Aquarium

We love this place!  Yesterday was Corbin's last day of 1st grade.  To celebrate the start of summer vacation, and the many great family memories and sibling time that is sure to come, we took a quick trip back down to the aquarium after school.

Jefferson was so cute watching the penguins.  Like both of his big brothers before him, he has started to take a great interest in animals lately.  He and Seth sat looking, jabbering and pointing to penguins for quite awhile, while the other two wandered around reading all the cool facts about penguins.  It is fun to see how they experience things during their different ages and stages of life.

The sharks and sting rays were the favorites this time around.  Also, we somehow let Corbin convince us to give him a mohawk hair cut last month.  I think it is almost time for it to be done, but he sure has spent the past month thinking he was pretty cool.

More Celebrations

Wednesday was Corbin's actual birthday, so he got to make a little poster about himself to take to school.

Mrs. Qualls also gave him a little monster birthday crown to wear for the day.

Then in the afternoon they had their PAL Thanksgiving feast where they all got to make little costumes and dress up as Indians.

I went to pick him up and the kid climbed into the car completely overloaded with stuff.  He said it was a great day!

Late Night Tea Time

A certain little someone was supposed to be sleeping...

Halloween Party

Our neighbors invited us to their Halloween party this year.  We were excited to go, but since it was early in the month, despite some desperate sewing the night before, our costumes were not ready to go yet.  Thankfully our children have the world's large collection of dress up clothes known to man and so we ended up just telling them to go raid the closet and pick out something for the party.  The kids thought Jefferson would be cute in a Santa suit, Seth decided to be Peter Pan, Makelle made the completely un-shocking decision to go as a Disney Princess, Corbin was some kind of monster-looking thing, Mom was in a poodle skirt and Dad was a recycle Angry Bird Pig from a few years ago.

They took the time to face paint all the kids who were interested.  Corbin asked for some fangs.

Seth didn't want any face paint, but was very interested in copying Corbin's pose for the camera :)

Our favorite was watching the kids bob for apples.  Seth and that little bumblebee next to him just kept reaching their hands in and grabbing a yummy apple, taking a single bite out and then tossing it back in and picking a new apple.  We tried really hard to teach him how gross that was, then eventually just gave up and watched them in amusement instead.  Good parenting right there.

Makelle was actually the first one to get one, when she figured out the 'go for the stem' technique.

Eventually Corbin saw how she did it and followed suit, much to our disappointment neither one of them actually stuck their heads all the way under water.

Hey look, you can see some of Seth's randomly bitten apples in that picture, nice.

Skinny Boy

Every summer Caleb's buddy from back when we first moved up to Salt Lake hosts what he has coined, The Annual Friends of Jeff Golf Tournament.  We have tried to go every year to keep in touch with old friends and have really enjoyed it.  Afterwards they always try to get everyone together for a BBQ at the park with all the kids.

During said BBQ, Seth decides that he needs to lift up his shirt and show off his manly little chest.  I am not sure how this idea got into his head, but Caleb responded by telling him that no one wanted to see his skinny little ribs poking out and that he needed to keep his shirt down.  This made the kids laugh and ergo we then spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to get him to stop repeating it in an effort to get his brother and sister to laugh again.  It is cute to see that he is getting old enough to really interact and play with the older two, but slightly concerning to consider all the trouble they are going to get him into...

"Look Mom, your scarf fits me like a dress!"

Only Makelle would see a pretty scarf and decide she needed to find a way to make it work on her.

And request that I take a picture of how beautiful it looks on her.

And choose to stand like that for said picture.

This girl still changes outfits at least 3 times a day and almost all of them are dresses or skirts.  In other words, she is nothing like me!

Carving

For Family Home Evening we found a Halloween movie on TV and got out a blanket to protect the carpet and then worked together to carve a jack-o-lantern together as a family.  The kids were in charge of the scooping.

Seth was really excited about scooping stuff out, but really unskilled at actually accomplishing much.  Even if he filled up his scoop, by the time it pulled it out, it would inevitably tilt too far and he'd have nothing left on the scoop once he got it outside of the pumpkin.

Makelle was her blissfully cheerful little self and happily helped Seth try to figure it out. And then got in there with her hands and finished getting all the hard stuff.

Corbin, from the time he was born, has always hated sticking his hand in a pumpkin.  You'd think it was a sewer based on his willingness to reach down in there.  At one point he asked if we had any rubber gloves he could use.

Oh yeah, and Jefferson was there too!  Good thing we never forget about him, left in the corner, neglected and sleeping through every family activity  :)  Seth did share his little pumpkin he had picked out to help make the moment more picturesque, and different from every other picture of Jefferson sleeping in a corner during various festivities, so it is all good.

