Jayden's Birthday

Jayden turned 8 on Thursday the 24th.  8!  So hard to believe sometimes, but then he comes and stands next to me and is almost the same height as I am and well, it becomes a little bit easier.


We started the morning off with birthday blueberry muffins!

And then got the kids off to school.

Later that afternoon, Brendan, Wyatt, Willow, my mom, and I all went to Jayden's classroom to deliver special birthday chocolate chip cookies and to watch him get sung to and bonked on the head with a mallet.  :)

Then we went outside for recess with his class and Willow ran into a friend of hers from church!

Wyatt said, "This is my first school recess ever!"

After school, we went home and discovered Royal had come home early, so Jayden got right to business in opening his presents!  We had a tight birthday schedule to keep, since it was our last full day with our visiting family and we had lots of activities still to do!

After presents were opened, it was right back down to the pond to catch more fish, which they did!

Then Jayden's requested birthday dinner of pizza!

After dinner, Jayden tried out his new rollerblades while the adults cleaned up dinner and got the next activity set up.

Which was painting the birdhouses we built the previous day!  I am going to hang them up on my fence!

Once we were done painting, we headed inside to some birthday cake.  Jayden still doesn't like regular cake, so we did an ice cream cake again this year.

Then we set up the basement for a sleepover (they had all previously been sleeping in Jayden's room, but this was way funner), and they got to do what they'd been begging for all week.  Stay up as late as they wanted and watch The Avengers.  Willow had her own little space, but once the movie was over she went and slept with Nana in her bed.  :)

I am pretty sure I am never going to be able to do another birthday for either kid that will every live up to this one - surprise cousins, activities up the wazoo, junk food galore, but it was all totally worth it, especially when Jayden told me, "This is the best night of my life!!!"  Although Willow keeps saying for her birthday she wants to fly in Easton so they can go to Disney World together......

Happy 8th Birthday, buddy!  Dad and I love you so much!!!

Easy Day

After our nonstop schedule we'd been keeping since the Wagner boys and my mom flew into town, Wednesday was kind of an "easy" day.  Both Jayden and Willow needed to go to school - not so much easy for them as it was normal.  So, we got the tired kids up and fed and dressed and off to school  But not before we spent some time that morning putting together some of the lego sets we'd gotten the day before.

Wyatt had been running a fever all night, so he really needed a rest day.  He laid on the couch almost all day and his activities pretty much included sipping water, building legos for awhile, and watching movies.  Brendan and Willow went with me to the nursery to get some flowers and then after Jayden got home from school we built some bird houses!  Well Jayden just built his gigantic lego Lord of the Rings Ship, Brendan and Willow and Nana and I built some bird houses.  :)

And later that evening, all the boys begged and Royal finally took them all fishing down at the pond, and they caught, I kid you not, 11 fish!

Lego Land

Jayden had mentioned going to Lego Land for his birthday and I thought that would be a really fun thing to do with the cousins too.  So, Jayden and Willow skipped school on Tuesday and we headed up to Kansas City.

Sadly, Jayden had come down with a nasty cold and Tuesday morning he did not feel good at all.  He say crying at the breakfast table that he just wanted to stay home.  Everyone else was really excited to go to Lego Land, so we convinced him to take a bunch of meds and sleep on the way up there and if he still felt really terrible and wanted to come home, all we'd do is hit up the Lego store and the Crayola store and drive the 3 hours back.  Thankfully, he agreed, but he rode the most of the way up to KC like this. 

He most definitely perked up when the Motrin kicked in and he got a Strawberry smoothie from Starbucks.  :)
These monkeys were excited and ready to go!

 We first went through the "lego factory" and learned how lego's are actually made.

Found out everybody's weight in lego bricks.  :)

Stared at strange lego statues

And played in huge boxes of legos all over the place.  The germ-freak in me wanted to bath everybody in sanitizer...Do you think lego-pits are like those ball-pits????

We rode on rides.

The boys built race cars and then sent them flying down the race ramp.

While Willow sang karaoke.

We watched a couple 4D movies and Jayden happened to sit in the seat that just got totally pelted with snow.  It was a pretty awesome treat for the birthday boy.   :)

 After everybody made their purchases at the lego store, then had a bit of buyers remorse in spending all their money on legos after then visitng the Crayola store, we hit up Fritz's to eat some food before we headed home.  Fritz's food is a big, fat, greasy gut bomb, but it's fun because all your food gets delivered to you by a train.  :)

And then we all piled back into the truck for the drive home. 

Unfortunately it was not a boring ride home.  While we had one sick kid on the way up to KC that morning, we had another sick kid on the way home.  Wyatt was totally fine all morning until we arrived in KC when he said his stomach hurt.  We all just chalked it up to motion sickness since he'd been staring at his iPod screen the entire drive and he's prone to motion sickness anyway.  But then all day he really didn't eat anything, but since he's somewhat of a picky eater anyway, my mom and I figured maybe he just didn't want any of the food we'd brought with.  He had kept saying that he just didn't feel right and that he just didn't want to get in the truck again, but it really didn't stop him from doing anything - riding rides and playing with Jayden and Brendan.  But just to help him feel better, we put him in the front seat and told him to try and sleep all the way back to Wichita.  However, 5 minutes into the drive this happy boy, right here on the right (picture taken just 20 mins earlier)

was throwing up into a plastic bag that I THANKFULLY had in the truck.  And thank goodness my mom was there to catch it all, because without her it would of just ended up on the floor and that drive home would of been horrible.  As has been previously stated on this blog, I do not do well with puke.  During the expulsion of Wyatt's Sprite and 1 french fry that he had tried to eat, I scooted as far as I could to my side of the truck and tried to breath through my mouth, but I was totally gagging and I couldn't stop.  My mom said she was proud of me for keeping my eyes open and not crashing or driving the truck off the road all the while trying to keep my own food down and driving through traffic getting out of Kansas City.  I quickly took the next exit, found a gas station, fueled up the truck so I could stay outside longer, and then got a few more plastic bags for the ride home.  Luckily, Wyatt kept everything else in the rest of the ride home, we just had to keep the truck's A/C blowing on him to help keep him not feeling nauseous.  I'd much rather be cold than smelling/listening to/watching puke happen.  :)