Keeping Up With the Joneses

I know I normally go overboard for Birthday parties, but this really was an exception. When I started asking Myles what he wanted to do for his party a few months ago, he wanted to go to a trampoline park and have a HUGE cake (thank-you Costco). He never wavered, and it worked out pretty well to do something so easy since I just got back from Disneyland the night before. Our rule is that you can invite as many people as how old you are, and over time we have had to amend that to not include brothers. So Myles invited 9 of his friends and almost all of them could make it. We printed out these simple invitations online and he distributed them a few days before.  The kids had so much fun. I love that Myles has such great little friends. I used to worry a lot that he wasn't interested in making friends or playing with others, but that has changed completely in the last few years. Our house is a hub for him and his friends, and almost every day we have one of his friends knockin...

I'm VERY LATE in posting this, but I was waiting for some good pictures that would do justice to the way my house looks now. A few months ago my Aunt Hollie and cousin Joy agreed to help me out with some home decorating. I was getting the upstairs painted and they helped me pick the colors. Then I decided to budget about $5000 for new furniture, updates, etc., and WOW they made that money go a long way. I ended up getting pretty much every room (except the basement) completely redecorated and I never could have done it without all their help. Basically they would send me pictures, floor plans, and links of what to buy, and then they came and arranged furniture, hung pictures, and made everything look beautiful.  I really wish I had before pictures, but I'm sure there are more than enough of those in previous entries on this blog. My favorite make-over is definitely my bedroom. We had it painted a beautiful, soft, green/gray color. I have new bedding, and then they told me wh...

Max has been wanting to go to Disneyland for a while and the other boys weren't as enthusiastic about it (spoiled bums) and so we decided that just Max and I would go for a few days. I felt like Max really needed it--it has been a hard adjustment for him to be a middle child and a big brother to a little brute and he often gets the short end of the parent-attention stick. He works so hard with 2 kindergartens and speech therapy in between them and has been a trooper. I absolutely LOVED spending some one-on-one time with him and feel like I got to know little things about him that I never knew before. The kid is hilarious, a thrill-seeker, and a definite introvert. It was his first time on an airplane and was excited/nervous. I got really worried when he was too scared to go through the metal detector at the airport. I wondered how he would possible want to do rides at Disneyland if he was afraid of the metal detector! Fortunately it turned out to not be a problem. He loved the p...

Just a few minor updates/things to remember in pictures from the last few weeks. On Saturday McKay was riding his scooter in the garage (with his helmet on) and before we could stop him, he switched to his tricycle rode it down our very steep driveway. Marshall was trimming trees and I was trimming rosebushes and we both saw the whole thing happen in slow motion as we yelled towards him. Fortunately (because a busy road was at the end of the driveway) he took a big unfortunate (because OW) spill right before riding out into the road. I ran to him and picked him up and started taking him in the house to comfort him and he just got more and more upset. Finally I realized he was telling me to put him down, so I did. He ran to his bike, picked it up, and rode it down the block with blood dripping from his nose.  Later we showed him his "owie" in the mirror (his arm was also scraped up) and asked what happened. He got a puzzled look on his face and said "I fell out o...