Birthday Madness

Per my last blog resolution, I'm going to update more regularly so this time around you get lots of photos and stories about the Birthday marathon that just ended. Ben is now officially 2 and Simon is 5.

We start our album off with a beautiful cabbage patch boy wearing a cabbage leaf hat from our New Year's Day feast. Ain't he cute? We ventured out to a bowling alley in January to relieve our cabin fever and met up with Nana and Papa for some bowling tips. Thank goodness for bumpers in the gutters for me! The boys have really enjoyed playing at bathtime lately, here is one photo of soap beards.

Oma and Opa visited over Ben's birthday and we had a great time at the Science Center, the playground and of course the birthday party. Ben had fun blowing out his candle and learned how to tell people his age, "TOOOOW!"

In between birthdays I found some time to take guitar lessons and Simon captured me practicing one of the 3 chords I now know. It's amazing how many songs you can sing with 3 chords. Then Simon decided to plan dinner one night so we have lots of photos of our sushi train dinner in the basement. Yes, that's sushi riding on the back of the elevated Lego train track built by our very own budding engineer, Simon.

The last of the photos include the many events of Simon's birthday - or birthweek. We began with opening an early gift from Grandma Vicky the weekend before because snow and illness postponed his party. He and Daddy spent 2 days building the K'NEX volcano rollercoaster. Ben and I used the time to build his alphabet puzzle about 100 times (He's a bit obsessed with letters at the moment). Mid-week included a classroom celebration Montessori style, Simon chose friends to orbit the globe around the candle sun for each year of his life while I described his growth each year. I really like this ceremony, it makes me cry every time. Our family birthday party was that evening. Brian and I actually figured out a way to make a "racetrack, cars, #5 birthday cake" from scratch. The boys got a special surprise from Jean when they got their haircut- rockin' colored hairdoos! The week ended with his big birthday present: a ride on the Amtrak train from St. Louis to Washington, MO. It was such a fun time for our whole family, finding gloves on ears as an easy distraction while waiting for the train. When we got home Simon had his favorite friends, Katie and Grace, over for ice cream sunday and his first sleepover.

I'm still recovering from the birthday marathon but spring is in the air and we've been enjoying walks in the park and eating outside while Simon leads Ben around our garden pointing out all of the sprouting plants by name. We hope you all enjoy nature's rebirth too.