I Still Have This Blog

I remembered that I had a blog. Mostly, I realized the link to this blog is still on my Instagram profile thing. So I checked to see when I last updated and then thought I should maybe update again? Sure.

Soooooooo, my family no longer lives in Illinois. We live in Iowa now. So there's that. All of my kids are in school now, too! My oldest is in second grade, my middle is in first grade, and my youngest goes to preschool (because it's free in our city); so I get about three hours a day for four days a week to do stuff kid-free. I would have said "to do whatever I want" but that's not true. I mostly have to spend one of those kid-free chunks of time doing grocery shopping and another of those kid-free chunks of time doing laundry. I really don't know what I do for the other two chunks but one of those days I probably nap because mmmmmmm naps. And I think I probably just watch TV or read or something one day.

I think I'll throw in some pictures from the last however many months because people like pictures...

I like to beard our family photos. This one is on the bag I use when we go to the library.

Simon turned 7 in April. He had a creepy crawly birthday party.

Charlotte turned 4 in May and had a rainbows & unicorn party.

Jonas turned 6 in August. He had a Mario party.

Chase had a Michael Jackson birthday party in September.

Halloween: Batgirl Charz, Ninja Jonas, Enderman Sime

I creeped kids out with my Bearded Lady Halloween costume.

So that's my random update. There ya go...

Writing

Well, today is the last day of September and my previous blog was posted in the beginning of January, so as you can tell, I'm really on top of things...

Yeah...

I really enjoy writing. Specifically, I enjoy writing stories. Even more specifically, I like to make up those stories. Giving regular updates on what my family is up to (at least in blog form) is pretty boring for me. With Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it also feels redundant. Social media allows me to post those silly conversations, proud moments and daily craziness right away; then I feel like there's no need to expand on those things here. So I don't.

But I am writing, I promise you that. I get a little giddy just thinking about the story I have to tell, too. It is not a children's book. It is not a short story. It is not a book to encourage moms of young children. (I'm actually quite bored and tired by the mommy blogs anymore unless it's a blog of someone I know personally.)

I'm writing a novel. Or maybe a series, I'm not quite sure yet. I don't know if I can get the whole story out in one book. Or if it will be just one book and then do a spin-off book with a certain character or storyline from the book. I've been inspired!

Inspiration is a wonderful feeling. I've basically been wanting to write a great story since my freshman year in college. I must have started at least ten times, but then I'd determine that those stories were either lame or have been done before. Then sometime this past January/February, an idea just came to me.

Now, I'm not going to reveal what the story is, but it is definitely in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre. And if you don't like that genre, you will probably hate it. And even if you do like that genre, you still might think it's a lame story. But I'm excited about it and my mom will at least tell me it's great. I concluded some time ago that I have an overactive imagination and it can actually be productive by making up characters, environment, imaginary physics and such for others to read and enjoy. I hope to publish some day, but I probably won't seriously start looking into that for some time yet. It is a goal, though.

So, that's the update on me. I'm writing. For real. And I guess I can post some kid pictures since you're used to seeing kid pictures on here.

Simon turned 6 in April and had a Skylanders party

Charzie turned 3 in May and had a Mickey Mouse party

Jonas turned 5 in August and had a shark party (at the end of Shark Week)

 Chase turned 33 in September and had an R2D2 cake because I found a sweet R2D2 cake pan at a thrift store. He's not a kid, but he does have a sweet cake.

There's no picture of me with my birthday cake because no one made one for me and I won't make one for myself. I do cakes and birthday parties for my family, but I don't do it trying to be better than other moms or make other moms feel bad for not doing it. I just enjoy coming up with cake & game ideas, executing those ideas and eating cake. Mmmmmmmmm caaaaaaaaaake. (Another reason I'm done with the mommy blogging world is when the birthday party issue comes up the blogs are often either showing elaborate/expensive birthday parties with styled pictures I find mostly ridiculous or the blogs bash those parties saying those moms are ruining it for all the other moms. I feel I fall more in the middle but could be seen as making other moms feel bad. I'm terrible at keeping up with cleaning & laundry, but at least my kids have fun birthdays!)

