happy 4th birthday, maddux! (and happy 13th anniversary, matt!)

the day maddux has waited for over the past five (long) months has finally arrived - his birthday! he has been planning it ever since being left out in june while everyone celebrated their birthdays. i don't think that he stopped smiling all day long. all of his plans resolved around food! for breakfast he wanted banana pancakes and pumpkin pancakes - both with sprinkles. and that is what he got!

daddy took the day off from work to celebrate with us, but the three big kids did have school. madelyn was very disappointed that we weren't going to take her out of school for lunch, but since she recently went to a party at chuck e. cheese without the boys there weren't too many tears. if there was one thing that maddux knew for sure, he was going to chuck e. cheese for his birthday! we chose lunch so that there wouldn't be too much of a crowd and it worked out perfectly. manning and i dropped the boys off at school and headed to the ymca like on a normal morning. (maddux was snack friend today too and chose the same snack he brought last year - cocoa banana snack cake.) after picking up the preschool boys, we picked up daddy at home (giving him a much needed morning at home) and headed to chuck e. cheese.

there was just too much excitement to bother with looking at the camera!

matt and i having a romantic anniversary lunch at chuck e. cheese. being together is good enough!

maddux was just in heaven. and chuck e. cheese was really generous to him because it was his birthday. they came and gave him a stack of extra tokens towards the end of our visit and then gave him an extra 200 tickets so that he could get a prize he wanted while still splitting our tickets with his brothers.

manning was very into the chuck e. cheese movie as we were leaving - until there was something he didn't agree with on the screen.

we all left very happy! it was actually a really nice day so we decided to give maddux one of presents to enjoy while we waited for madelyn's bus.

he was SO happy to get an orange pedal bike!

i love manning cheering for maddux in the first video and maddux rides on his own in the second video.

maddux chose pizza again for dinner. what can i say? our kids love pizza! when everyone was full maddux was ready to get to those presents - and so were his brothers and sister. the funny thing is that our kids love getting clothes just as much as toys - look at his face!

so maddux changed his mind several times about what he wanted for his birthday dessert - sweet frog, cupcakes, cake, ice cream and back around again. two days ago i got him to commit to his final choice - vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. he wanted "white sides, orange on top and orange and white striped candles." so yesterday i made cake. since i was already making preschool snack for today, i went with box mix cake. which is fine (and what i would normally do) but since we don't eat eggs any more i used apple sauce instead. it was SUPER moist. like falling apart moist and very, very difficult to frost. here was the, not so pretty, final product. but maddux was happy.

and he loved it! all of the kids did. in fact, it has already been requested for madelyn's birthday. matt and i thought that it was pretty gross so matt said that i have to use eggs if madelyn wants it for her birthday.

at the last minute, i remembered that we needed to take pictures with the birthday boy. matt got the awesome picture you see here - in one take - and after four attempts, this is the best one maddux gave me - of course.

happy birthday, maddux! we are so happy to have a four-year-old you. you were the best anniversary present! matt and i are deferring our anniversary celebration until a later date - at least until maddux moves out some day. love.

science lab building set

this morning manning participated in his first building project at lowe's - and got a new apron! madelyn was excited because the project was a science lab! manning, madelyn and i set up on the floor and matt, mason and maddux worked on the 'table' set up.

the kids were all pretty excited about their labs and they even came with 8-10 experiments they can do! we can't wait to get going at home.

when we were done, we spent quite some time checking out all of the christmas decorations! we just love christmas. manning doesn't really remember christmas and he is seeing everything like it is for the first time! you should have seen him marveling over the pre-lit trees today. i can't wait to take him to the christmas tree festival on thanksgiving! love.

leaf story

madelyn had someone in her class bring in a story and craft yesterday so madelyn came home and made her own to bring today. when the boys and i left the park, we took some of the large leaves to do some rubbings when we got home. it was a bigger hit than i had expected with the kids! and it inspired madelyn's story:

"one day there was six big leaves and six small leaves. and then some wind came along and made fun of the six small leaves. and the six big leaves made a plan. they would yell, "don't make fun of them!" the wind stopped. it flew away. and the twelve leaves lived happily ever after. the end."

she read it to her class today and was thrilled about it. (she is wearing all green for "right to read week". her principal read all day on the roof of the school yesterday and earned books for the school.) love.

library fun

manning is in a "tales for twos" class each week at the library and since the other boys don't have school on the day of the class, they get to go too (and they love it). after class we go upstairs to play and refresh out book collection. the boys were all really taken with the elephant puppet craft available today - manning in particular. his lovey/pillow is an elephant. love.

little voters

admittedly, i had not done any research into the candidates for this mid-term election. and it snuck up on me! i hate not to vote, but i also hate to vote in ignorance. so i spent some time researching candidate interviews on third-party sites (more than one to try and allow for natural biases). and the boys and i headed to the polls.

it was a gorgeous day! so we spent an hour at the park right next to the polling site playing in the leaves. the boys thought that attacking me with leaves was the greatest thing ever! and i had them everywhere!

besides leaves, we spent a while trying to match acorns to their caps. manning was particularly taken with this activity and stayed at it the longest.

we very rarely play at this park even though it is one we can walk to from our house. i don't know why. the boys are already planning to go play in the leaves again.

so thankful for sunny fall days! love.

preschool math

mason brought home this worksheet today and was pretty excited that he was able to do math like madelyn! love him.

boy art

maddux fingerprint cow from library

maddux' favorite school craft so far

guess who drew this one...

maddux brings me a piece of paper every day with his name written in orange crayon

mason is becoming quite the little artist. and he draws from memory! these aren't even the most impressive pieces. he has been drawing a ton this week.

right now we have more artwork than we can even display! not a bad problem to have. love.