Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays!

Hey everyone!

I know it's been a few months since I've posted...sorry, life is crazy busy. Well, in the past few months, we've had four birthdays: Grandma's 70th birthday, Shawn's February 5th, mine February 21st and Jasmine's April 4th (we celebrated it a week early though). I figured I'd write and try and post some pictures since I haven't in quite a while.

Grandma's kids (mainly Kelly and Kim, I think) planned a surprise 70th birthday party for her in Manito, IL at the end of January. Mom, dad and Travi came up for it also. We were having a birthday party for Shawn that weekend as well. There were somewhere around 90 people that attended according to grandma. We stayed for a few hours and then we went back to the house to get ready for Shawn's birthday.

Some pics from Grandma's surprise 70th birthday party:

Mom and dad helped us get ready for Shawn's birthday party. Mom helped us wrapped our presents for Shawn b/c we hadn't got to those yet and my mom can wrap presents quickly. Jason occupied all of the kids upstairs with either guitar hero or rockband or something. Dad was upstairs with Jason and all of the kids. Once Laken got there (our cousin), she helped us with blowing up the balloons and decorating. One of the funniest things was when Shawn was opening his presents. When he got digging in the bag from my mom and dad, he found a battery. One of the toys they got him required batteries, so my mom taped some to the package to go along with it. Shawn picked up the battery and got this funny look on his face and he said, "HOLY MACCARONI! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!?!" He got some hoodies, a spongebob flashlight, a little backpack that had a movie, a book, a stuffed animal and some other things inside of it, some blocks, a learning book (shapes and colors), and other various things.

The Bob the Builder learning book was one of the gifts from us, and he really liked that. Lucas sat down and said that he wanted to help his brother with his learning book. So they took turns doing pages in the book. They completed the whole thing in about an hour. The movie that came in the backpack was called Fires and Liars. It was teaching about fire safety. The kids watched it and loved it. Now they know what to do if they have a fire. They were practicing their stop, drop, and roll technique and everything. They also know that it's wrong to prank call that there is a fire because of the movie. It was called Fires and Liars because in addition to teaching about fire safety, it taught how these kids pranked some fire fighters into thinking they had an emergency...but really, they didn't and then the fire dept. couldn't help someone that actually needed them. It was cute and the kids really enjoyed it. So now anytime they see smoke (like from a cigarette) or the smoke detector goes off (like if we're cooking), they're like, "FIRE!!!" lol.

Here are some pics from Shawn's birthday:

My 21st birthday was last month...I'm finally legal to drink. Which is kind of funny because I sort of made this pledge (yeah, I'm kinda weird, I know) to myself several years ago that I wouldn't drink on my 21st birthday regardless if people wanted me to or not. Just because I wanted to be different...I mean, come on, just about everybody gets drunk on their 21st birthday. But I held true to the promise I made to myself several years ago and I did not drink on my 21st birthday.

We were able to make a trip to MO for my birthday, which I was really happy about. We got in town a little earlier than we expected to actually. My parents bought me some flowers and they gave me one of my presents that night. My dad had got me some more memory for my computer, which has really helped me out and I get less annoyed now that my computer runs better. lol We got to bed late, as always. My dad and Jason stayed up for a while after I went to bed because they were looking at my computer trying to put the ram in and everything. We woke up early Saturday morning and just kind of hung out with the kids for a while. We went to Texas Roadhouse in the afternoon. The food was great, but the service wasn't. They were extremely slow, quite crowded, our waitress didn't come to our table enough, and we had to wait a while before we could get seated.

When we got done eating, we went back to the house. My Aunt Joyce and Uncle Dan were already there (mom and dad got to the house a few minutes before Jason, the kids and I got there). A bunch of my family came over, which was really nice to see them. We invited Kelly, John, Anthony and Hannah to come over so we could see them also. We opened presents, had the cake and visited with everyone for a while. Then we left around 1:00 on Sunday.