So if you want to see an inordinate amount of pictures of my kids, follow me on Instagram @weesher. If you want to read dumb stuff I say, follow me on Twitter @weesherweesh. If I know you in real life, we can be Facebook friends (but only if I know you in real life) if you search for me. I may occasionally post something or other amusing on here or maybe give a book update, but this blog will probably be neglected.

I will leave you with things I've been into lately...

Books: George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I am currently finishing the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons. I think I'll get into the Halloween spirit by reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein once I've finished.

TV: Doctor Who (I don't get BBC America, so I have to wait until the current season comes to Netflix or Amazon Instant Video), Classic Doctor Who (I started from the beginning of what they have on Netflix/Amazon and am currently on the episodes with the fourth Doctor, the one with the long scarf), Game of Thrones (HBO), True Blood (HBO- started this one over the summer when the GOT season ended and now only have a few episodes left of the series!), The Walking Dead (AMC- don't get AMC so we bought the series on Amazon, but we don't get to watch it until the day after it airs), Drunk History (Comedy Central), Impractical Jokers (TrueTV- we don't get this channel but watch it online sometimes).

Movies: I go to maybe two movies a year. The last movie I saw in the theater was The Lego Movie with my kids. I am pretty set on seeing the next Hunger Games movie in the theater when it comes out, and I'm totally cool with seeing it alone. I'm sure we'll watch lots of horror movies on Netflix/Amazon this October, too, after the kids go to bed. 

Sports: HAHAHHAHHAHAHHA (this is a joke because I don't watch sports, except my kids doing gymnastics class, and that is quite amusing- the boys do cartwheels like Oompa Loompas.)

Food: Entenmann's snack size (chocolate) frosted donuts, Eggo pumpkin spice waffles, Count Chocula, burgers with BBQ sauce, crab cakes, crescent roll sandwiches, cake, Breyer's lactose free ice cream

Kids' Activities: sending them outside to play, sending them to the basement to play, telling them to color rocks they find outside, gluing stuff they find outside to paper, Legos, reading books with them

Music: The Flaming Lips, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, Beck, Lucius. I mostly like 90's alt rock with a bit of newer music. Alice FM is my favorite radio station.

I don't really know how to end this. Hopefully next time it won't be quite so long between posts. And hopefully next time I'll have made real progress on my book!

Jonas' Super Rad Aquabats Water Balloon 4th Birthday Extravaganza

As of today, my Jonas is four years old. We had been planning on having an all-out party for him since last year he didn't get one due to our big move (we bought a house and moved in four days before his third birthday). We had thought he would have a Batman theme and were looking for someone to show up dressed as Batman, tights and all...

But right before I started gathering party supplies he told me he wanted an Aquabats party. I said OK and that I wasn't sure if there were Aquabats party supplies, but we'd figure something out. Turns out there are Aquabats party supplies but only online at one web site. Before ordering I made sure he actually wanted an Aquabats party, and he told me he wanted "an Aquabats WATER BALLOON birthday!" So that's what we did...

Invitation front

Invitation back

So the Aquabats would be an actual rock band who also happen to be super heroes. I was a fan in the 90's but sadly never got to see a live show where they dress in their super hero costumes and battle evil monsters while playing music all live on stage. They now have a TV show for kids on The Hub and there's a season on Netfilx. Rock band + super heroes = awesome in Jonas' book.

For Jonas' cake, I made it chocolate with buttercream icing and drew the Aquabat logo guy on it. I also made a bunch of funfetti cupcakes with cookie burgers on them (thanks Pintrest!) in honor of one of Jonas' favorite segments on an episode of the show: Burger Rain. (You can watch a video of Burger Rain at the end of this post.)

I altered some decorations I had from Charzie's Yo Gabba Gabba party (I'll have to post on that later) to make them Aquabats-appropriate. And we had fruit, veggies, chicken nuggets, cheese & crackers to snack on.

Decorations & snacks

I had ordered some official goodie boxes & fillers for our kid guests, and then Jonas helped me choose some extra stuff to stick in there, too.

Guest loot

We started out just hanging out and snacking. I had a water table set up for the two-and-under crowd. Then we really kicked things off with a water balloon toss.

Water balloon toss

Next, the kids got to take turns chucking water balloons at Snakey. Snakey is actually a monster from the show. I painted him on cardboard and covered it with contact paper. After they all had a couple turns, we had them line up and attack together. They thought it was awesome.

