Parental Celebrations

So I'm a little behind with my posts for Mother's Day and Father's Day. Yes, I realize it's now mid-July, but I figured better late than not at all.

For a long time now I've been wanting to go to the paint-your-own pottery store to make a family birthday plate. I thought it would be a neat tradition for the birthday person at our house to get to use it on their special day. My mom's group went there for an outing but I knew I'd never have time to complete one, so I ended up making this plate....

I love it, but it doesn't fulfill the purpose I needed, so for Mother's Day my mom and I went to a different pottery store to each make something. We had lots of fun painting as we drank big fountain Coke's and ate Arby's. No one at my house likes Arby's so sometimes it's my special treat to eat when I'm with my mom. My mom made a plate to match her kitchen and I made my birthday plate. It took me 6 long hours, but I'm happy with the result. It takes a lot of coats to get that paint dark.

The kids made each of their grandmas a decoupaged vase and we went to Jason's parents for a cookout. Jason and the kids also made me breakfast in bed. I forgot to take pictures of all that. I remembered to take pictures of these though.....

For Father's Day the kids painted some canisters and we made all the grandpas some cinnamon-sugar popcorn.

We went to dinner for gyros with my step-dad and mom and then Jason's parents, his sister and boyfriend and my dad and step-mom came for a cookout. Jason treated himself to some private fishing time and the kids and I made him a few gifts.

Not sure where we're going to put the stepping stone, but I made sure it was LSU colors.

The kids' birthday party

So today's party was the quickest whirlwind of chaos I've ever seen. The first 45 minutes was supposed to be games with the kids led by the parks and rec staff. About 10 minutes into the start of the party I had to tell them to get the ball rolling and the late people would just have to miss that part. If I'm paying for 45 minutes of activities, I want them to start on time. Then they couldn't get the kids engaged. Part of me felt sorry for them, because my kids are rough to work with anyway, but I'm thinking since that's their job they should kind of have a handle on it. We were able to get some small excitement with a parachute and some hula hoops, but that's about it. The rec leaders were pretty much oblivious to the 10 kids.





Then it was time for presents. Only 45 minutes is allotted for gifts and cake/ice cream combined, so the kids had to both open their gifts at the same time. I pretty much have no idea what Jordis got. My mom worked with her and I helped Xander. The rec leaders were writing down who got what with me shouting back and forth at them to make sure they got it. They said they're sure they got Xander's but not 100% about Jordis. So hopefully I don't miss anyone when it comes to thank you notes since I didn't see everything for myself when she opened it.







The kids seemed to like the cake and ice cream, though I thought it was pretty unprofessional that they were hacking up the cake with plastic knives and no spatula. I'd think if you do this often enough you could keep a good serrated knife and a spatula on hand so you're not touching everyone's cake, but maybe that's just me. And maybe they did wash their hands first and I didn't see it. I'm not going to comment on giving little kids purple Kool-Aid. Enough said there with just the mention.

At any rate, the kids are telling us they had fun, and I think after they go to bed tonight and we sort through their gifts and they can play with them tomorrow they'll be even more excited. And I didn't have to clean my house before or after. So I guess it was worth it for the money.

After arriving home we gave Jordis her gifts from us, like we did Xander on his actual birthday last Tuesday. These few pictures are our favorites. We're raising a diva indeed.





We decided to let them watch TV after dinner so they'd quit running around the house screaming. I think this last picture just about sums up how Jason and I feel about now, too. I'm pretty sure there will be no more joint parties. We can only take so much excitement in one day.