Birthday Season 2014

Wow, it has been a while! We've had quite the whirlwind for the end-of-summer-start-of-fall time period. Among the many things, we've been up to -we traveled across the country, started a new job, had a broken arm, celebrated 4 birthdays, had 2 parties, started school, etc, etc. So we've been busy and this blog has been sorely neglected. With Jason out of town this weekend, I'll make an effort to catch back up - though I also need to do some work on the new job, finish my bookclub book and clean some bathrooms.

So anyway, as part of our busy past two months, we've gone through what we call "birthday season." Just in our immediate family, we have 4 birthdays within 12 weeks (and there are 4 extended family birthdays within those 12 weeks, plus more just before!). With so many birthdays, there are lots of parties and desserts and presents to be had. I'll just catch you up quick on the family birthday celebrations - and hope to detail the two parties (art rainbow! pirate!) that we threw too!

First up was Hayden. She turned 7. I think I mentioned that briefly in an earlier blog. We headed out of town on her birthday, so we celebrated the night before. She chose spaghetti and meatballs for her birthday dinner and chocolate mayonnaise cake for her dessert! She got lots of wonderful presents (thanks everyone!), but I was especially thrilled to give her the collection of Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which I saved for the morning of her 'real' birthday. We both smiled pretty big when she opened them!

the books!

birthday cinnamon rolls (yep, before we left for 4 days, I baked homemade cinnamon rolls)

present from Aunt Lacey - she was really into pandas this summer!

birthday cake!

Molly had the next birthday in late August. She turned 3! We didn't give her a big party (just a few popsicles with her playdate friends) but she had fun at her family party. She chose chicken nuggets and eggs and sausage for her dinner - after going through many, many other choices. And we had poundcake cupcakes with berries and whipped cream for dessert because the girl can put away some fresh berries!

First thing in the morning birthday grin - she loved the decorations we put up for her as a surprise!

Her favorite present was the trampoline from grammy and granddad. (We no longer have this one; we actually traded in for a model that allowed for kids bigger than Molly.) The kids jump on it EVERY day.

opening her very own box of gummies from grandma and popop

blowing out the candles.

Isn't she so grown up now?!!

Then in September we moved on to Jason's birthday. He chose real beef burgers for his dinner (cooked on a new gas grill that was part birthday part dissertation part it's just time present). And we had a chocolate mousse pie for dessert!

birthday boy, his favorite shirt, and chocolate deliciousness

 Then it was Eliza's turn, the last of the family birthdays for the year. She had a hard time picking what she wanted for dinner, or dessert. She finally settled on hot dogs and ravioli, and then we convinced her to save the ravioli for later in the week. I made another mayonaise cake and surprised her by decorating it with a minion!

Eliza and her pile o' presents - she's wearing her new leotard

minion cake!

blowing out the candles (with her new headband on, she wears it every day practically!)

So that was the birthday season. More details to come about Hayden's art rainbow birthday party and Eliza's pirate party. I should mention that in the middle of all this baking and birthday celebrating, I also decided it would be a good idea to host bookclub and for that, I made pavlova since the book was set in Australia. It took me two tries but it turned out quite nice! Bookclub friends said it was very tasty.

pavlova - meringue on the bottom, topped with whipped cream and fresh berries

Wet & Wild Cousins

I forgot that BEFORE the fourth, at the end of June, we had the Georgia contingent of the family come up for a visit. We had a great time playing and gallivanting around town with all the cousins.  It's been so long now, I can barely remember what we did. We went to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. We walked around American Tobacco Campus and went out to lunch at Tyler's. (Molly ended up being sick and fell asleep in my lap at Tyler's - that NEVER happens.) We had a mini-family reunion with some of grandma's side of the family. We went to the pool, went to a park and just generally hung out a lot. Busy but fun.

balloon animals at the farmer's market!

group pic on the sofa!

cheese

anyone know what Charlotte is signing?

Not too many more pictures, since we were too busy having fun, but I did break out the big camera for water play at a local park. I got to capture the epic water gun fight (even adults joined in!), splashing in the water zone (including experimentation with buckets and spray), and just the joy of running around in swimsuits at the playground (slides just don't work as well mostly naked).  Then we even got a good group picture with grandma and popop.

 

face off!

And one last picture of Molly showing off one of her newest tricks - I think she even called it an arabesque. Doesn't she look amazingly graceful?!

the fourth!

