School Birthday Lunch

Bladen always gets excited when we stop by to each lunch with him at school.  For his birthday, Trek took the day off of work & came to eat with us.  He was SO excited to have us there.

We brought little tubs of ice cream for each person in his class so they could celebrate his birthday with him as well.

Grace, one of Bladen's best friends, REALLY liked the ice cream.

It was a lot of fun going to the school & getting to know Bladen's friends better.  He's such a good kid.  Everybody just loves him.  He makes me so happy.

Family Birthday Party

So on each of our kids' birthdays, we make them their favorite dinner & let them open presents from family members.  Usually their friend party is on a weekend, so it's fun to have a mini-party together as a family.

For his birthday dinner, Bladen chose lasagne, homemade bread, Caesar salad, & apple slices.  He's definitely a boy.  He's going to eat me out of house & home pretty soon.

My friend (whom he calls Fancy Nancy), sent him a Super Hero Squad
Chutes & Ladders game as well as a dinosaur book.

Mamoo sent him a Fred Action Figure

Mimi & Baba sent him the Metalbeard
Lego set from the Lego Movie.

Auntie Cari & Uncle Justin sent him some
dragon legos.

Bladen is just now getting into legos & is having a blast with them.  This set that my parents got him were kind of hard to build (even for me), but they were SO cool.  I don't know what kind of geniuses they have working at Lego, but these are almost works of art when they're all put together.

Fancy Nancy also sent him lots of new clothes.

Cadence used her saved up money to buy him
a Batman lego playset.

And Opa & Oma sent him some fun action figures.

Grandma Kinsfathers sent him $10 to spend on whatever he
wanted. . . aka a stop at the ice cream truck every day for 10 days.

All the siblings got him the double decker couch Lego set
from the Lego Movie.  He really wanted this set because it
had ALL the Lego Movie characters in it.  He LOVES playing
with the Lego people.

Trek & I got him Big Hero 6.  He's been wanting
it for a while now.

And Lorien used her money to get him some Hulk hands.  I
was thrilled because I got to use them for his party later in the
week.  I'm so lucky to have such sweet kids who love each other.

Bladen's Birthday Breakfast

I can't believe this crazy kid is 6 already.  How does that even happen?  We started out our day taking a bunch of silly selfies together.

Bladen's birthday breakfast consisted of chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, bananas, & a ding dong.  No Potter birthday breakfast is complete without those ding dongs.

He was SO excited when he woke up.  He has been waiting for his birthday FOREVER.

Six years old.  What a cutie.

Baby Birds

So as we were doing our Easter Egg Hunt over Easter, we noticed a little nest in our playground.  Inside was a single blue egg.  We were SO excited to have baby birds in our backyard.

Pretty soon we noticed a very fat mama bird going back & forth to that nest & we knew there would be more eggs!  Each time she left she was a little smaller.

Later that night we peeked inside & there for 4 cute little eggs in the nest.  We couldn't wait to see 4 little birds hatch.

About 2 weeks later, I happened to go up into the playground just as the eggs were hatching.  Three baby birds had hatched so far & they were covering the 4th egg.  They were scary/ugly little things at first.

They had their little wings wrapped around each other in a hug & their eyes were still shut.

Every time I'd made a clicking noise with my tongue, they'd all sit up & open their beaks for food.  It was SO CUTE!!!!

A week later, they started getting little black feathers on their backs & their eyes finally opened.  We could now hear little chirps coming from the playground as we passed.

And finally, when the birds were about 2 1/2 weeks old, they grew too big for their nest.  They had big beautiful black feathers, large beaks, feet with big talons, & voices that could be heard a mile away.  It was time to leave the nest.  One morning we woke up to the nest empty & little birdie voices in the trees.

It was such a neat experience for all of us.  The kids loved watching the whole circle of life happen.

Spring Break Bucket List

So I've done several different things over the years with Spring Break.  Sometimes we do a mini version of Camp Tonofun.   Other times we've done themed days.  Sometimes we take a family vacation.  This year I wanted to try something new & boy did I love it.  We decided to make a Spring Break

BUCKET LIST.

The kids drew a big "bucket" on a poster board & they each got to put one to two things on the list that they'd love to do together as a family over spring break.

It was a fantastic list.  I was actually REALLY proud of the ideas they had.  Here's what it had on it:

1. Go to a playground/park/Fort Fun to play

2. Go see Cinderella in the theater

3. Do a family craft together

4. Plant a vegetable garden

5. Do yard work & plant sod (that was Trek's)

6. Play Super Smash Brothers with mom (I hate that game, but had fun with them)

7. Walk to Sonic & get slashes for Happy Hour

8. Make homemade bread & butter

9. Have a sleepover in the girls' room

10. Play school. . . everyone takes turns being the teacher

Canyon spent the week making huge messes for all of us to clean up . . . but he sure is cute.

It took the whole week to complete everything on our bucket list & I didn't get pictures of everything, but we had an absolute blast.

I think their favorite part was seeing Cinderella in the movie theater.  We very rarely go to the movies because it's so expensive, but it really was a fun splurge for us.

We ended up letting the kids have sleepovers in the girls' room all week long.  It was a great opportunity for all the kids to grow closer together.  It was darling to hear the girls comfort the boys during the lightning storm, or hear them giggling as they "snuck" in one more bedtime story.  I love how much my kids love each other.  It's not always sunshine & rainbows, but when it is, I love it.

The most challenging project was the homemade bread & butter.  My girls know how bad I am at making bread.  This was Cadence's choice for the bucket list & I really cringed & put it off until the last day of Spring Break, but we did it & you know what?  We had a LOT of fun.  We made six full loaves of bread & homemade butter together.  I think my girls will never forget it (especially all that kneading by hand!)

The bread was absolutely delicious!!!

For playing school, we made a trip to the library here.  It was Cadence & Lorien's first time at our local library. . . they always just use the library at school.  Now that they've been there, they want to go EVERY WEEK now.  Thursdays are story time so we took them all for story time.  The boys loved having their sisters there.  It was a a lot of fun & we wound up spending almost 2.5 hours at the library.

When we got home we played school together.  I taught science, Taya taught writing, Lorien did reading, & Cadence taught Math. 

It rained a lot of the week, but we found one sunny day & did all the outside stuff that day.  We found an amazing park down in Suffolk & the kids went wild for hours.  It was SO nice to get all their energy out & get some sunshine.  It was a beautiful day. 

Some of our church friends met us there so we could all play together.  The more the merrier right?

Can I just say that words can't even express how much I love these kids.

Our vegetable garden is not only still alive, but it's flourishing.  My plants are so big we now need to transfer them from the pots we did over spring break to a garden box.  I'm SO excited.

We planted cilantro, basil, two types of tomatoes, jalepenos, green onions, purple onions, carrots, & 2 types of lettuces.  Not bad for my first time.

And of course we had to take a walk over to Sonic to get some slushies during happy hour.  The kids LOVE slushies.  It was a blast.

We did play Super Smash Brothers, & we planted sod in the front yard.  Oh, I totally forgot to take pictures of the little toy crafts we made.  But we completed the entire bucket list.  We had such a fun spring break, the kids are already planning a bucket list for summer!

We also checked in on our little nest during the week.  There were still 4 blue eggs there.  (They hatched this morning. . . pics to come later)  Canyon has been the guarder of the nest of eggs all week.  He's such a sweetheart.

It was an absolutely FABULOUS week!