Katie's Birthday Party

This weekend was a blast and a blur; we had a great time visiting with our friends and then we hosted about 12 neighborhood kids for a birthday party. One good thing about our neighbors is that our kids are all very close friends. One bad thing is that they are close enough friends to fight like brothers and sisters. Especially at birthday parties when not everyone gets the same number of Easter eggs and I promise them a prize egg that was never found and they question my egg hiding integrity as if I had made the prize egg up. Oh, it's still out there, people. I don't know where, but it's still out there. And it has money in it.

And another thing: when I hide Easter eggs, I don't mess around. You have to work to find those eggs. They don't come for free.

Anyway, we all bounced back. The cake pops were a huge hit. The birthday girl had a great time. All the tears were forgotten as soon as the candy started flowing.
We have several 12 year old girls in our neighborhood who work the birthday party circuit. For five bucks an hour, you can hire them to work your party, doing hair, painting nails, running games, or doing crafts. These are my future babysitters in training. For this party, we just offered hairdo services. I think the french braid pigtails are lovely. Of course, Katie only allowed plain pigtails, no ribbons. It didn't occur to me until after the party that I should have hired the girl to come clean up afterward. I will definitely have to do that next time.
Here are what my cupcake pops turned out like. They were really delicious, and the kids loved them. If I make them again, I will just stick with one color ball with sprinkles on a lollipop stick instead of trying to be so fancy. These took way too long to make.
Here are Katie and Molly, BFF's, opening presents together. The only two pictures that I have of Katie without Molly at this party are the ones where I cropped Molly out (the first two at the top). Those girls are joined at the hip.

Look at this sleeping baby...

Oh dear, someone's noisy camera woke him up. Sorry.

Sugar-coated

My baby girl is turning five on Monday. Five. I've been telling her all week that I love Four so much that I want her to stay Four. Four is so sweet and affectionate and adorable. Each time I say it, Katie giggles and says, "No, I want to have a birfday and be five. I want to grow up! I'll still love you when I'm five!" And I tell her no, we'll have a birthday party, but it will be her Fourth birthday.

She doesn't care much for that suggestion.

Meanwhile, my usual temporary birthday insanity has taken over, and I've attempted to make these for the party. I don't know what possessed me to think this was a good idea, but it's done. I have company coming in the morning, the house is a mess, and the entire kitchen is candy-coated, but the cupcake pops are done. I don't know why I lose my mind every time one of my kids has a birthday. I am not a crafter or a baker. I have no tolerance for things that require attention to detail. But three times a year, I see something cute on the internet and say to myself, "YES. That is exactly what I need to spend my entire day doing, even though it is far beyond my skill level and will frustrate me beyond belief. How fun!"

So for now, I am going to bed and leaving the kitchen candy-coated until morning. Some close friends from Nashville are coming to stay here for the weekend with their precious baby, so we'll be doing lots of visiting and spades playing and birthday partying and enjoying the last few days of Age Four in our home. It looks like it's going to be a good weekend.

Mo Photos

These are the last Big Bend photos that I will post. I hope you are able to live with that. The first one was taken at a place called Burro Mesa, at the bottom of a dry waterfall that has been carved into the mountain, and if you look at Greg's face, you can tell that this is the exact moment that I was asking him if he knew how long it would take for an ambulance to reach us.
The answer: a very long time. Of course the girls got in on the action next. They love to climb the rock wall at REI (even Katie can ring the bell), and they were excited to climb a real-life rock wall. Tommy, like me, kept his feet planted firmly on the ground.
Next we went to a town called Terlingua, to visit their "Ghost Town". The kids were really excited about this until they found out that it was really just a bunch of crumbling adobe buildings, a cemetary, and some touristy shops. We didn't see any actual ghosts.

This is a book that Santa brought for Tommy this year: He LOVES it. Yes, it is a book about poop. He brought it on each hiking trail, and got disproportionately excited each time he came across some 'scat'. Especially coyote scat. He loves coyotes. All week, he kept saying he just wanted to see one. There was a group of them that roamed our campground at night, and we could hear them howling to each other. On the last night, one of them howled right outside our tent, and I really wanted to open the window and look at it, but it was really cold, and my sleeping bag was really warm.

And now a final sunset from Big Bend. I don't know when we'll go back. I don't know if I'll get my husband to agree to camping again any time soon. It was a lovely vacation, though.

