Happy Birthday James & Jacob! Again!

Oma, Opa and Uncle Boo came over today to celebrate the boys' birthday, along with Opa's. I made pulled pork in the crock pot, pasta salad, beans and chips (well Lay's made the chips). I made the famous Rainbow Cake again but didn't get pictures of it this time. I also made Boterkoek for my dad, which is a Dutch butter cake. He said it was really good. Jamie said he was just being nice. I liked it.

The boys got come wonderful gifts from Oma and Opa. They each raked in $20 from Uncle Boo.



We had lots of fun and lots of laughs, as we always do when we get together. Thank you Oma, Opa and Uncle Boo for spending the day with us and for the wonderful gifts!

Mobile Blogging

Can you believe he killed this thing in two days?

That's my baby right there.

My big spoiled Bear. I love that dog!

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Mobile Blogging

Checking out this mobile blogging thing with a sweet picture of my Jenna...

I hope this works. It'll be neat to be able to add the funny little moments I catch with my cell phone that you might not otherwise see.

XOXOXO

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Happy 5th Birthday Jacob!!!

Today is a big day for Jacob. The big 5! Five years old?!?! That is such a big birthday! Not such a baby anymore. :-( They will always be my babies but 5 is a hard birthday for mommies.

Jacob has told me a few things today...
1) I'm 5 now, ya know? I'm not 4 and 3/4 anymore.
2) I can go to Kindergarten now. I'm 5. I don't have to go to preschool. (Eek! Telling him he has to be 5 to go to Kindergarten is biting us in the butt now!)
3) I can play outside with the big kids now because I'm 5. You don't have to come out with me anymore.

I found this really awesome cake online the other day and showed Jacob. He immediately had to have it! It took awhile to put it all together but the end product was sooo worth it. It's such an awesome cake.

Interesting cake mix ready for the pans...


In the pan ready for the oven...


The aftermath...


Happy Birthday Jacob!!!




The inside of the Rainbow Cake


Is this not the coolest cake you have ever seen?


Jacob got his present on James' birthday since they got a joint gift so here's that picture again


Oma and Opa will be over on Sunday to celebrate James, Jacob and Opa's birthdays so we will have more pictures to share then.

I guess I'll be nice and share where I found this awesome cake. Click here! You don't have to make the cake with the Sprite. You can make the cake mix as you normally would. Heck, you can make it from scratch. I do suggest, as the blog author suggests, doubling up the recipe. I didn't use the gel food colors. I used Wilton icing colors. You use WAY LESS and get a much more vibrant color. If you have never used Wilton icing colors and don't know where to get it, Wal-Mart, Michael's, AC Moore or any craft/cake store. Click here to see what they look like. They come in a huge array of colors.

Homemade Guitar

Jasmine had to make a guitar for music class. She wanted to show it off. Not bad, huh?



The hair is curly because Daddy braided it while it was wet. This is the next day after the braid was taken out. It's actually pretty cute in person.

3rd Place Virginia State Scrabble Champs!

Jordan is in the Scrabble Club at school. Their teacher entered them into the Virginia State Scrabble Tournament in hopes of going to the National Scrabble Tournament in Rhode Island at the end of April.

Jordan and his teammate, Courtney, played great and came in 3rd place. The last game that they played, they only lost by 6 points. They missed one word that they could have challenged which would have won them they game. Nonetheless, both Jordan and Courtney were very proud of their efforts and will be moving onto the National Scrabble Tournament in April!!



Congratulations Jordan and Courtney! They will be having a lot more practices after school until April! Not only that, Jordan landed a part in the school play; a remake of High School Musical 3. Jordan is the skater dude in it! Many practices for that as well. Baseball will be starting in March. He's a busy busy guy and doing great in school and keeping up with everything!

Happy 9th Birthday James!

Happy 9th Birthday James! When in the world did you get this old? Almost to the double digits! So not fair! I only have one picture unfortunately (I've been horrible lately). I'll have more in a few weekends when Oma and Opa come over. We'll be celebrating James, Opa and Jacob's birthdays.

For now, I leave with you this a picture of James and Jacob and their joint gift...

Spoiled *Little* Doggy

I came home from running errands to find this...



On the couch with a pillow! Bear has a rough life!

Happy Birthday Jordan!

Just a tad late on this on. My baby boy turned 12 on January 23rd. I can't believe he's 12! For the first time, I didn't get to see him on his birthday. He had friends coming over at his dad's. I'm not ready to be *thrown aside* for friends but that time is here so I guess I better get used to it.

Today we celebrated with Oma and Opa. Nothing fancy since it was the Super Bowl and Opa wanted to be home before that started. (Can't blame him. It was an awesome game! Still sad for the Card though.)

Opening his MP3 player



He's learning to play guitar (much to his Opa's delight!). Oma and Opa got him an electric guitar for Christmas so for his birthday, they got him a guitar stand, head phones so he can plug into his amp and rock out, picks, pick holder and a guitar chord sheet.



His big gift ~ think he's a bit happy? He was quite excited because he got to take it to his dad's for his room there. I think Anthony was just as excited about Jordan's gift too.



And the sad little cupcakes I made. The weekend just went by too fast that I didn't really have time to put together something better. There is one candle in the one cupcake and two in the other for 12. Jordan didn't care ~ he was just happy it was chocolate overload!



Happy 12th Birthday Jordan!

The Ice Storm

Compared to other places, we got off pretty easy. This was early in the morning. Jamie didn't know if he was going to be off or not and headed off to work. While getting gas, he got the phone call that they would be off. He headed to the grocery store and back home. I watched him try to walk in. You can see his foot prints in the yard. When he walked on the side walk, he just slid right into the black car. It was bad. Poor Bear didn't know what to think and looked like Bambi with legs flailing.

Just me

Look what Jasmine got!

I had nothing to do with this. This was all between her and Daddy. I was there when it happened but I didn't know it was going to happen. The boys were at the Monster Truck Jam with Aunt B, Uncle Carl and Chad so Jamie and I took the girls out for some fun.



Yes, she got her ears pierced again!

Of course she has to pose for a few shots then!