Bryce's 3rd Birthday!

Bryce was pretty excited for his birthday this year.  We decided to not do parties with the boys this year and instead have "Rycie Day" and "Cason Day" where we just celebrate as a family but let the birthday boy pick everything we do that day.  Bryce's birthday happened to fall on a Sunday and Mother's Day this year.  We skipped church and he knew exactly what he wanted to do, he had been planning for months.  First up was opening presents from Mom, Dad, Cason, and Grandma right after he woke up.  Then we had some breakfast, got dressed, and Bryce wanted to go get donuts.  We headed to one of the 1,000 donut shops in town and he picked out a sprinkle donut, no surprise to any of us.  

 

Next up was Chuck E Cheese.  No pictures of this but the boys had fun playing the games and collecting tickets to buy the usual twisty straws and plastic dinosaurs.

For lunch, Bryce picked McDonalds.  The last time we ate at McDonalds was shortly before Christmas so Bryce had been talking about going for months.  Kelly refused to eat McD's so we went through the drive through and sat outside the Panda Express next door where Kelly got his lunch.  Bryce was thrilled with his cheeseburger and fries.  

 

Next we headed home for some birthday cake.  Bryce wanted an airplane cake this year so I showed him some pictures online of airplane cakes and he fell in love with a Blue Angels F-18 Hornet.  I studied some pictures and made his cake the day before his birthday.  I made a template out of paper of how I wanted to cut the cake and I love how it turned out.  Including the time it took to bake the cake, make the icing, and decorate it, the cake took me about 6 hours.  I'm so thankful Kelly kept the boys busy so I could get it done!  The vertical stabilizers are cardboard covered in frosting but the rest of the jet is all edible.  I also made him some marshmallow clouds because the boy is obsessed with marshmallows.  Bryce loved his Blue Angels cake!

 

After cake we played with his presents some more, he took a nap, and we went to the park to launch a rocket.  For dinner that night he chose to order pizza from Mr. Jims.  It turns out that all of his favorite things are my favorite things too!  We all had a great day celebrating our little Rycie turning 3!

Videos

I don't have a lot of time to blog (I promise to blog about Bryce's birthday soon!) but wanted to remind family that I post videos periodically of the boys on our YouTube channel, which can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/crayonsandcheerios?ob=0

Funny Bryce stories

Bryce: Why doesn't Papa Bear wear a seat belt?
Me: Because bears don't wear seat belts.
Bryce: Yes they do.
Me: Really?  How many bears do you know?
Bryce: About six. 

Bryce (pushing toy shopping cart around the house): Bye!  I'm going to Heaven!
Cason: Do you know where Heaven is?
Bryce: Yeah, I do.  It's right behind Target.
Cason: You think everything is right behind Target.
Bryce: Yeah, it is.

Bryce to Cason: What do you want?  Oatmeal?
Cason: No.  I don't like oatmeal.
Bryce: You did last week.

^^^True.  Cason often claims to not like things he loved the day before.

The boys love potty talk and we tell them to go in the bathroom if they want to say words like that.  So now they take advantage and say potty words while they are in there and we can't say much about it.  One day Bryce was walking to the bathroom and said "When I get to the bathroom, I'm going to say 'poop'".  Five seconds later, he walked into the bathroom.  "Poopy!" 

Easter

Kelly had to leave town on Saturday this year and work on Easter so we celebrated Easter on Friday. I made homemade carrot cupcakes, we had a lovely Easter pizza dinner, and we started the day with Easter baskets and an egg hunt for the boys.

















Both Grandma's sent the boys some Easter money so on Saturday, I took them to Toys 'R Us. Cason recently started liking big kid Legos so he spent all of his money on this police helicopter.





Bryce picked out three smaller items and still has over half his money left.



Bryce picked a Matchbox Rev Rig fire truck, a Matchbox fire rescue pack, and a set of motorcycles.











On Easter, the boys and I went to church and that evening some friends invited us over for an egg hunt and dinner. The boys had a great Easter and ate way too much candy!

Spring Break

Kelly and I both like the book The Lorax so we thought it would be fun to take the boys to see the movie. They both finally sat through a full movie a few weeks earlier at home so we figured they would do well in the theater. We read the book a few times that week before we went so they would be familiar with the story.



They both loved the movie, we all did actually. I'm sure it helped that we bought popcorn and candy to munch on.



I just love this picture, it cracks me up. Leaving the theater that day.



We had planned for months to go to Austin during Cason's spring break because Kelly had vacation that week. It was just a mini-vacation, Wednesday morning through Friday afternoon. We picked Austin because Cason talked about caves a lot last fall and he loves bats so we wanted to go to the Inner Space Caverns just north of Austin. That was pretty much the only must do activity we had so the rest of our trip ended up revolving around food. Austin has tons of great restaurants and places to eat. I spent hours searching Yelp and I made an itinerary of everywhere we were going to eat and what meal.

It turned out that Austin traffic is always crazy but spring break makes it worse. Then add the South by Southwest music festival on top of that and it made us pretty much want to avoid downtown. We had planned on hitting up Tenderland, a food truck serving some awesome pork tenderloins (outside of Iowa???) for lunch the first day but the food truck was gone. I checked their facebook page and they were downtown for the festival. Strike 1. So we went to Torchy's Tacos instead. Ehhh. Kelly liked it but the kids and I were not fans.