The boys chucking water balloons at Snakey

But even more awesome than that was when they got to use a water balloon slingshot to battle the Floating Eye of Death (another actual monster from the show, which I also painted & contact-papered). I rigged this bad guy up on the kids' fort. I tell you what, boys ages 3-6 were all about that slingshot.

This guy had some fantastic aim.

After defeating Snakey and the Floating Eye of Death, we had a water balloon and water gun free-for-all. Then it was cake time.

Cake time

Jonas blew the candle out at the wrong time and freaked out. I re-lit it, he blew it out at the end of Happy Birthday and all was well.

We had cake and ice cream (vanilla or "monster" which had M&Ms and cookie dough in it) and then opened presents. Jonas got quite the birthday loot! The big surprise was our big gift at the end...

Jonas discovering his drums

Yes, we're crazy and bought our four-year-old drums, real drums, for his birthday. Kid's got rhythm.

And of course, Jonas being Jonas, had to go and do this:

This picture sums up Jonas

Now watch yourself some Burger Rain!

Neglect

Yeah, I've been completely neglecting this blog. It's not that I haven't had ideas to blog about, it's more that I haven't felt like any of those ideas are worthwhile.

I'm tiring of blogging about what's been going on and just posting pictures of my super cute kids.

Before everyone and their grandparents were on facebook, this blog was an easy way to show my friends & family what I've been up to, but now they can just facebook stalk me or instagram stalk me or twitter stalk me and see that in real time or close to it. I'd rather write something a little more entertaining.

The problem is, I've been uninspired.

I don't think I'm going to change the world or become some sort of internet comedian or make it as a mommy blogger or anything. I just want to write something... else?

Since I'm uninspired, I'll just give an update with pictures of what's been going on:

Simon got glasses.
Jonas wants glasses (and will wear his sunglasses around the house).
We had about a week of sick kids.
We cleaned up lots of gumballs from our yard.
There are still lots of gumballs in our yard.
Simon turned 5.
I made him a bug cake & we celebrated with our church community group.
We also made a trip to Kings Island to celebrate again with family.
Chase has been playing music.
I went to a concert at a basement venue where I saw Lucius and Tall Tall Trees.
I hula hooped with a friend between sets because a hoola hoop enthusiast hangs out at the house where we saw the concert.
Chase bought me a Lucius shirt.
I waited too long to change Charzie's diaper & pee got on that shirt.
I'm working on Charlotte's 2nd birthday party.
It's Yo Gabba Gabba! themed.

Now pictures:

Simon showed me bugs in a book & I put them on his cake

Spectacled Sime blowing out his candle

Simon at Kings Island with his funnel cake

My grandpa poking a kosmoceratops with his cane at Kings Island

Simon & Jonas showing some dino-love at Kings Island

This one is almost 2!

The birthday invitation (front) I designed for Charlotte

Cake?

As I was checking 19 month-old Charzie's diaper...

Me: Is there poop in there?
Charzie: No. Dere's cake in 'ere.

The lesson here is never consume any cake offered to you by my toddler.

(Just to clarify, there was poop in there.)

Our September: Goings on & a Photo Dump

It's been, what, a month or so since I've last blogged?  Seems about right.  Lots has happened this past month!  Ready for a photo-dump?

Chase turned 31 and I made hims some pretty delicious peanutbutter chocolate cake bombs.  Next time I'll use a little more chocolate and a little less peanutbutter to make them more fantastic.

Chase, the boys & cake

The in-laws visited and we discovered the ridiculous awesomeness that is Scheels. (Read this in Stefon's voice) This store has everything: an indoor ferris wheel, sporting equipment, taxidermy, crossbows, aquarium, arcade games, photo ops, children's play area, animatronic presidents and delicious mint chocolate fudge...

Simon with Granny & Jonas with Papaw on the Sheels ferris wheel.

Granny & Papaw with the kiddos on our porch swing

My in-laws also went with us for the kids' first trip to Chuck E. Cheese's.  Let's just say next time we'll just eat at home and go for the games.

Charzie with Chuck E.

 Some friends stopped by to visit & see the new house and we lined our kids up to take their pictures as we do whenever we get together.