We were lucky enough to have Grammy and Granddad come to visit over the fourth - so we got to show them how much we love the holiday (grilling! festive clothes! fireworks! the Eno festival!) and celebrate with them. We also got to hear about their trip to China! It was just a fun celebration of red white and blue and summer time.

you can't tell, but her hat is red, white and blue!

feeding her new panda with her new training chopsticks

decorating our cookie cake.

the delicious finished product!

showing off their festive dresses

family fourth finery!

fun with Grammy

Durham's skyline before nightfall and fireworks

fireworks! M watched them for about 5 minutes and then was ready to do something else!

Happy Fourth!

Donuts and berries

I think it makes sense to back track to the beginning of the summer and just go through our adventures chronologically. So, let me first take you back to the middle of June. School is out for the summer, Jason is still working on his dissertation in all of his free time, so we are busy finding different adventures to occupy our time. Now, as you may have noticed, we LOVE picking berries. (Well, I love picking berries. The kids tolerate it but they do love EATING berries.) Despite the plethora of berries I have plucked from the plant, I have not yet had the opportunity to harvest Jason's favorite berry - the raspberry. I search periodically, in the hopes of finding a U-pick raspberry place and this summer I stumbled across a farm that seemed to have blueberries, blackberries AND raspberries for the picking. It was an hour away, so it meant that we need to plan an adventure.

So one Saturday morning, we plotted to both try a new donut place (if I could find U-pick donuts, I would) and to try to pick the elusive raspberry. Grandma and Popop were enlisted for assistance, and even Jason was able to come along on the donut part of the expedition.

Donuts were delicious. We made the most of the excursion (all the way to Cary!) and got 2 dozen of all different kinds. Yum! Nothing super fancy, like some of our local shops, but definitely quite delicious. Special awards for the apple fritter, the cruellers and the cream filled ones.

After chowing down on sugar, then it was time to hunt the berries. We found the farm without too much problem but alas, we had arrived too late. There were no raspberries to be picked. (The owners told us that there were 10 cars waiting when they opened at 7 am. ALL of those early birds came to pick raspberries so the bushes were picked out. ) In grand total, I think we found 8 raspberries amongst our group. But the blackberries were GINORMOUS (big as my thumb, no lie!) and very sweet. Very easy pickings on the blackberries. Blueberries were just coming ripe, so we picked some of those as well.

can you see how big and juicy the blackberry is?!

happy with her harvest, pre-fall

M tended to skip the bucket and go straight to the mouth

Eliza did have a spectacular wipeout at the end which gave her a bloody nose (like gushing, it was awesome in a I-only-have-berries-in-my-hands-how-do-I-stop-the-blood-and-get-her-to-stop-screaming sort of way.) Thank goodness for Popop and his handy handkerchief! She did rally enough to help feed the goats some greenery.

our harvest! Yum!

We have not returned to either donut shop nor berry farm. I guess we'll wait till next summer to see if we can time the raspberry picking better. Now we know it's better to go for berries first, THEN donuts. Or maybe just make separate trips; I think donuts can be a cold-weather harvest after all!

Summer Accomplishments

Wow. I knew it'd been a while since I posted, but I didn't realize HOW far behind I was. And alas, there's just not enough time to really do justice to all that we've been up to. But just as a quick update, and maybe I'll find more time to elaborate later this week, we have had some pretty cool accomplishments this summer.

First off, Hayden is now SEVEN. That's right, 7 years old. Oh my how time flies. We had a great arty birthday party for her, and celebrated her birthday with family and a chocolate mayonnaise cake.  She was a good sport about the fact that we headed out of town ON her birthday - but she got plenty of celebrating in.


Why did we head out of town on Hayden's birthday? Well, that's due to the OTHER big news. We now have a DOCTOR in the house. (well, at least another one.) Jason successfully passed his dissertation defense. We are all SO proud of him. Plus we really enjoyed celebrating (over and over) with lots of ice cream while in State College.

And a silly accomplishment, but one that did elicit squeals of delight was RAINBOW JELLO. Not hard to make, just tedious, as we had to chill each layer individually. But it turned out beautifully and was a great addition to Hayden's rainbow art party. 

There will definitely be more to follow about our many summer adventures, but those are the highlights for now. Stay tuned!