Next up was one of the cupcake bakeries I had picked out. I chose peanut butter cup, Cason wanted mint chocolate chip, Kelly got carrot, and Bryce loves anything with sprinkles. The cupcakes were much better than lunch.



That night we went to Salt Lick BBQ. Kelly and I had been here last October after we ran the Tough Mudder and wanted to go back. It was just as good as the first time and well worth the drive. This place has been featured on Man Vs Food and definitely lives up to the hype.



Thursday morning we hit up Round Rock Donuts, another Man Vs Food locale. We also ate here last October and told the boys about it. Bryce had talked about going to Austin to get donuts daily for over a month before our trip. I thought they were the best donuts (creme filled bismarks to be exact) that I've ever had.





After donuts on Thursday, we went to the long awaited cave. It was really cool. I was only disappointed in the bats. I thought the bats would be bigger, these were the size of chicken nuggets and barely noticeable. They were also loner bats instead of hanging out in a colony. The cave itself went on for quite a ways, I think we were in there for about an hour on our tour.







The camera on the iphone fogged up because at the end of the cave, it was 98% humidity.



Thursday night we were supposed to go eat Detroit style pizza and see the bats fly out from under the bridge on Congress Ave. But we realized that the bats might still be hibernating in March and couldn't find anything online that would tell us for sure. We didn't want to drive downtown and fight traffic if the bats were still hibernating. The pizza got canceled for similar reasons. Strike 2 and 3. The boys didn't mind though. They mostly went to Austin for the donuts.

Financial Peace Jr

Last fall, our boys started asking for toys constantly. This is back when Cason was obsessed with Imaginext (wow, kids go through obsessions so quickly!) and he would want to look at Imaginext toys on my computer every day. He would look for all of the things he didn't have and ask us to buy him any he didn't have. So Kelly and I decided that it would be a good time to start him on an allowance. We figured Bryce was probably a little young but we didn't want him to feel left out so we wanted to include him too. Kelly and I follow a lot of the Dave Ramsey ways so we thought Financial Peace Jr would be a good way to go with the boys.

The first week of January, we sat down with the boys and explained everything. We gave them each three chores to do each day. At the end of each day, we pay them for the chores they did that day and they divide up the money between "Give", "Save", and "Spend" envelopes. They caught on quickly and it has gone very well the past three months. The boys are good at putting money in their Give envelopes and then taking the money to church on Sundays. The money they give at church goes to help Josue and Isaac, two little boys in Honduras that have Cerebral Palsy. Our boys always talk about taking their money to give to Isaac and Josue, it's so sweet.

When their other envelopes start to fill up, we will take them to the store with us and they can pick out a new toy. We have done this 3-4 times since we started this system and the boys love picking out something new. They have mostly stopped asking us for toys, they know they just need to save up their money. And they are also learning that they need to work to get paid. They now have a better understanding of why Kelly goes to work, so he can make money to pay for all of our things.

This is one of the times they got to spend their money at Target. Cason picked out a small Lego set.



Bryce picked out an ambulance (complete with lights and siren of course!)

A very Mickey Valentine's Day

I'm totally back dating this blog entry so I can pretend that I didn't completely neglect my blog for almost three months. We've been so busy lately and I use my limited free time to talk to friends on text or facebook or do mobility work. But it's time to catch up.

I usually don't really celebrate Valentine's Day at all, other than buy Cason some valentines to hand out at school. But my friend told me about these cool Mickey bowls at Target and I needed an excuse to give them to the boys. Then I was walking through Sam's Club and impulse bought a Minnie DVD I knew Cason would love so then I picked up a Mickey DVD for Bryce. They were both completely obsessed with Mickey and Friends at the time. They also both talked about muffins all the time. We never have muffins ever so I thought it would be a nice treat for them if I made them some blueberry muffins for Valentine's Day. Kelly was out of town that day so he left cards for me to give the boys.





Grandma and Grandpa Gehling sent the boys cards with money in them so we took our Mickey obsessed duo to the Disney store.



They each picked out a Mickey and Friends play set.



They also each picked out two stuffed characters. Minnie and Daisey for Cason.



Minnie and Goofy for Bryce.

Trio Blocks

Cason's favorite thing to play with these days are his Trio Blocks. He got them for Christmas two years ago and was really into them when he turned three. Then he went through a Lego loving phase. Then it was all about Imaginext, and now it's back to the Trio Blocks. He builds all day long when we are home. He wakes up and starts clicking blocks together right away. All day long, I will ask him to do something and the response I get is "but Mom, I'm building something!" He will sit for hours building, as soon as he gets something built, he will change it or take it apart and build something else.

He is a good builder, he thinks of his own things to build and they usually come out looking like what he says they are. Here is an airplane he built last fall.



Then he got really into Imaginext toys and if there was a toy he didn't have that he wanted, he would just build it out of Trio blocks. Here is his Serpent Pirate Ship. It has a tail, oars, and a serpent head, just like the real thing.



This day he built the Twin Eagle, an Imaginext plane that he has.



And now that he's really into Mickey Mouse, he builds Mickey stuff all day, every day. This is one of my favorites, it's Mickey with a jetpack on. Notice the Mickey ears.







Most every day, he builds the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, complete with all of the details like the shoe garage, glove balloon, and vegetable patch. This video is him talking about his Clubhouse the other day.