So she will be going to playschool 2 days a week through June.

She is very ready to go in!

Let's GO!

With her new teacher

This is the first thing she did in the backyard.

Meeting the other kids.

They have a zipline - and she LOVED it!

Snack time!

She enjoyed 4 hours of playing, laughing and singing.

She can’t wait to go back!

 

Amber was gone when the tooth fell out and wouldn’t be home before bed time so Wesley drew her a picture explaining the whole thing.

The red circle is his mouth. You can see his throat and uvula in the center. Teeth all around the circle and the red mark on the bottom is the bloody part of his gum where his tooth used to be. In black you see the tooth popping out of his mouth. In pencil you see me and YaYa looking around on our hands and knees for missing tooth. At bottom-right are two pictures of Wesley. On the left, “Sad” and on the right, “Hapee”.

 

Wesley and Jillian are so cute together.  I hope it will always be that way…

6 years, 3 months, 6 days

4 years, 6 months, 19 days

 

We are really excited to be able to keep the house and property in the family. With any luck it will be in the family for another 50 years or more.  It should be a great place for the kids to grow up. It is closer it family, on the beach and frankly so much nicer than Lynnwood.

Ironically for us, we don’t have any good pictures of the house itself. But here are some of the view and of the beach to give you an idea of why we are moving.

 

I’m not sure where they got the idea, but the moment we took down the Christmas tree the kids decided that they wanted to ride it. I’m not really sure what they had in mind, but I had a simple solution. We took the tree, tossed it on the wagon and strapped it down. All that was left was for them to climb on. They loved it!

The first night we just walked around the back yard. The next morning we went out front and ran up and down the sidewalk and street.  They didn’t want to stop.  I hope this doesn’t become a tradition.

 

Of course, it wasn’t just us. We had the whole family involved: Kathleen, Dave, Amber, Joshua, Adrianne, Cody, Corey, Willow, Wesley, Aidan and Jillian (I think that is roughly by age).

The train heads down the tracks a short ways, stops near a small waterfall and then heads back the other way. While the train is stopped the engine is moved from one end of the train to the other. So our car was the first on the way out and the last on the way back in. The perfect combination if you ask me.  The train cars are from the early 1900s and in surprisingly good shape. When we were kids it seems to me that the engine was steam and the cars were more open, but I guess things have changed a little.

Starting at one end Santa comes down the train and sits with each of the kids. He takes their seat and does his usual thing. Wesley was really excited that he got to be the first kid on the train to sit on Santa’s lap. And Jillian didn’t scream at all this year!!

From the opposite end of the train as Santa comes Ben the banjo player. He plays and everyone sings carols.

We had hot chocolate, apple cider and lots of fun.  Look at these faces and tell me they didn’t have a great time.

 

More than being really difficult, the trouble with going homemade is just how long it takes. First we made the dough. This was fun and Jillian was a big help. But then you have to bake the shapes three times for each house. The roof and long side get baked twice and the other side of the pan, the small sides and chimney, get baked just once. But you can’t bake them back-to-back because the pan is hot. You have to wait for it to cool and that takes hours. So, for each house it took me three days. I’d make the dough and then bake each side a night. Then repeat the process for the second house. I wanted my own house, but I was too lazy to make any more.

Once all of the pieces were baked I took another day to assemble the houses so they could dry and be sturdy enough for the kids to work with. We used a pretty standard royal icing recipe and it gave us structurally sound little houses.

Finally, a week later, we were ready to decorate these little guys. Amber bought a ton of candy and there was plenty to go around. Interestingly, even though we divvied everything up 50/50 some strange things happened. Some of Wesley’s candy bowls were empty even though hardly any of them were on the house. Where did they go?

To start with we let the kids go there own way. Once they had made good progress Amber and I each started adding little touches and giving the kids some more complicated ideas. They each came up with great ideas of their own and copied from each other when they saw something they liked.

They had fun. Here they are with the finished product. The houses had to be moved to the mantle almost immediately since pieces of candy were being removed even before the frosting was dry.

 

They are ready to celebrate!

in the tv room

the green room

vests, bandanas, eye-patches & gold earrings for everyone.

the goodie bags

the kids and I made repurposed crayons in pirate shapes.

looking in to the front door area

arr...

arr...

arr...

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After a lunch of macaroni & cheese, pasta salad, green salad, rolls & fruit… it was time to hit the piñata.

Wesley starts us off.

Then Addison

Jillian

Stellanne

Aidan

Lilly

Ben

Aidan

then Wesley again with a strong finish!

they quickly filled their treasure chests.

Then it was cake time.  To see more about the cake you can see the post I did about it here.
Before we sang to Wesley, the kids who wanted to – got to launch the cannons too.

Wesley launching the cannons.

a nice and powerful jump.

Jillian launching the cannons. The small black dot near the edge of the table is one of the cannon balls.

Singing "Happy Birthday" to Wesley. (not quite sure what Jillian is doing...)

Wesley is still talking about his party and had such a wonderful birthday!

Thank you to all of our guests – you really made it magical for him.