Happy 27th Birthday Paul!

My first attempt at making a rocket cake was prompted by Alex's father's day gift to Paul. He got him a rocket kit for father's day and Paul and Alex love to shoot them off together. It was a fun cake to make.

Blowing out 27 candles went off without a hitch, I guess Paul isn't getting too old yet. Of course, he did have the help of two little boys...so maybe not. :)
Alex was really, really, really excited about his daddy's "happy cake" as he calls it. He helped decorate it, which resulted in surprise skittles in every bite---he jammed them in as far as they would go!
Alex and Dominic did all the work for Paul in opening presents. They loved it, and Paul (and all of us) loved watching them.
Alex had helped me wrap them that morning, so he was especially excited to open them because he knew there were rockets and balloons hidden in some of them.
Here they are opening the professional sculpting balloons. Paul also got a pump and a how-to book. We went on a date to the movies and Red Robin a couple of weeks before his B-dy, and there was this balloon man there making really cool balloons for all the kids. Paul thought it would be really fun to learn how to do that himself, so I surprised him with a kit for his b-day.
He also got spray paint...yippee! OK, so he got a couple of model rockets as well, and he needed the paint to, you know, paint them.
Paul and Ben spent at least an hour making balloon creations. Here they are working on hats.
Paul is now attaching a dog to the end of his balloon hat...hmmmm..It looks like an intense process.

Voila! Not bad for a first attempt.

Dominic was keeping us all in line.

Alex enjoyed modeling Ben's hat.

Making Swords

Ta-Da!
Ben had a hard time figuring the swords out (his is the orange one).

And, this is Paul's latest latest creation--a MONKEY.

He made it just yesterday at John's B-day party. His skills at balloon making are really taking off...he has already advanced from the book I bought him (i guess it was too easy). So, now he just needs to learn to ride his unicycle while making balloon animals. :) Happy Birthday Paul!

Children's Festival 2010!

"CHOO CHOO!" Alex and Dominic couldn't get enough of the trolley that took us to and from the parking lot to the Children's festival. They called it a Choo Choo Train, and yelled "Choo Choo! out the window the whole way. It was really adorable.
Molly, Rochelle and I thought it was pretty cool, too. Mainly because we thought we were going to have to walk the whole way.
The Children's Festival is located in Historic Jacksonville. It is put on by the Storytelling Guild once a year for three days. The festival started in 1967 and has been going on ever since. One of my mom's sisters took her to it when she was a little girl, and she said she remembers it being really fun. Admission is only $2.00 per person per session, and after that everything is free (except food, which is super cheap). There are about 35 different booths that give the kids the opportunity to do some kind of craft or learn something fun about science.
Our first stop was to make GIANT bubbles, which I didn't get any pictures of, and then Alex decided to explore the bushes for snakes and bears and such...
Then we went gold panning, which consisted of water, sand and treasures that you found with an ordinary sand-sifter.

We made paper leis.

Dominic refused to wear his...Molly got it around his neck for about 10 seconds.

Zi-Zi went to the bathroom while we were making the leis and came back with flavored Ice...hmmmm
The boys thought it was delicious. I think it was their first taste of one, and it was a hot day, so they kept stealing bites. After that we headed up the hill where they made clay caterpillars (no pic).
We eventually found this sandbox where Alex became obsessed with this life-like crab.

Dominic was more into this cool dump truck.

Then he found a sifter and thought it was cool that he could see through it.

Peek-A-Boo!

They loved this little maze and solved it in record time.

They ran through it over and over again..it was that cool. :)

They had a bunch of wooden animals next to the sandbox, so Alex of course had to ride them all.

Zebra

Horse

Giraffe

Elephant
Alex was making this really high-pitched elephant sound in this picture.

We also scarfed down a lunch of hot dogs, chips and juice. The session lasted only 3 hrs and we were really late, because of parking issues, so we only got to explore for about an hour and 45 minutes. But, it was really fun and we plan on going again next year. We ended the day with another "train" ride that the boys are still talking about to this day. I guess we'll have to go back to Jacksonville just to ride the trolley. :)

Happy Fouth of July 2010!

I can't remember exactly who was working the sparklers in the above shots but I think it was as follows (L to R): Andrew, Ben?, Miranda or Megan, Greg.

Paul and I took Alex to pick out his own fireworks this year. Here he is digging into his bag. He didn't know what they were when we bought them, but he learned fast. Then he couldn't stay out of the bag. All of the ones to the right of him were brought by the Swartz family.
This train was by far the favorite, and it was really cool, too! It zoomed across the board, stopped, and then zoomed backwards while shooting off all kinds of sparks. The boys were very impressed.

Alex looks a bit worried in this photo, but Dom is obviously in awe. :)

Sparklers were a little dangerous...Paul almost lost a couple of eyebrows, his nose and who knows what else when Alex threw it in his face. Alex wasn't too keen on holding it in the first place, which is why Paul is holding him, and then he saw everyone else waving them around and thought he would give it a try...BIG MISTAKE. Paul got a face full of sparkler!

Ralph bravely held this one until it pooped out.

Daniel made some cool sparkler circles.

Alex wearing Naomi's homemade visor.

Dom, snatching handfuls of Aunt Pat's delicious homemade kettle corn.

And, Paul made this delicious patriotic cake!

It was so good, that it was gone in about 15 minutes!