Happy Birthday, Noelani!!!

Dear Noelani,
Happy Birthday (a couple days late). We started to make this on your birthday, but it wasn't working properly. We cannot believe you are already 5. We love you so much. How neat it is that you and Lydia are only 16 days apart. She loves you very much and she tells just about everyone she meets about you. People at school and church "know" you since Lydia talks about you so much. You are her best friend. We are so excited to come tomorrow for your party! Hugs and Kisses!

Love, Aunt Gwen, Uncle Dan, Jake, Lydia, and Claire

Happy Birthday, Joel!

Funny Myspace Comments

To Joel, my fun-loving nephew. I hope you have a fabulous 3rd birthday today. I wish we were there with you to celebrate. My most fun memory with you, so far, was our little pow wow we had on my back porch steps waiting for your mommy to get out of the shower. You were nervous at first to not have her near you, but you loved talking to me about my "hot coffee" and that quickly got your mind off mama. Then we watched the little june bugs trying to get off their backs and we had an exciting conversation about where they would go when they did. Watch out the next time you see me...I searched for pictures of you, but only found ones from when you were a few months old at the cabin. So, next time I'm with you, I'm gonna go camera-crazy!!! We love you, Joel! Hugs and Kisses!!! XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

You Tube Clip

So, Dan spoke at Dayton Christian's chapel for 5th-8th grade on Thursday. He showed this little clip from a few years back and also put it on You Tube. I think we should submit it to America's Funniest Home Videos...but then again, maybe it is only funny to us (although the middle school students laughed, according to Dan). To me, the funniest thing (or sweetest thing, not sure the right word) is that when Dan showed this to Jake and Lydia the other night, Lydia had this look of shame on her face and quietly said, "I'm sorry for doing that." She was around 20 months at the time, so I know she doesn't remember it.

The Proper Way To Eat Spaghetti

When I married Dan, I remember asking him one day, if he could choose any meal in the world, what would it be and I was going to make it. To my surprise (and delight), he picked spaghetti. What wife can't make that favorite meal? All that to say, we have spaghetti quite often. There are many methods of eating this noodley delight (is noodley a word?...proabably not, but I'm known for making up words anyhow). There's the stab and scoop method, the twirl around the fork method, the grab a big bite and just chomp off the part that fits in your mouth method, and perhaps the most famous, the slurp and slide method. Well, let me introduce you to the "Claire method"...it's quite entertaining (and messy). (Forgive the big burp in the background noise).

Happy Birthday, Jonathon!

Happy Birthday to my 8 year old nephew, Jonathon!!! Love you so much and we are all hoping to get to see you sometime very soon.

Princess Tea Party

We didn't let this...

keep us from this...