Ezra, Silas, Nella, Charlotte, Jonas & Simon

I took the kids to the State Museum where there is a children's play museum all for free!

Simon posing in front of the giant mammoth/mastodon puzzle he did himself

We got new kitchen appliances and have been searching for artwork, curtains & area rugs for our house.  Eventually there will be before & after posts, but no room is quite finished yet to post an after.

I won tickets from a local radio station to go see The Smashing Pumpkins in concert in a couple weeks!!!

And then there was the Disney World trip with my parents.  This trip was exhausting and fun.  Some Disney trip highlights: Simon looking teeny tiny riding big rides, Charlotte dressing up in her Cinderella to parade around Magic Kingdom (and lady even took her picture to show her daughter-in-law what 16-months-old at Disney looks like), Jonas getting to spend almost a whole week with his grandpa, dessert with almost every meal, Charlotte exclaiming "Mouse!" whenever she noticed a Mickey Mouse anything, Simon & Jonas getting a pirate makeover and just having the fun Disney experience with my parents & kids while my kids are still little.  My mom should be a Disney vacation guide. 

Some Disney World low points: Jonas freaking out for every single ride (I mean every. single. ride.) because it wasn't his turn to get on yet, the stroller parking nazis and cheapo toilet paper (c'mon, Disney!)

Like I said, it was exhausting but fun.  Here are some pictures from our trip:

Cinderella got to meet Charzie

Me on the spinning tea cups

Simon riding Thunder Mountain with my dad

Chase & Jonas on Toy Story Mania

Peter Pan told the boys not to be pirates...

...but they were too creepy cute not to be pirates!

Jonas with his arms up on the Peoplemover (not a roller coaster)

Charzie with her arms up like her brother

Jonas checking out gorillas with his daddy at Animal Kingdom

Charzie snackin' with Neena on the bus

And the boys with Minnie & Mickey, of course!

And we have many, many, many, many (you get the point) more pictures.

So that was September.  Now it's October.  Maybe I'll give you another update in a month!

Birthday Cake Bombs, Coming Soon!

Tomorrow is Chase's birthday.  For his cake, I'm making him cake bombs, but not just the regular kind, I'm making an alteration to the recipe! *Gasp!*  First, let me tell you that I'm not really much of a cook or baker, but I'm not bad either.  I'm the kind of cook who does just fine as long as I have a recipe and all the ingredients.  Then I follow the recipe pretty much exactly.  The only alterations I really make are leaving out nuts and raisins (in my opinion, raisins ruin pretty much every dessert, but nuts are OK, just not preferable) or maybe adding some mint chocolate chips.  So this recipe alteration is a bit of a big deal to me.

Cake bombs are basically the same thing as Bakerella's cake balls, only I make them bigger and they're not pretty.  Typically I'll do chocolate cake bombs with can of plain ol' vanilla icing and chocolate bark, and they're pretty amazing.  I've used cream cheese icing, too, which is more amazing, but I'm lactose intolerant so it's not that great on my digestive system.  But today, friends, today I am substituting something that I can't imagine being anything but very very tastey for icing...  peanut butter.

I mean, a chocolate + peanut butter combination is almost always awesome.  And peanut butter has a similar consistency to canned icing.  Plus, we use Jif's all natural peanut butter, which I refer to as gourmet peanut butter (seriously, once you taste it, you may never go back to the regular kind of peanut butter; just a warning!).  I got the idea after making my third batch of Bakerella's dark chocolate chip comfort cookies which is pretty much the most amazing chocolate peanut butter dark chocolate chip cookies that I rave about.  They have become my go-to cookies whenever I have a reason to bake something.  Anyway, I was baking these cookies for about the third time in a month when I thought how peanut butter just might make cake bombs extra delicious, or at least it might be a fun switch-up. 

I just needed a reason to make cake bombs.  Chase's birthday is tomorrow.  Now I have a reason.  I'll let you all know if they are 'da bomb' or if they bomb.

Charlotte's 1st Birthday

OK, here it is, Charlotte's 1st birthday post...

