Two Birthdays

Hallie turned "fee" on Sept. 30th. Ever since then she says, "I'm bigga" (bigger) over and over again...  probably a good 30 times a day... to which I have to say (over and over again), "Yes, Hallie, you are bigger." She still says she is "happy birthday", something that started a year ago when she turned 2. In the last couple of months, Hallie has really gotten the hang of potty training, something which I am extremely grateful for. So no more pooping in her underwear, no more sloshing poop in the toilet--Hallie-luiah! My life has gotten better by a good 65% I would say. And amazingly, she has never wet the bed. That girl has some great bladder control.

I baked a chocolate cake in the morning and then went upstairs to take a shower while it was cooling. When I came downstairs, the cake had been completely cut up as you can see in the picture. I guess Hallie wanted to cut her own cake? Who knows why kids do the things they do? The point is that I had to turn the cake upside down and frost it the best I could, despite it being cut into pieces. It was a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake with all the characters, fitting since she has watched the one episode we have about 100 times since last year.

Apparently, I was not very good at taking pictures that day. We hung out at the children's museum for a while and then my parents came over to give her some presents. She said she wanted clothes when they asked her so they gave her some cute things, including new underwear. She also got new underwear from me and now thinks that any time she changes her clothes (which is multiple times a day) she also needs a new pair of underwear. Since she loves Minnie Mouse, she got a Minnie dress up and a Minnie stuffed animal.

Hallie also loves to say the prayer. Whenever someone else gets asked to say it, she immediately says that she will say the prayer for dinner or for bed (whichever is the next one).  She also doesn't like to go to bed (just like her mom), so we always have Hallie and the baby up for a couple of hours after the other kids have gone to bed. Sweet Hallie is sure growing up! And we love her so much!

On Oct. 10th Alex turned 9. Since Alex is usually the first one up in the family, we made him turn off his alarm so we could bring him breakfast in bed.

Erin made this awesome card and homemade basketball for him. So creative!

Alex has a fun personality. He wanted a cheese cake this year... like a wedge of cheese made out of cake, not an actual cheese cake. I'm not sure if anyone remembers the racquetball racquet/fly swatter cake that I made for Jared a few years back. The one in which I declared that it wasn't my worst cake ever, to which Jared asked which one was worse than that one? That cake is infamously known as my worst cake ever... that is until this one.

This is what it was supposed to look like...

...and this is what it actually looked like.

All I could do was laugh about it. Since it was chocolate, all the dark crumbs came through like it was a piece of cheese dropped in the dirt. And all the holes we tried to put in it just made it look that much worse. It has been affectionately named "The Cheese Touch" cake and "The Pinterest Fail". Oh, and then there is the writing. It kind of looks like it says "Alex is 91. Alex was such a great sport about it and just thought it was funny. I love that he does things just to be funny or ironic, like wanting to be Santa Claus for Halloween.

Anyway, we rounded up whatever part of the gang of boys that was lurking around our house at the time and gave them each a piece of the Cheese Touch (it was delicious, in my defense)

He got a new basketball, a circuit making kit (something that Jared loves) and the second Harry Potter book. Alex just finished the first one and loved it.

Since it was a Saturday and since we weren't having a friend party for him this year, we went downtown for a family day. We spent hours at the Leonardo museum. We had never been there and it was so fun. They had tons of things to play with and build, as well as paint and create. The best part was that there was hardly anyone there. I feel like if we had that museum in our neighborhood, it would be packed all the time. Anyway, it was a really fun family day!