Mom was in charge of finding a themed image, to use as a carving pattern, that went along with our costumes, mainly because she is the only one who cares about having a themed image to go along with our costumes :)

Dad was then left in charge of doing all the actual carving, or scraping as it happened to be this year.  He is such a good sport and made his crazy wife's idea work out perfectly.

While Dad did most of the work, Mom and the kids made pumpkin cookies for dessert in an attempt to keep the, "Are you done yet?"  "Can we put a candle in it yet?" "When do we get to see it glow?" "Will it be done before we have to go to bed?" and other such questions to a minimum  :)

Ugly Christmas Sweater Party

Last year we attended Caleb's work Christmas party with an ugly sweater theme, and thinking we could run to the thrift store the day before and pick up something old and out of style, discovered the popularity of said parties.  So instead we ended up buying a red turtleneck paired with a green sweatshirt and a red sweater with flakes of gold thread and then stopping at the dollar store for some accessories, which we proceeded to hot-glue onto the sweaters.  Caleb even found battery operated LED lights and a singing tie which got dismantled and included in his 'Reindeer Throwing up Christmas' sweater.  At the end of the season they got stuffed in a box with all our Christmas stuff, only to be rediscovered just in time for the Walker's ugly Christmas sweater party this year.

We looked absolutely hideous stunning!  We then posted our picture on Facebook and ended up with enough likes that it spread around the neighborhood and was requested for numerous other people's parties throughout the Christmas season.  Our sweaters managed to win multiple prizes.  We sure looked good.

Family Party

Corbin decided to have a friend party this year, but we still ended up making him an extra cake and celebrating with a family dinner on the Sunday before his birthday.

As has become a bit of a tradition with Corbin we ate breakfast for dinner and had a huge spread of pancakes, hash browns, eggs, sausage, bagels, fruit, cereal and juice.

Then since the party took most of our time and money, we decided to forgo getting him any presents from us this year and instead let him pick out a new Lego set to use as a cake topper.

I also special ordered those stupid rock-shaped jelly beans to make the cake look like a scene from the story and then saw that they carry them in the bulk section at our local grocery store.  Wasted efforts!

None the less, he liked the way it turned out, and even more importantly the way it tasted. (Minus the troublesome rock colored jellybeans, after all that, most of them got thrown away, as they tasted disgusting!)

He got spoiled with plenty of fun presents from his aunt and uncles, grandparents and cousins!

On a completely unrelated note, someone was having some drooling issues during the party that we all found pretty entertaining, laughing away at his his expense :)

No Admittance Except on Party Business

For Corbin's birthday this year we told him our budget and asked him if he'd rather have a nice present or throw a party.  He chose to have a Lego Lord of Rings themed party.  Not a Lord of the Rings party, a LEGO Lord of the Rings Party, apparently there is a huge difference :)

He doesn't actually own the video game, hasn't seen the movies, or read the books, he just played a demo of it once and has heard all about it and really liked the idea of it all, so we went with it.

We hosted the party Saturday morning at about 10:00 am.  When the kids first arrived we had a bin of fun elf, dwarf, hobbit, warrior and wizard dress up clothes out that they all played around with while waiting for everyone to get there.  Originally we were going to take pictures of Corbin with each guest all decked out and then send them to the one hour photo place down the street and have Caleb run and pick them up half way through the party so we could send a picture home with each kid as a party favor... that didn't happen though :)

Once everyone had arrived we sat them all down around the table and, borrowing a few cultural elements from the Hobbit book, served second breakfast to all the kids.  Corbin's favorite foods are all breakfast foods and most parents are like us on a Saturday morning and the kids get a bowl of cold cereal on the way out the door if they're lucky, so it really worked out. We ate pancakes, sausage, fruit and bagels.

Then to start, since every kid knew about Lord of the Rings, but very few knew all the characters or plot points, we found a nice little video summary of the Lord of the Rings story line someone put together from clips of the LEGO version of the video game, thank you YouTube!  

Once the kids finished watching the movie we explained that they were going to go on their own quest today:

Frodo Baggins received the ‘One Ring’ at Bilbo’s birthday party.  He then met with friends to form the ‘Fellowship of the Ring.’ Their mission was to take the ring to Mordor where they were supposed to destroy it by throwing it into Mount Doom. At Corbin’s birthday party today you will all make your own fellowship and complete your own quest by following the clues. For your first clue, look under an object that shares its name with a rodent and controls a screen.

These video game obsessed kids immediately ran to the xbox controllers and completely overlooked the whole rodent half of the clue, but eventually made their way over to the computer mouse where they found the next clue.

To begin the quest you must first find the one ring. Search through the bin of legos for the magic ring.  But careful, the Ringwraiths are also looking for the ring, if you take out any other pieces other than the ring you will reveal your location to them and they will defeat you.

