candles and the whole shebang.


So see, I'm not a total monster mom after all, (notice the little boy's shirt)...no I'm not guilty of biased reporting here. These are just the facts - and no, Avery still won't admit that he is now 3.