I got a lot of really nice gifts for my birthday. I think my two favorites came from Travi and Lucas, though. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed and appreciated everything I got...but Luke and Travi's gift just really meant a lot to me. Travi's gift to me was something he made in his art class. It is a little holder holder thing. He said he used rope and then different colored string wrapped around the rope. It's like a little bowl. It's really cute and I could tell that he was proud of it. I loved it so much because I miss him and it's something I use everyday and it reminds me of him and it makes me smile. I use it to put my rings and necklace in when I go to sleep. Lucas made me a bunch of pictures...and he wrote "mom" on them. I cried. He was the hardest of the three to get close to me, so that meant the world to me. The story behind it is he made me a picture with a heart on it. He called Jason in to ask him if the heart he made was good enough. Jason said it was and asked who it was for. He noticed "mom" written on the picture, but he wasn't for sure if it was for me or if he was making it to take back to his mom. So he asked him who the picture was for and he said, "It's for Cole for her birthday." And Jason said, "Well are you going to write her name on it?" (Just kind of testing him to see what he was going to say) Luke said, "I already wrote her name...it's right there" and pointed to where he had written "mom." So Luke gave Jason the picture to give to me. (Mom and I took Shawn to Walmart to get the kids new shoes...) Anyway, when I got back, Jason pulled me aside to show me the picture and told me the story. I called Luke in the room and I thanked and hugged him for my picture. I cried when I saw that it said "mom" on it. Well, he ended up making me about ten pictures that said mom on them. So, you can probably see why those two gifts were my favorite.

And here are some pics from my birthday:

We just had Jasmine's 7th birthday party yesterday. Her birthday is actually April 4th, but we had it a little early since we wouldn't get her on her birthday weekend. So anyway... I had to work on Saturday until 3:30. When we got home, Jason made us dinner while I made Jasmine's cupcakes. And a big thanks to Kelly for letting us borrow this awesome Disney Princess castle that you'll see in the slideshow. She used it for Hannah's birthday party and I asked her where she got it because I'd love to get one for Jasmine and she sent it up for us to use. It came with the tablecloth that you see in the pics. It had these sensors and it came with a trivia game also. It would ask a trivia question and you had to press (on the table cloth) which princess they were talking about. It was really cute. I think she liked it.

We fibbed to Jasmine and told her that she wasn't having a birthday party. So when she found out that we were just wanting to surprise her, she didn't like that too much and she got mad at us and told us that she wouldn't smile for pictures. Once she got going though, she couldn't help but smile. It was kind of funny. Jason was like, "Well, at least now we know that Jasmine does not like surprise birthday parties!" lol Jason took the the kids upstairs for a little while so I could decorate a little bit and set the presents out on the table and everything. Grandma helped me with the castle. Each time one of the kids has a birthday, we always buy something small for the other two to give to the kid who's having a birthday. So I let the boys pick which gift they wanted to give her. Luke chose this little fairy notepad activity set and Shawn chose to give her Hannah Montana make up.

We got her some Littlest Pet Shop (LPS) stuff and Bendaroos. She has seen those things on TV and she always says, "Nicole/Dad, will you buy me those? I really want those...look how cool they are..." and she goes on and on about them. My work had them, so we decided to go ahead and get them for her. They're not as cool as they look on TV, but she wanted them and was really excited when she got them. One of the LPS things we got her was a bobble-head dog that she could decorate with stickers and glitter and stuff. Her favorite gift she said was her LPS pet that she can take care of. She really wanted a Nintendo DS but they're expensive...but this is kind of similar to a DS because it's handheld and it has the touch screen with the little pencil thing. It's a virtual pet that she can take care of. She has to feed it, clean up after it when it goes potty, she has to brush it. She can go shopping with it and all kinds of stuff. It has a bunch of games on it and it comes with a calander and a calculator also. She was so excited when she got it. She barely put it down once she got the package open. Even though she didn't get a DS, that was close enough for her. I think she had a really good time.

Jason took the kids upstairs for a while to play rock band while I was setting things up. Once we were finished with presents and everything, we had a tea party with her princess tea set that she got for Christmas. I figured if we were going to have a princess party, we needed to have a tea party, right? After that, we popped some microwave popcorn and sat down to watch Finding Nemo. By the time it was done, we all went to bed.


Here are some pics from her birthday party yesterday:

Today we didn't do too much. Sunday's are usually pretty laid back with us. We took the kids home a little after 5:00 and then stopped by Jason's dad's house for a little bit. We grabbed something to eat and came back home. Now we're just hanging out and I'm uploading a bunch of pictures. I really need to change this background, but I'll do it eventually. Jason has to re-write the html each time I want to change my background because of some of the extra stuff I have on my page. I'm off tomorrow...yay! Oh, and the next time we get the kids (Easter weekend), we're going to try and take the kids to the movies because Laken informed us that the next weekend we have the kids...Hannah Montana: The Movie comes out....and Jasmine wants to go. lol

I hope this finds everyone doing well. Sorry for the slow updates...I'll try and write more. Love you all...thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the pictures. It takes me forever to upload those...lol. For those of you that have Myspace, I have more pics there. I just upload the better ones on here because it takes so long to do.

-Cole-

P.S. Here are some misc. pics of the kids playing Rock band...