El Trip Reporto Part Dos

Hola. Bienvenido to el blog. Here are more vacation pictures for you.

Here are a bunch of goofballs getting ready to hike. Please look at the map and note that the yellow portion is most decidedly Mexico, and the green is Texas.
In this photo, Mexico is to the left of the water, and Texas is to the right. Our instructions were to stay firmly on the right, by the way, a direct order from the Feds...or at least that's what the bulletin board said.
Here we are sauntering along in the U.S., minding our law-abiding business...

(super-star!)

And here I am putting my toe in the water at my husband's insistence....still legal.....and such a natural pose....

But wait....who's that cowboy? He's crossing back and forth from Mexico...illegally!!! To sell souvenirs!!!and here's another one....singing Mexican ballads into the canyon for tips. Our family is very law-abiding, and would never support such illegal activity at our nation's border....

oh wait, apparently we do. Smile, honey! This one's for the Feds!

Spring Break, Whooooo!

Greg and I have been planning a Spring Break trip to the beach for several months now. We made reservations for a campsite on a beach in South Texas, bought flip-flops and sand buckets, and packed all of our beach accoutrements in anticipation of our departure. Unfortunately, 24 hours before we were to leave, the Weather Channel predicted 70% chance of rain and 60 degree weather, so we decided to chuck the beach trip and go to Big Bend National Park instead.
It goes without saying that I am thoroughly in love and obsessed with Big Bend. I LOVE it. My sister Wendy and I went there a year ago, and I have been dying to get back. We simply didn't want to do it for Spring Break because the place is usually filled to capacity with college students during the month of March. Sure enough, there were no reservations to be had, but we drove out there anyway in hopes of finding a place.

Fortunately for us, the weather had been horrid all week, and had run most of the college students off, so we had our choice of campsites in the park. We chose one right by the Rio Grande, which of course is the border between the U.S. and Mexico. (The Rio Not So Grande, as Greg calls it)

Unfortunately for us, the weather continued to be horrid for the first night that we were there, and we nearly froze our booties off. I don't know how strong the winds were that first night, but it was exactly like sleeping under a kite that has been nailed to the ground. Just like it.

After that first night, the weather turned sunny and warm, and we were able to enjoy lots of hiking and sightseeing.
Here we are hiking the Lost Mine Trail. The kids were very excited about potentially finding the Lost Mine. Like it was an episode of Dora or something.
This is the view from an overlook one mile into the trail, which is where we turned around. Tommy was insistent that he could hike the full five miles, but we wouldn't take his word for it.

This is the Window, which is in an area called the Basin where Wendy and I camped on the last trip. Wendy and I actually hiked to the edge of the V, which ends at the top of a waterfall, which is the location of my header photo up there.
This is Casa Grande Peak, one of my favorites in the park.
After we were finished hiking, we got into the car for the 30 mile scenic drive through the park back to our campsite. We had a beautiful view of these mountains, called the Sierra Madres.
The kids were really excited that we got to go through this tunnel every time we came back to the campground.

This is our very sturdy tent and campsite, with dinner cooking. The car behind us belongs to some college students. I'm not trendy enough to drive an X-terra. Speaking of college student trends, I saw a lot of male college students wearing skinny jeans. What is up with that? I wanted to just take them aside and shake my head and say, "No, honey, just no. Girls do not like toothpick legs on you. Trust me. The fauxhawk is okay, but not the skinny jeans." But I didn't. They'll have to learn on their own, I guess.

Another side story about the campsite: the metal box on the right is a Bear Box, meant for storing food and cooking items that need to be kept away from wildlife. When we pulled up to the campsite, Katie asked what it was, and I replied, "It's a bear box." With perfect dry comedic timing, Grace responded, "That's where you keep your bears." The reason it made me laugh so hard is because it sounded exactly like something my dad would say, and it tickles me to death that she has inherited his sense of humor.

Well this has gotten quite long. I have harrowing tales of coyotes and encounters with illegal aliens crossing the border, but I will wait and share them with you tomorrow.

I've been gone this week...

to a place where we were slightly lower on the food chain
and where the kids got into a little bit of legal trouble.....
but for now I have a wet tent to air out and several loads of grungy laundry to wash. More photos to come.