We had one tiny gold ring from a Lego set Corbin had that we showed to all the kids, then we put it into Corbin's Lego bin, mixed it up and told them they had to find it without dumping the Legos out.  This actually proved to be much harder than we had anticipated because every time someone would see it, someone else would shove more Legos on top in their search until we finally stepped in and showed them how much better it is if we all work together and have one person slide the pieces around while everyone looks together.  Eventually they found the ring, which we had them trade for a large version we had made by covering a foam wreath in gold duct tape.  

Then we passed out the next clue:

The ring’s power is too strong and can destroy you if you hold it for too long.  So make sure you carry it with you throughout the quest, but take turns with it so no one has it for too long. To find your next clue, go to a place “wear” you can open two doors.

They ran around opening all the doors in our house until we pointed out the quotation marks probably meant that was an important word and that we thought that word was a homophone, then they got it pretty quick, since Corbin's large walk in closet has double doors.

When they arrived at the closet they found the next clue taped outside the door:

You have arrived at the Mines of Moria.  To enter in you must first learn the secret word by decoding the Elvish message.

On his dresser by the closet was a pile of papers with the following:

And a separate stack of papers with the decoder:

Once they figured out the message, "Speak Friend and Enter" they were able to open the closet and find their next clue:

You will need to arm yourselves for the battles ahead.  Go to the place where you sit morning, noon and night. (Hobbits would sit here 7 times a day!)

All the guests immediately ran for the dining room table where they had just eaten, but Corbin knew that we are not formal people and don't even use that table 7 times a year, let alone per day, so he knew to go to the kitchen table where he found the next clue:

The Orc army is coming to attack, you must equip yourselves with weapons to defend Helm’s Deep.  Everyone select a bow and decorate it with marks to make it your own.

We had made fun little bows and arrows out of Popsicle sticks and dental floss for each kid which they then decorated by coloring with permanent markers.

Once they were done we gave them a handful of q-tip arrows and the next clue:

The Orcs are attacking! Fight off the Orc army by knocking all of their guys off of the castle walls. You must stand back behind the counter and work as a team.

We had placed plastic army men on Corbin's castle from his 4th birthday and made the kids line up on the other side of the counter and knock them all down.

Once they got them all down we gave them the next clue:

You try to enter Mordor through the Black Gate, but it is too heavily guarded, you’ll never make it.  Gollum tells you to go to where you can move down to travel through a secret passage instead.

Since the kitchen is right next to the basement stairs they figured out where to go pretty quick.  As soon as they opened the basement door they saw a mass of leftover, clearanced out Halloween spider webbing with the next clue hanging all over the stairs:

Gollum has tricked you! Now you must make it through Shelob’s tunnel without touching his web.

They all crawled over and under the webbing until they got to the bottom of the stairs where they next clue was waiting:

Oh no! The power of the ring is too strong and Gollum tries to steal it from you.  Toss the ring around to each other and don’t let Gollum get it. If he does, then you are “it” and the previous Gollum is out.

As soon as they were done reading it out loud, Caleb ran in and tried to grab the ring they had been carrying around, starting a big game of monkey in the middle.  Once he got it the kid who had thrown it became the new Gollum and the current Gollum sat out, til we slowly eliminated all the players

Once we had our winner we gave them the next clue:

You defeated Gollum, quick travel to where you can become someone else to destroy the ring by tossing it into Mount Doom.

This clue led them to our costume closet where they found the next clue:

Line up in the order you got out in the last game. Everyone has two chances to get the ring into Mount Doom.  Then go to the end of the line to try again, but beware if you get too close you will fall in and lose, so don’t cross the line.

While they were reading we put a piece of tape on the floor for a starting line and then placed a red plastic tub at the other end of the room.  Being all cutsie, I wrapped a brown sheet around it so it would look like a volcano with dirt around it and molten lava on the inside.  None of the kids seemed to notice or care about my creative genius! :)

After they each successfully threw the ring into the bucket we gave them the last clue:

Well done, you’ve completed your quest and prevented the evil Saruman from ever getting the ring. Return to the Shire to celebrate with presents and eat Elevenses.

The kids all went back upstairs where they opened presents while I set out all the cupcakes and changed our centerpiece to say, Elevenses.

Then we sang "Happy Birthday," blew out candles and ate cupcakes.  We bought a random collection of Lego Lord of the Ring minifigures on ebay that we decorated the cupcakes with and for party favors we let the kids keep the minifigure that was on their cupcake.  With this age group that did require each kid picking a random card with the numbers 1-10 on them to determine cupcake choice order, thus avoiding the otherwise inevitable, "I want blank, blank!" argument that we were sure would have ensued.

(Corbin's eyes look a little a lot creepy, but this is the only group shot I managed to take all morning, so it will have to do.)

Heber, Trey, Colton, Corbin, Adam, Corbin, Silas, Jayden, Eric and Satchel.