Dane's 7th Birthday

It was a Pool Party (because that means I don't have to come up with party games to keep them entertained).

We ended up with 12 boys (and Mackenzie) because all the friends Dane wanted to invite had at least one brother who came along. It was crazy! I think its funny to watch them enthralled with the gift opening.

Yaya gave me a icecream cone cake pan. The cake is the cone with a scoop of icecream on top. Hard to eat but so cute.

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Sleeping Brice

Brice has never been a good sleeper. Bedtime, every night, is a nightmare for me. He won't stay in bed, he won't go to sleep and he stopped taking naps a long time ago. So recently his sleeping has made me laugh. He has fallen asleep in strange places and strange positions in his battle to defy me. He has even fallen asleep in the middle of the day. Not my typical Brice. So each time it happened I had to take a picture.

(This is not the first time I have found him asleep on the bathroom floor.)

Great American Bake Sale

We went over our goal by almsot $200. We ended up with so much food (donated and homemade) that we also got to split it between a couple churches to donate to their families in need.

This was one of the things I made..."cake on a stick" thanks to my grandmother (Tutu) who sent me the random cake pan. It was fun to make these...they were definitly unique among the cookies, cupcakes and loaves of bread.

Before and After

Living in HOT, HOT Vegas means summer haircuts for all...I think I prefer everyone's longer but it will grow back and in the mean time it will be cool and easy to do. You can't really tell much difference with Mackenzie because it isn't sticking up in the pictures. Before her "First" haircut her hair was always sticking straight up looking greasy from sunscreen. Now it isn't quite so long on top (or behind the ears) so it doesn't look so gross with all the sunscreen.

I couldn't resist posting the crazy morning hair for Dane's "before"...If you look at my earlier posting of our recent Photo Shoot you will see what his hair looked like styled. I am not real happy with his "after" cut. Hello! I said 5 clippers on the bottom/sides (this is at least a 4 if not shorter) and the top was supposed to be 2-3 inches long at the finish. Argh! I miss his "California boy" blonde hair!

Brice can be bald and still have the sweetest face.

I thought I had a "before"picture of Dan but I guess he was wearing a hat...but here's the "after":

Didn't want to forget Lexie's summer cut. She is so much cuter when she is fluffy but I am sure she feels much better without such a heavy coat for the summer.

And you should have already seen mine...but if not: its here.

Our Family Photo Shoot Favorites

There really isn't anything to blog about these...I like to get family and at least individual kid pictures once a year. I am cheap (generally) so we do the JCPenny coupon special. Not too bad for the price we paid.

The Big Cut

Okay...I did it!! Here are some "before" pictures. (I didn't really style it...I just straightened it so it would be as long as possible to make the 8 inches without being too short.)

And here are the "after" pictures. Unfortunately, the pictures don't really do it justice. Its a really cute cut. But, you get the idea...its SHORT!

The ponytail ended up being almost 10 inches and then even more was cut off when it was cut to be styled.

Trauma

Friday night Brice and Dane had gone to bed and had been there for about an hour. Of course they still weren't sleeping, but we were ignoring them. Then Brice starts wailing. This happens pretty often. Brice is messing around and hurts himself by falling or something. Or Dane has done something to make him mad.
I went back, saw blood, lifted Brice down from his bed and then yelled to Dan. Brice's mouth was full of blood. Apparently Brice had wrapped his blankets around his head and was jumping on the bed. At some point he fell and smashed his front teeth on the bed frame (hence the wailing).

We brought him out and one tooth was gone, probably lost in the bedding. We still haven't found it. But one was hanging on by a thread. Brice was hysterical. I wanted Dan to wiggle it to see how loose it was. He told me that if he touched it he was going to pull it out. I called the dentist a couple of times trying to decide what to do. Basically my option was wiggle it out or bring him in and have the dentist pull it out. She thought it might be more traumatic bringing him to the office and the numbing shot would probably hurt more than pulling it.
So we decided to do it ourselves. We put on a little orajel, gave him some motrin. I held him and Dan grabbed on with some pliers and one jerk later, the tooth was out.

He was a more upset about loosing his teeth than he was about the pain until we convinced him that the teeth would grow back and that it was cool to lose baby teeth. More poor little boy!

For those of you with strong stomachs...here are some photos of my toothless 4 year old:

Memorial Day

Memorial Day was a lot of work. We moved rocks, we swept dirt, we moved a sandbox, a trampoline and a swing set. We set up the pool...

And created...



sprinkler + 3 pieces of rope + hose + trampoline = homemade water park

A friend said we should start charging admission to our backyard. We are very lucky!