Well, it's official...My sweet Lydia turned 5 this past Monday! It goes way too fast for my liking. Dan is working on transfering video from the camera to dvd's tonight. We reminisced from just one year ago, where she seemed so little on her 4th birthday. As Dan stated, " a lot changes in a year." Anyways, her party was a big success, despite the blizzard we had that day. Let me paint the picture a bit...I had been attending an inservice training on autism last Thursday and Friday. The news was predicting a huge snow storm for the Miami Valley area, but I chose not to dwell on that. Hey, they've been wrong before. So, Friday morning, as I leave to go to my session at the SERRC center, it starts to snow. It was getting bad fast; I could tell this just from my 15 min. drive. When I arrived, I was informed that they were compacting the original whole day into half the day and we would be out of there by noon. I understood why, but I will say I was somewhat bummed as I was gaining a lot of info from this training. So, after brushing off my car, I head home. I stopped on the way at a couple places. Rich, Araceli, and Noelani were planning on coming to Lydia's party and were debating about when to come. The weather in Indy was not as bad so they decided to come Friday evening. They did drive into the storm, but made it safely. Turns out it was a good call as Saturday was a horrible day to travel. They arrived pretty late in the evening, but we let Jake and Lydia stay up as they were so excited!! We went to bed late that night. We woke up to much more of a winter wonderland. We were supposed to go to another birthday party at 1pm; Lydia's friend, Drew, who is a day older than her. Spent most of the morning debating whether to try and brave the roads to New Carlisle (and answering phone calls of people wondering if Lydia's party was still on or not). Dan went out to 'test' the highway for me and came back saying he didn't think we should go; that you could not even see the highway with all the snow drifts. So, we spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out. We were still planning on Lydia's party since hers was not until 6pm and we were hoping the roads would be somewhat better by then. We got the girls ready (and Jake came too...he can't miss a thing. He did, however, dress up by putting on a clip on tie over his regular pullover shirt, his idea) and left to go and pick up my co-worker who was coming to help out. She thankfully lives on a main road which made it easier picking her up. (There was no way she was getting her car out of the alley that had not been plowed). We arrived at my mom's house around 5:30 and scrambled to take off coats and boots and to replace them with tiara's, gloves, and princess shoes. My mom had done such a wonderful job of decorating her house into a Princess Tea Party place, complete with red carpet going up the front steps to the house. She had a nice, fancy table set for tea with Lydia's castle cake in the middle. In the other room, she had small tables set up where the girls could get their nails painted, make-up done, and work on a craft. (the craft was them putting jewels on their foam picture frame, which held the picture of each girl sitting on the throne chair. My mom ran down to the basement to print them off so the girls could leave with them). Also, in that room, she had a Mirror, Mirror On The Wall. She'd recorded little messages on those little keychain recorders and had them on hooks next to the mirror. It was all sooooooo cute. I wish I was a five year old at that party! She had a Kiss The Frog game set up, which was like Pin the Tail On the Donkey, only after they spin with the blindfold, they put the lip stickers on the frog. And in the kitchen , she had Princess hopscotch set up and a Snow White puzzle to do. So, there was lots of activities to be able to participate in and you could tell much planning had gone into this. So, when this snowstorm hit, we weren't sure who was gonna show. In the end, it was just perfect (although we missed the ones who couldn't make it). The table was set for 10 and that's how many we had, including Lydia and Jake! We had invited all the girls from her school, only because we figured that would be fair. I totally was thinking only 2 or 3 would come, but all but one RSVPed, so we were nervous for the total which was going to be 16 kids...Yikes! We did all the fun activites first, and then we all went to the dining room for tea. My mom had made little cheese sandwiches and pb &j sandwiches. The beverage in the different tea pots was either pink lemondade or chocolate milk. It was so fun serving all the little girls. I think all involved had a great time! Then we had cake and ice cream (see pics of cake below, my mom did an incredible job)! Then Lydia got to open her presents. Then we just turned back on the princess cd that had been playing in the background all evening and let the girls dance around...that was one of my favorite things to watch too. Lastly, we played a game my mom made up or found somewhere. The girls each had a fan (made out of cardboard wrapped up in paper) and had to try and keep a feather in the air. All in all, Lydia had a fabulous Princess Tea Party 5th birthday. Many, many thanks to my mom for pulling the whole thing off! And many thanks to all our great helpers...Araceli, Rich & my Dad (taking video and pics), Sarah Beth, Stephanie, and Robin! It was a memorable night, that's for sure. Now that I've bored you with all the details, here are the pictures (lots of em'...Mom, I need your pics too. I didn't have any of you and I remember taking some...it must have been with your camera).

Jake's 6th and Claire's 1st B-days

This is mainly for you folk who weren't able to make it to our October celebrations. I am so bad, I don't even know how to send pictures through e-mail. Maybe I should learn so that you aren't having to finally get to see pictures 4-5 months later. Just so ya know what you are lookin' at...Jake wanted a robot party, hence the robot cake my mom and I made together. He and Lydia had gone to a football game with daddy while we made it. When he walked into the house after getting home, he was so excited about his cake. He thought it was soo cool! He got to invite a few friends, and the day of his party, the weather was so nice that we got to party outside! And since we call Claire our little Claire Bear, we decided to give her a little Care Bear party. We did cupcakes for the guests and then Claire got to dig into her cake (which was just the tummy portion of the Tenderheart Care Bear...although he is brown and we just used the light blue to match the cupcakes). It took some convincing on her part to want to put that blue stuff in her mouth, but once she tasted the sugary bliss, she went to town.

Claire's 1st Birthday Dress

Hmm, wonder what this is? Eww, get it off! It won't come off! ok, ok mom, I'll taste it if your gonna shove your finger in my mouthMmm, mmm, this is good stuff! Nope, not gonna admit it...I didn't like it one bit. I don't want to get down yet...just give me back my cake.

This last picture is of Lydia. Even though she is my March baby, I had to include a pic of her as well. Here she is the night of Claire's birthday party, holding on tight to her Chloe Bear that she's cuddled with since babyhood. She was sharing her that night for part of all the decorations, which was just all the various stuffed animal bears we have in the house. BTW, for those of you who know how special Chloe is to Lydia, Claire has a very special bear as well. Her name is Beary (ingenious name, huh?). Below is my Flash From The Past Picture, which just so happens to be one of my favorite pictures of Claire. Right beside her head is her precious Beary.