Pee Wee Bowling

Porter's preschool had a bowl-a-thon fundraiser last weekend that was a crazy free for all of bowling fun. 

 

 The whole alley was rented out just for our school so it was kind of bowling anarchy.

Two balls = twice the pins!

Matilda celebrates a strike 

Missing Grammy

Cathy went home last night and this morning both of the kids were sad and recounting all the fun things they liked doing with Grammy. 

Yummy meals.

 Dissecting owl pellets. 

 Dance parties.

 Hollywood hikes. 

Porter also listed building Legos, which is probably what Grammy spent the majority of her vacation doing. I think she might relieved to go back to work just to escape her slave-driving lego builder grandson!

Remote Control Time

With some of his birthday money Porter picked out a remote controlled monster truck that we finally got up and running with the right batteries today.

Porter loved running along with the truck like a game of chase. It was quite the workout.

  The tongue of concentration.

The model we got is supposed to climb over stuff really well so Porter was longing for big rock piles to test out that claim. We will need try that soon, for today some roots and curbs proved a good enough challenge.

Lego Party Ingredients

Tim and I had a blast getting carried away with the Lego themed birthday. I can take little credit for the ideas, almost all were found in about 5 minute after Googling "lego birthday party."Here's what some of what we came up with:

Lego sandwiches.

  

 Lego head marshmallow pops. Tim did an awesome job wielding the edible food marker to create their faces. My favorite were the faces he gave these saggy headed guys who didn't stay at the top of their pop. (If you attempt your own, don't make the mistake of pushing the pop too far in.)

 Lego 4, Duplo flashlight guy for decor, pops, and lego straws to go with the hand drawn lego cups. Tim also rocked those cups; I loved all the super lego-inspired faces he did.

 Lego mini-figure design crafting area.

 Lego cake. The fondant legos turned out so nice, it was a great first foray into fondant for me. We scared a lot of parents at the party as the kids ran off with very realistic looking legos to munch. To disclose all the details, the digger and figures are real legos, the cake was lemon cake with a raspberry jam center layer and buttercream frosting.

Most important to a successful lego party is a crew of CUTE builders.

We of course made lego themed goodie bags, complete with an attempt at lego font. They were  not photographed by us in the hectic end of the party but captured by Adam for posterity.

Birthday Party Boy

Birthday Boy

Porter is in Lego heaven today on his birthday, building and building like a crazy fool after opening all the fabulous new sets he got at his party yesterday.





Adam has come through again with great pictures and lightening fast upload times to get you a peak at all the party fun. Find Adam's pictures over here on Flickr.

Tiger-Rainbow-Unicorn

After a huge, fantastic, fun birthday bash this morning in the park, we passed the afternoon quietly at home building new Lego sets and exercising our creativity with some face painting.

Matilda turned Porter into a ferocious birthday beast. 

My sunshine girl. 

Marionette King

We went on a preschool field trip today to the Bob Baker Marionette show. It was a super fun show with ice cream after and 30 some school friends, but the clear highlight for Porter was his birthday boy treatment. His good friend June shares an Earth Day birthday with him and her mom arranged for the kids to get called up. Some huge marionette dogs (Henry and Happy, the birthday dogs) presented them each with a crown and puppet and then led the entire audience in a big round of happy birthday. Porter is quite in love with his puppet AND looking so big to me here.

Lego Party Prep

We are gearing up for the big birthday this weekend. My first foray into using fondant has been fun as I am crafting edible bricks for the cake. We also tested out these lego sandwiches, which are Porter-tested and approved. He is requesting peanut butter-honey sandwiches and cream cheese- avocado.

Color Pop

Tim and I each had a chance to go to the Huntington Gardens this week with the kids and it is in full bloom. I have not seen flowers like this in a long time - so beautiful and amazing.

Porter Boy Love-Fest

My almost 4 year old boy is simultaneously driving me crazy and being insanely sweet and loveable. Clingy, funny, irritating and annoying all at once.








He kind of looks like that round baby I used to know here.

Birthday season in our house always makes me sad the years are slipping away so fast.

Easter Day Snorkel Cruise

I am slowly working my way through the zillions of Hawaii photos and stories I want to share here. One highlight was a beautiful catamaran tour we went on up the coast that included lots of wildlife viewing, yummy meals, amazing snorkeling and an all around great family time.

I see you! The binoculars and this trampoline area of the catamaran both provided lots of entertainment for the kids during the 5 hours we were on the boat. It was difficult to convince Porter that this type of trampoline was not for jumping.

I have such strong memories of sailing with my family as a kid so it was a real treat to make some boat memories with the kids.

Porter was very content with the endless supply of drinks, namely these awesome tropical juices.

Tim got to flex his photo-taking fingers.

Matilda was raring to go and one of the first ones off the boat to snorkel.

I was nervous Tim and I would not get to snorkel for very long if the kids got tired or cold, but they lasted longer than lots of the adults snorkeling in our group.

The crew had these boogie boards with snorkel viewing windows for the younger kids. Porter used it for a bit and was tickled to see some fish below but even more excited when he would catch a glimpse of my flippered feet. Porter didn't ever get the hang of the snorkel mask and for this outing spent most of his time riding me piggy back while I snorkeled. It was actually not as hard as you imagine. I just used the boogie board out in front of me for a bit more floatation support and could cruise around to see whatever I wanted. He chattered away to me from my back and I was content to know exactly where he was, for once. Definitely a win-win situation since I got to snorkel for a decent amount of time and he got to be glued to mom like he prefers.
Tim snorkels with a Green Sea Turtle friend.

Hello, friend!

After the snorkel we sailed slowly for a few more hours, enjoyed lunch, cozy snuggles in laps with sweatshirts, beers, macadamia nut cookies and lots more scenery and whales.

I am so lucky with these three.

At the very end of the day the crew gave us a chance to experience why they call the front area the trampoline. They picked up the speed a ton and showed us how you could lay down on the mesh and hold the side edges. As the boat goes flying over the waves, your whole body would fly up in the air. It was a super fun little thrill ride. The kids were totally freaked out by bumps and cold spray and wind during the mini version the captain did for them. After that trial the kids went into the lower cabin area and were thrilled to watch Tim and I take turns riding the trampoline!