The invitation front

After two boys, and since Charzie is such a girly girl, we went with a general girly theme with most of the colors being pink and green.  I hung crepe paper, made paper rosettes, hung poofy paper pom things, I did a Charzie through the year banner, we got flowers, and I even made Charlotte a onesie with a "1" on it to wear with her tutu (which I had made for her Halloween costume and it still fit!)  We also had a girly playlist with songs sung by girls (Cyndi Lauper, No Doubt, Bjork, The Ditty Bops, The Sundays), or about girls ("Girls" by The Beastie Boys, "She's a Dancing Machine" by Jackson 5, "My Girl" by The Temptations), or had "baby" in them ("Baby Love" by the Supremes, "Baby" by Justin Beiber, "Always Be My Baby" by Mariah Carey) and some Rockaybe Baby! alternative rock songs turned into lullabies.  There were also some other songs we or the kids just liked thrown in there (They Might Be Giants, The Smashing Pumpkins).

Crepe & tissue paper decorations & thru-the-year banner

A big part of our birthday parties is always cake.  After Simon's very involved Darth Maul cake, I kept it simple.  The main cake was chocolate with buttercream icing, green decorated with simple pink drawn flowers.  The cupcakes were strawberry with chocolate buttercream icing decorated with pink drop flowers.  Charlotte's smash cake was also strawberry with chocolate buttercream decorated with pink drawn flowers to match the bigger cake.

Cake, cupcakes & smash cake

I really like how it all turned out.  I only wish my 3-teired cake stand wasn't broken so I could have had a better display.

Charlotte was a bit confused at first.  Her brothers blew out her candle for her since she had no idea what that was all about.  Then she noticed everyone staring at her...

The birthday girl melted down.  I tried to get her to taste her cake, but she only wanted out of her high chair and to be held.  So we cleaned her up, passed her off, served cake and ice cream and started the main event of this party: the photobooth.  Charlotte was all about that and really put on a show!

A page from Charzie's birthday party photobook

Some of the dress-up things were from Jenn Fortune's stash (we used her business) and some of it was ours; I think most of our party guests had fun dressing up and taking pics with the birthday girl.

My intention with the whole photobooth session was to have something fun a 1-year-old can do with other kids, to get pictures of our extended family (which I usually forget to do when we visit) and to make a photo book that the kids will really enjoy.  These are some of my favorite pages from the book I made.

After we were all finished playing dress-up (and Jonas photo-bombed about half the pictures!) , Charzie opened her gifts, played with some new toys and most of her guests left.  Then my sister & I tried giving her cake again...

She thoroughly enjoyed it this time!  Of course, she had to eat it off of Aunt Manders' plate, but she did decide cake was more delicious than scary.

I had thought that since it was a holiday weekend, more of the extended family would be able to come to Charlotte's 1st birthday party.  I was a bit disappointed that most of the aunts &; uncles missed out on the photobooth fun, but maybe they can at least enjoy the party via pictures.

Dear Charlotte, at 1 year old, you are so sweet, smart, hilarious and amazing.  You love playing baby dolls and Star Wars guys.  You say so many different things but your favorite is "Hi Dad, hi Daddy, hi Dada," and you will say it all day long.  You love to dance.  You like Justin Beiber's "Baby" song.  You put pretty much everything in your mouth.  You took your first steps the day before your first birthday.  You really only like to walk when you have an audience.  You manipulate Simon to get what you want, bringing him snacks out of the diaper bag so he will open them for you.  You give big sloppy kisses but mostly save them for baby dolls, Daddy & Simey.  Sometimes you give them to Mommy & Jonas, too.  You like to stand up on the tiny rocking chair.  You love to knock down towers that your brothers build, but you also like to help build them back (usually knocking them down again in the process).  You are great at cleaning up because you like to put things inside other things, but this also causes us to lose your pacifier.  You are attached to your pacifier (or plug, as we call it).  You share a room with your brothers and really seem to like it.  You have girly owl decals on your wall and when you point at them and say, "OW-L, OW-L, hoooo, hoooo!" it is pretty much the cutest thing in the history of all things.  You will sit very still while I take your clothes or jammies off to get you dressed, but the instant I start to put something on you, you will crawl away giggling wanting me to chase you.  You were a dramatic pregnancy, dramatic delivery and are a dramatic girl... dramatic and wonderful.  I'm curious about the little girl you're turning into, but I'd really like for you to stay my baby for a while longer.  I love you Baby Charlotte!

1-week-old Charlotte