Birthday Party MAYHEM!

***POV CHANGE - DUSTIN IS WRITING THIS ONE

Yesterday we had a joint birthday party for Dylan and Hayden (Erin, in case you are curious, we did NOT have our first snow yet, the weather was awesome, JEALOUS!) If any of you have ever attended a birthday party that Paulette throws for one of our kids you know that it is a well thought out, orchestrated event that is envied by other mothers everywhere. This year was no different except Paulette only had 50 weeks to plan instead of the neccessary 52 due to having it two weeks before Haydens actual birthday, not to mention the disturbance of pushing out a 9 lb baby. The birthday invitation was just as elaborate as any other year (think of the pirate party Dylan had with the really cool invitation in the bottle) and the party was bigger than ever thanks in part to more people moving in on our street. We all know you can't leave the kids on your own street off the invite list to the party of the year so that alone was 11 kids (not including our own), cousins add another 5 and contrary to popular believe we are not total hermits so we do have some friends with kids so there is another 5. Paulette's parties all require adult interaction so we had a mad house yesterday, the good part about it though is that we only have to do it once since we had one party for two kids.

The theme of the party was western so Paulette wanted to do something cowboyish. Leslie (Haines) and Gordon have some horses so we asked if they thought we could have the party at the place that they keep the horses but the lady who owns the property shuddered at the thought of having that many kids running wild on her property so we did the next best thing.

That's right, when you can't take the kids to the horse you bring the horse to the kids, even if it means having a full grown horse graze in your backyard for 5 hours. The kids absolutelly loved it though, I mean, why wouldn't they. How many times have you showed up to a birthday party at one of your friends houses and got to go on a horseback ride? There are now about 20 kids that don't have to answer "Never" to that question. In addition to horse back riding we had cattle roping (sorry, no real cows), stick horse races (Paulette found stick horses at the dollar store to give to each kid), a shooting gallery (we had to drink a lot of Root Beer to have the bottles for the kids to shoot) and bull riding.

These videos are too funny not to post. Enjoy!

We both thought things were going pretty well until we finally got to open presents which we tried to do like Christmas morning with everyone taking turns. That worked until they had each opened one and then Hayden proceeded to dig right in to all the rest of the presents while Dylan was too busy concentrating on what he had already opened. Paulette's mom was trying to keep track of who gave each kid what but we ended up asking each parent that was still here what they gave and the rest we asked tonight when the kids were all out playing.

Needless to say, everyone had a good time and Dylan and Hayden got more toys than they could have asked for.

Funny side story, we were going to Paulette's parents' house today for Kendra's birthday party (her real birthday was the day Ike hit). Hayden was pointing out to Dylan an airplane that he saw and said "Dylan, Dylan, see that airplane?" to which Dylan replied that he did. Hayden asked him if he knew where it was going and Dylan said that he didn't know. That was immediately followed up by Hayden telling Dylan "I know, it's going to WalMart."

Yes, we do still have a third child

Oh wait, that's not him! We found this bug in the grass in the front yard. Here's a picture of Kolton, sorry no videos, he's not that interesting yet. He sure is good looking though, he must take after his DAD. Obviously he is the only one besides me that is aware of this fact as you can see by his shirt.

More funny and/or cute pictures.

Hopeless was getting a bath and Mattie couldn't wait to have her turn. When it was her turn she wasn't so excited anymore.

Hayden being Hayden. He is standing on the counter top in the kitchen with his head in the void created where the two sets of cabinets meet. One day I just know he is going to figure out how to shimmy his way up through this hole and get onto the very top of the cabinets because that is where we put stuff when they are in trouble and we know they can't get to anything up there.