Happy Birthday Stephen

Stephen turned three on Friday. We had a party Saturday morning. We had it at the park near our house. Stephen wanted his party to be themed "yellow" I kid you not, that's all I got out of him, "I want a yellow party" Finally my friend Cristy (Hey Cristy!!) Convinced him that he wanted balloons. So I had that to go on. And here are photos.

Cake. He picked those tacky candy things, I would have done something fancier.

Stephen rocking a yellow shirt and sitting with his cake.
Ethan, also in yellow with super flushed cheeks, he played HARD at the party.
Me and Stephen who didn't want a picture with me.
Friend Elly Opening presents. Xander, Brian, Stephen, Ethan and frind Nathan
Friend Xoey and her cute, skinny, mom Shara. Xoey's birthday party is tomorrow. She is the happiest baby ever and I've only heard her cry like once. In the background is friend Dean. Ethan got some rain boots, I know it's not his birthday, but Stephen got them too and I don't want to deal with one kid having them and one not having them for the next two months. They are insanely cute with his shorts. I'm hoping it rains soon! Stephen amid a pile of presents. He got this cool art stand thing and one side is dry erase board, so he got markers too. These are from Marcia. Stephen loves it! He loved everything he got.

And that's all I've got. Stephen got a pile of art supplies, froggy rain boots, a "buggy cave" which is a cage for bugs *joy*, a Cars movie toy that is pretty cool and a Tonka Truck front loader digger truck that we can't wait to take the beach.

We did take some video and I'll try to upload it sometime soon, it takes a while to upload videos.

Playing with our new camera

I'm hoping you see a video there. A video of us. Playing with our new video camera.

here's to hope

Garage Sale and other great deals... AKA ERIN GETS SPOILED

This weekend was great! Yesterday my mom and Jack drove down. I fed them a nice dinner, which was a real pleasure to be able to do. This morning we got up and went to a huge neighborhood garage sale. We got a TON and took photos.
Me and the tots looking for bargains.
Ethan and his Grampy Jack.
Me and my boys walking from one sale to the next. Ethan rocking the monkey leash.
A digital video camera! It works and everything, it was new. We have no idea why he was selling this, but whatever. So soon I can put video on here. :)

Maps for the boys and a thing about how a frog's life cycle. These are in storage behind my dresser right now, I'm going to use them when the boys are a bit older.
A pink Jaguars hat for me, sticker still on it, child hinge door gaurds for the closet in the kids room, a drying rack and a laundry basket. Sorta boring, but good useful stuff. I think those are my feet too, but I've had them for years, didn't just get them. Oh a Tony Dungee book and a propane lamp too.
This strange thing is a CD tower. It is hand made and not sanded or painted. Well it wasn't, I already painted it. I've put it in my craft area and will hold my unmounted stamps in it. I keep them in CD Cases so they will be perfect and this will hold plenty of them. Best part? It fit perfectly in the spot I had in mind. I painted it the wall color *dark red* so it looks built in! LOVE it.

Kickboards. They were five cents each. I'm going to start teaching Stephen to swim this year and kickboards is a part of my plan.

Books and games and a movie. *HEY! that movie is not for us, Mom, did you get that movie back?* That "Body" book is the awesome kind with overlays and even a CDROM and it was a quarter. Heck, almost all this stuff was a quarter.
This was my idea, feather dusters! I figure they can "help" me dust with these. I got an unopened box of crows *licorice candy* there too. I love licorice, crows are ok, but not strong enough I like really, REALLY strong stuff, anyone know any? Please provide a link. *wink*
We got a computer for the boys *we have one great one from Christmas, but they fight over it, so for $3 I got a second, this one is bigger kid stuff, but they seem to find stuff to do. There are some other goodies here the kids picked out. My mom and Jack are unable to say no it seems, but just look at the joy!
Clothes, shoes, socks and other odds and ends. The shoes all look almost new and were fifty cent a pair! SCORE!

At lunch a very nice man had this Harley. Well when the boys oooh'ed and awwww'ed over it he said, "Would you like to sit on it?" and then he asked if we had a camera, Mom did!

After lunch my mom took me to Bealls and bought me a ton of clothes. Nice shorts, a beautiful skirt *seriously, it's the nicest thing I own* and tops. FUN stuff. Also we didn't take boys and we DID take Marcia, so it was super fun girl time.

,

Disney's MGM Studio

Oh and Disney is trying to call it "Hollywood Studios" now, which I think is lame to change the name of a park but whatever, same place.

We went to MGM yesterday! It was stinking fun. Unfortunately the boys woke themselves up at around 6, so they crashed and burned a little early. Perhaps I will have to NOT mention that we are going somewhere super cool next time.

The first thing we did was ride the Tower of Terror! Me and Stephen I mean. He was a little scared but he loved it anyhow. If you are inclined then call us and let him tell you about it, he is super funny when he tells it. I can't type what he says, he does sound effects. He's definately a thrill seeker.

