green and pink and hit all over

What's green and pink and hit all over?




















Well,it starts with a balloon, and a few cups.

























Then add lots of paper, flour and water.  Probably cover the table, because it's really messy.



Finally, you add Jonah's two favorite colors (pink and green),

























with a few frills just for fun.




















What do you end up with? Why a piñata of course! One of Jonah's favorite bedtime books is a Spanish book about filling up a piñata, so we decided to make one just for his birthday. Of course we didn't have cool things like in his book- dos trompetas, tres animalitos, quatro aviones, cinco silbatos, seis chicles...well, you get the idea. We did have candy, and a few glow in the dark things, so that was pretty good, right?
 Jonah seemed to think so. Good thing too, because it took most of the week to make it!

























We don't have a good tree nearby, so we planned to hang it at the school playground on one of the toys there. But as there were people there the night of his birthday, we changed plans and took it to the pow wow grounds!
Everyone got a turn to hit, from smallest to largest:





































 








































Josh made the first mortal wound, and it wasn't too long before it looked like this:

 

Of course, mommy might have had something to do with that final blow :)

 

 The piñata was the big event of the evening, but Jonah got other cool stuff for his birthday too, like the cake that he and daddy decorated together. He got chocolate cake with strawberry frosting, and he told daddy how he wanted it decorated.

 

 

 

He got lots of cool presents too!

 

 

Everyone needs at least one light saber in their childhood.

 

 

 

Happy birthday, Jonah!

 

 

Independence Day

Did you celebrate the 4th of July this month? Chances are, if you live in the USA, you probably did. We live in a sovereign nation within the USA, but apparently we can still celebrate too!
There are no parades within an hour and a half of where we live, so we didn't get to go collect candy (bummer.) The closest place with fireworks is 40 minutes away, and prior to this year it seemed too late to be driving that far, so we always did a few sparklers at home instead. Our kids are little, they don't care.
But we had a lot of fun watching the fireworks at Grandma's house last summer, and since they remembered it, we figured we'd take the kids to town to see them this year. Now they weren't anything like a bigger city- and nothing like those we used to watch in Logan just across the street from where we lived. But they were still fun!
We brought our sparklers with us too, which we lit off while we waited for the big show.  We were actually by a bunch of other parked cars, but we were on the very end of the row so we were able to keep them out of the picture-and catch the beautiful sunset at the same time! Of course, whenever everyone moved to the wrong side of the camera (by the cars and away from the pretty sunset) I ordered them back to the good side.

Elora and Jonah

This was Eli's first real time getting to play with sparklers. At first he loved it.

light me up, daddio.

Everyone ran around like crazy spinning their sparklers and enjoying the pyrotechnics.

















































Eli was copying Jonah and laughing maniacally as he waved his sparkly banner around; several times I had to remind him to hold his hand up high, as he and Jonah seemed to be trying to light the grass on fire! All was fun and games, until Eli held his sparkler a little too close to his face. I think and errant spark got on him and made him nervous. He proceeded to try and wipe the spark away from his head- with the hand that was still holding the sparkler!
I alerted Daddy to the danger, and he pulled Eli's hand away from his head and patted at his hair, just in case.




















After that though, Eli wasn't so keen on his fiery toy.

























When Daddy lit the next one, he smiled at first, then quickly held it away from himself and shielded his face. Poor little guy! He didn't cry or anything, but now he recognized the danger and didn't want much to do with it.




















That was okay though. It was finally getting darker, and the big display was going to happen soon.





















It made for a late night for all, but we had fun celebrating our Nation's independence! (And our neighbors had fun celebrating for the next week or so...I picked up about 100 bottle rockets in front of the school the following week!)

sweet dreams!

Washington

Some of you may not know that we took a quick trip to eastern Washington in late May. The circumstances were stressful- there was a death in my husband's family- but we were happy to be able to visit, as we hadn't been to the area in about 2.5 years! It was a long drive, but pretty. We even found random roadside benches where we could eat lunch in Montana.

We were glad the kids got to see their other grandpa, who's been ill, and some of their cousins with the same last name as they have. We even met one cousin we'd never seen before! She's three years old, and looks a lot like Elora at the same age.




















While we were at their apartment, the kids were fascinated by a slug on the ground. Too bad it wasn't one of those huge banana slugs they have around Seattle.

This was my favorite thing at their apartment!

We were happy to soak up the green of late spring, which hadn't yet arrived in South Dakota at the time we went on our trip. We had a day or two to explore the area, which was nice as our kids hadn't been to the state in the warm seasons since Elora was about two years old!

Do you think they look like cousins? This was in grandpa's yard.




















We got to play at the park and a school playground too. It was pretty, but it was weird to have to watch out for the teenagers and possible needles under the toys, even though it was a small town. Guess they don't have that stuff in ultra rural South Dakota!

we loved the tall trees!



Jonah really liked having someone to play with!

Elora had fun too! Though she was disappointed that three of their older girl cousins couldn't be there.

























One day we went on a little hike, but it was very short because the trail was blocked by fallen trees. There was a lot of nice flora to see anyway. Yes, Josh dropped that apple in the dirt about five times.

We forgot our lunch at Grandpa's house,
 luckily we'd bought a few snacks for our hike.

We tried to go to a more well known hike, only to discover that now in Washington, you have to get a special pass to go to most recreational sites! Residents can renew it every year for $30, and visitors can buy a day pass for $10. Unfortunately, you can't buy it at the waterfall we visited, and it was a 40 minute drive back down to town. So that adventure was over!

Daddy was happy he got to see two of his brothers, one of whom looks like the lead singer of Metallica.




















We also took the traditional cousins picture. At least, we traditionally do it in my family, everyone there seemed to think it was kind of a weird idea, especially the older kids. FYI, there were some trees over to the side, and I thought that would be a nice background, but everyone was facing the wrong direction so we got this instead....

 

See, this is the way it was supposed to be! No one wanted to move, and only Eli and Elora knew which way to look , lol.

 



 

Finally, we had to say goodbye to grandpa and his dog Honey, to make the two day trip home, so Josh could go to his Kindergarten graduation.

 

 

 

It was pretty and cloudy all the way home, with an abundance of rest stops. This one was in the chimney of Idaho...

























Can you tell this one is in Wyoming? About two seconds later, everyone fell down and had to have bandaids.

 

baby haircut

So Eli has had some pretty sweet curls. I've left his hair long for a longer time than any of the other boys, because his curls were just so angelic. I was kind of hoping to leave them till he was two, so he could have some fancy two-year-old photos with his curly locks. Alas, it was not meant to be.
Now it is summer, and summer means hot and sticky. Curls aren't that cute when they're matted to your forehead and neck!
The other day, I was messing around and decided to put Eli's hair up to get it off his neck. Yes, we could now see he needed a haircut-he could too easily pass for a cute little girl!




















So the next day, out came the haircut apron! I didn't feel quite ready to pull out the shears and completely buzz his head, but we got it pretty short anyway.



The front: Before

Eli was actually thrilled to be in the "barbers chair" ; whenever we cut the other boys' hair he is always anxious to join in.

Back: before

Eli's not sure if he wants to show you the 'after' pictures!


 
 





















Oh all right, here it is! Yeah, don't ask me about the way his hair is combed, daddy thought he was making it nice for the pictures.


 

























Eli seems to agree that he's quite handsome. Look at that face.

























Now when he sees pictures of himself, he thinks it's Jonah!

 

 

What a cute boy!