He's A Man! He's 40!

So that's a reference to an old college football coach's post-game press conference rant, but it also describes Dad as he is, in fact, now 40.

And his 40th birthday was shaping up to be way lame-o, until I stepped in.

Decided late afternoon I was gonna make a run at this thing to make his 40th birthday memorable. So I put together a bunch of games and after dinner, well, we got after it.

Blindfolded pin the tail on the donkey (you'll see from the looks of me about to walk down the hallway this game was not my strongest, and Mom eventually won).

That moved right into Suitcase Race, Hutch even participated in order to make it 3-on-3.

And then my favorite game - Guess That Food. This is where we blindfold people and then the other people prepare food and feed it to them and they have to guess what it is. Given the poor performance shown by Dad in this one, I'm a little worried he's more like 70 and the old taste buds are failing him...

Anyway, all in all a really fun 40th birthday party for my Dad, compliments of moi.

The Little Duck Turns 3

So there's a lot going on in this next batch of photos. Let me lay it out for you:
1. Pax actually has something on that is not a t-shirt and sweatpants on, Juliana was able to get him looking nice for his big day.
2. Pax actually has a shirt on, at all.... not very common as I might have told you.
3. Pax actually was posing for pictures, so as you'll see, we just took big advantage of it.

Without further ado.

Oh, and this is Juliana, not sure if I've ever introduced her to you all. Pax started just calling her Julie out of the clear blue about 8-10 months ago and that kind of stuck. These two are truly inseparable, and it's no secret why if you spend ten minutes around them.  She just loves him to death and the feeling couldn't be more mutual from him back to her. Amen for the people who come into our lives and take such great care of me, the middle dog and the little duck.

And we'll wrap this thing with Pax unwrapping a few things.

Happy Birthday to my best little buddy in the whole wide.

Birthday Week... Interrupted

Well, you're probably wondering what happened to Birthday Week, it was going so well.

Leading into it everyone was having such a blast.

I was getting treated like it was my birthday week...

So the night of my actual birthday mom gets summoned out of town for work, but alas I still really wanted to go to Rosebud so Dad took me, Mae, Pax and my bestie Shea.

What is Mae wearing in that photo, you ask? I have no clue. Before she left she asked Dad to take a picture of her and we all thought when she came downstairs she was Olivia Newton John.

Anyway, I started not feeling well at Rosebud, so much so that I didn't even eat my spaghetti, so you knew something was wrong with me. We came home and did some cake and I tried to tough through it. Oh, and at this point Olivia is hating life and making a solid effort to sabotage my birthday with her version of nastiness.  (it's working)

Then we opened gifts. As you can see, Olivia recovered briefly and was stoked at the Shopkins Season 4 present I got from mom and dad...

And then there was a serious huddle around them.

And then, just like that, it all went to pieces. First I got sick, then Mae decided to come along with me the next day and we spent the next 8 days sicker than dogs. In the meantime, Mom came down with it as well and then this happened...

Pax goes into the ER for croupe (or however the hell you spell it. Yes, I said hell, it was a frustrating week). Dad manages to tread water and actually is secretly wishing the whole time that he got it so he could just climb into bed for three days... instead he's the ringleader of this whole circus.

So here we are, almost 13 days later. Some of us are still coughing (Mom, Mae), some of us are finally better (me) and some of us need a room with a straightjacket and rubber walls (Dad).

So that was the Birthday Week... interrupted.

Oh, and then we found an awesome app on Juliana's phone and this happened.

Mae turns 6

Yesterday was a big day. Mae turned six!! It started out with donuts day in the basement of the school where we ran around with our friends and had a bunch of fun.

Then after work we picked up Mae's bestie - Adrianna and Ana - and headed for Roots, Mae's pick of choice for her birthday dinner. Ana thought it was funny to disappear from the picture... Mae thought it was funny, too.

Then we came back to the house where Juliana had decorated so nicely for Mae's birthday and she and Paxton even made Mae a Shopkins cake.

We sang Happy Birthday with the crew and Mae had a couple presents to open up... one of them being... SHOPKINS SEASON 4!!! We were pretty stoked and for some reason Pax was taking a bite out of my leg (he's so weird).

We often caught Pax just standing and staring at the cake waiting for a bite. Oh, and that's only the second time in his entire life he's had something on other than sweatpants. I think Mom and Dad even relented on Christmas when he rolled around all day in track pants and a t-shirt.

Mabel, oh Mabel, the one and only. Happy Birthday medium cat. That's what we call her in the house - I'm the Big Dog, Mae is the Medium Cat and Pax is the Little Duck.

Thanksgiving, 2015

So it was that time of year again. Time to jump in the car and have ourselves a ROAD TRIP! to Kansas City to Aunt Erica's for Thanksgiving.

So let's get things started. This is what you call a road trip snooze.

Things got off to a rocky start when Mae thought she wasn't feeling good.

That didn't last long and we were off to ice skating. We had never gone ice skating before (well, once when I was really really little bit it didn't really count) and Mae has her ice skating lessons coming up in January, so we hit the frozen pond in the little town square by Aunt Erica's and did our thing.

Grandma got Pax out on his skates

And then Aunt Erica went and got us Christmas presents which were roller blades and skates, which we were able to roller around her gym in.

We hit the game room for a little shuffle and foos, too.

And then things got serious. We got down and dirty with a Christmas Village craft project. There were hot glue guns, houses to build, blow dryers going, the whole bit.

And after about five hours... (drumroll, please)

This craft did not come without serious injury, though. Mae got burned by the glue gun, and so did I. BUT, Aunt Erica doctored us up, but instead of gauze, she fixed us with tape and marshmallows, which naturally made everything SO much better.

Later, Mae took everyone to task with a game of Candy Land.

And along the way I made sure that Jesse's nails got painted (he just loves light blue, that Jesse).

We also settled in for a couple Christmas specials.

And had a Thanksgiving feast, complements of the chefs.

And what would Thanksgiving weekend be without Mom and Dad's birthday...

Mom's being a little more normal than Dad's...

And finally, on the way home, Pax showed us all how to just let nature call, when nature calls.