This first photo is of the boys meeting characters from Little Einstines TV show. I don't know their names. Stephen calls them, "the red one" and "the yellow one". There were a lot more characters hanging out at MGM than the other parks. (You may remember my complaining about that in my other Disney park reports)

Next we have a look of wonder on Stephen's face. We are in a show called "Playhouse Disney" Stephen KNOWS that we saw the REAL Mickey Mouse Club House, the REAL Mickey Mouse and Handy Manny, Little Einstiens and so on. The other ones that you can meet and hug are "Characters". He leaned to me and said "Wow Mommy, that's the REAL Mickey Mouse, not a character!" The "real" guys were puppets and smaller than the hugely oversized characters.. not sure if that's what made them so real? This is the real Handy Manny.
Here we are on the Studio Backlot Tour, right before all heck breaks loose.
All heck breaks loose
And terror ensues We found out that Ethan is no fan of special effects that have fire, loud noises and such. Especially gun ones, he really doesn't like those. We also learned that if he's scared he will either hold his blankie over his face or hold your hand over his face until he feels brave again.

Being very scared is tired business.

Stephen had a little rest too. *not asleep, note open eye*Who are these people you ask? I don't know. This was the closest we got to Mickey Mouse, but they had to cut off the line on us so we didn't get to meet him. But Stephen saw him and wanted me to take a photo. I did later ride a ride with these people, they were with me in line. They seemed nice. It's a small world after all.They had a collection of outstanding Alice in Wonderland art. I love this one. That's about all. It was a nice day. We stayed until the 10pm showing of Fantasmic and that was good. Ethan thought a lot of it was scary, and Stephen slept through it, but I liked it. :)

Egg hunt

We had an Easter Egg Hunt today. They loved it.

Zoo trip and publication news for me.

Today we went to the zoo with our friends the Holts. They have boys ages 4 and and somewhere around 19 months, so they make good buddies for our boys.

You may know that Stpehen loves birds, so first stop was the bird area. He especially likes flamingoes so I took this photo:

Next is this bird and turtle. Doesn't it look like they are kissing?

Unfortunately they are not, they are fighting. The bird apparently wanted the turtle off the rock, the turtle didn't want to give up. The bird bit him and everything! Eventually the turtle did slide off the rock and back into the water. Mean bird.

Watching all this good Bird vs. Turtle action was this guy.

Then we tried to leave, but we had to deal with this guy first! *he looked mean in real life*

Here are some pics of the boys walking around the zoo. *Stephen in green, his friend in yellow*Here is Stephen on an aligator. and you thought I was an overprotective mommy!

Here is Ethan and his little friend. How cute is that "Thing 2" romper? It was sunny so they have squinty eyes.

Here is Ethan with an aligator. The consenus of all the boys is that they "think" it's not real.

I'm pretty sure this one is real, so we just looked, didn't touch!

The kids almost fit though these bars, either aligators only eat fat kids, or the zoo only cares about fat kids. *kidding, there was another fence*Arn't these pretty? Our zoo is a "Zoo and Gardens" and they take the garden part seriously. The sign says African Daisy. Now I'm not a gardner and rarely get to see flowers from young and all, do these petals uncurl and just turn normal? See how they look really interesting? Especially in this second pic. well in the first you can see that on the same plant some are all weird like this and some are flattened out and look like normal flowers. So do all daisies do that? Anyhow I really like them curled. :)We also went on the carousel. Our zoo has the best one, all types of animals on it. Ethan rode elephant, Stephen rode some spotted cat, I think a leopard. *leapard, leapord, Katie, what is it??* I know I've posted photos of it before.

Then we had a snowcone. It was the fluffy kind, you know what I mean? I consider myself somewhat of a snowcone expert. This was a top of the line one.

They have stingrays now at the zoo but you have to pay $3 a person to SEE them. I'm not paying $9 so Stephen can tell me how scarry they are and Ethan can stare off into space. I think you should have to pay to feed or touch them, but you should be able to go near it and look with your eyes for free. Whatever!

In other news I was published in a magazine! It's the Just Cards! magazine, Volume IX. Here are some photos, the cover (which I'm not on) will be first.

There are more, (9 total) but I feel sketchy taking more than a few photos from a magazine. Anyhow this time I took the time to email all the vendors of the stamps I used and let them know I got their stamps published. I really did it with a few at first because I was excited for them, I use a lot of smaller companies' stamps and I love to see them get their names out there. Anyhow they responded with "Great, pick some free stuff!" and so I emailed the rest and almost everyone said that! From this one magazine I'm getting a TON of free stuff. It's perfect because it's all stamps I LOVE, that's why I used them on the cards of course! One funny thing about publications like this, is that I sent this stuff a LONG time ago. Its always funny to see how my style changes and all. :)

So my computer is giving me fits! FITS I tells ya. We are getting a blue screen of death, randomly it shuts itself down and my CD drive isn't reading anything. I'm not thrilled. I wanted to use the CD drive to back up all my photos and writings and stuff, because I'm afraid the computer is going to just explode or something, but I can't! It has caused high tension here. This computer is less than a year old. I just noticed there is a phone number for tech support right here on the side. I wonder if it would help to call it ever? Probably not, they will be like, "Do you have it plugged in?" and I will scream at them and they will hang up.