Ethan's Birthday Party

With Ethan's obsession with Angry Birds, we knew an angry birds party would be perfect!  With a little help from pinterest, I found cute easy crafts to make for the party.

 Party bags and yarn ball angry birds

 angry bird bowling

 Angry bird balloons

 Angry bird cupcakes

 Ethan and Lillie with their cousins before the party started.

First up was the angry bird bowling.  Ethan threw the ball high each time and resorted to just kicking the cans!

 Jack got the hang of it!

 Then we moved inside to use the yarn angry birds to hit the balloon piggies.  We played angry bird music and they had to freeze when the music stopped.  They were pretty good at freezing and had some great poses!

 On to the cupcakes and ice cream!

After we opened presents and had one last game of Angry Birds Bird toss. Ethan had a great time, thanks friends for making his birthday special!

Ethan turned 3

Ethan turned 3 last week.  He is getting so big, 92nd percentile for height and 87th percentile for weight.  Now that he is three, that means the terrible twos are over, right? I am looking forward to a calmer year with a more mature Ethan  ;-)  I wish I had as much energy as Ethan.  He is up around 6am each day ready to go, yelling from his room, that the sun is up (even if it isn't), it is time to eat cereal.  He usually doesn't nap, though sometimes he will fall asleep watching Diego while I cook dinner.  On the plus side, both he and Lillie are usually in bed without fussing by 7:30pm, if not earlier. 

He is such a smart little boy.  He knows how to use our smartphones and computers. We've had to put passwords on everything just to keep him off. He knows all of his letters, recognizes them in different places and can count objects to 10.  Along with the counting, he has learned to negotiate and will ask for 3 or 4 of an item before settling on 2.  Ethan knows I have a stockpile of food in the basement. So when I told him we were out of popcorn when he wanted it for a snack, he knew better and told me to go to the basement to get him some! We are still working on getting him to dress himself. If he had it his way, he would stay in pjs all day long.  He is content to let us completely dress him and puts no effort into doing it himself.  For the most part, he doesn't care what he wears after I get his pjs off of him. 

He is starting to show his love for Lillie a little more now.  He gets concerned if I leave her somewhere, like in her car seat when I've taken him out first, or when she is upstairs when I am heading down the stairs. He doesn't like to hear her cry when I put her down for a nap or if I don't get her right away when she wakes up. He still has her moments with her and the only time they are left alone together is at night since they sleep in the same room.  Amazingly they do very well together and are heavy enough sleepers that one wakes up crying, the other one stays asleep.

I decided to start recording a birthday interview. Not surprisingly, he could barely sit still.  It will be interesting to see how his answers change each year.

We were going to have his birthday party on his actual birthday but then the forecast called for a storm with the heaviest snowfall during the party.  I cancelled it realizing that it would probably be nothing but worried that if I didn't cancel, it would end up being an awful storm.  So we held it today instead.  Ethan woke up on his birthday asking for cake (he has been wanting a birthday cake ever since Lillie's birthday) so I made him a giant cupcake.  When the storm ended (and of course it wasn't bad at all!) we decided to invite my parents, Justin and Rebecca (the McDermotts were home sick) over for pizza and cake.  He didn't end up eating any of the cupcake, he thinks frosting is yucky (and I agree!) It didn't matter, our sweet-tooth girl, Lillie, managed to eat most of it by the following day!

Catching up-Christmas

Its been awhile, but I am trying to finally get caught up. Unfortunately, I haven't taken many pictures recently, partly because I actually put the camera away where it belongs and then never took it out and because I take quick snapshots with my phone a lot more now. Here are some pictures from the Christmas season!

We cut down a Christmas tree at a local farm.  I learned you can negotiate the price when we found out we were two dollars short after Ryan bought some locally made maple syrup down at  another farm near by.

I loved doing most of my Christmas shopping online and Lillie loved playing in all the boxes! Notice the lack of Christmas ornaments, Lillie destroyed any she could reach, good thing they were cheap ones that I had planned on replacing during the after Christmas sales!

We went to my grandma's house one day so that the kids could make gingerbread cookies with her.

Christmas was fun, Ethan is just starting to understand what is going on. He loved to point out Christmas decorations everywhere. He didn't understand it all though. Christmas morning, he woke up before 6 and so I set him up on our upstairs computer to play pbskids.org while Lillie, Ryan and I slept in. He didn't know that presents were waiting for him downstairs! They loved their big present, a playhouse!  Santa stayed up awfully late finishing the basics on Christmas eve and hopes to add all the embellishments soon.  We enjoyed a quiet Christmas morning with just the 4 of us before going to Church.

 While Lillie napped, I got a picture of Ethan in his Christmas suit.  Good thing I did then, he pooped in his pants just before heading out for dinner.  Since then I have put potty training on hold until summer, or until he is too embarrassed to be in diapers!

After we headed over to my Dad's cousin's house for a delicious Christmas dinner. I tried to get a picture of Ethan and Lillie but the only shots I got were of Ethan putting Lillie in a headlock.

Lillie loves her sweets, she ate quite a few cookies after dinner! 

Ethan getting in some Grandpa time!

Lillie loves playing peek-a-boo in her the playhouse!

The day after Christmas we drove down to Maryland to see the Fisher side. We really didn't take any pictures while we were down there, but we had a ton of fun playing with the grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins!  Everyday there were so many people to play with, Ethan and Lillie loved it.  Ryan and I enjoyed getting to relax a bit too with so many people to entertain them. One day we went to a place called Paradise of Fun that is basically a room full of bouncy houses. They loved it! I took a few pictures but they never stopped moving long enough to get a clear photo!  We will definitely after to visit there again! Our trips down there always fly by. Ethan asked the day after we got back, when we were going to Grandpa Fisher's house again.  And just this week he talked about visiting them again.  Its hard not being near the Fisher side, but we are glad we get to visit often.

Lillie and her cousins Zach and Easton.