Ava's 5th Birthday

Ava said she wanted a surprise party this year for her birthday. She didn't want anyone to tell her when it was her birthday. Ava has a general concept of months and days of the week, but she doesn't understand dates yet, so surprising her on her birthday wasn't too difficult. No one talked about her birthday the week prior, and we didn't wish her happy birthday day when she woke up the day of her birthday. We just sent the kids off to daycare as usual while we worked. Ryan made a crown cake this year and decorated it with berries and candy for our little princess. She secretly wishes that she could have been born into nobility.

When I picked the kids up in the afternoon, I sent the others inside and asked Ava to help me with the garbage cans. Then we came in and when she walked up the stairs everyone one yelled surprise. She was surprised and very happy. We just had a small family celebration, and Ava was quite content with cake and some presents. Little things can make her so happy.

Ava's 4th Birthday

What better way to enjoy 100 degree weather than at the Splash Pad. Ava and about 20 of her friends from school, baseball, church, and the neighborhood came out to celebrate her 4th birthday.

The umbrella was a birthday gift that made all the kids jealous.

Ava is absolutely amazing and we are so thankful that she made a full recovery from her accident last year. Life wouldn't be the same without Captain Destructo!

The good news is that we didn't have to worry about the pizza getting cold, but the icing on the cake was melting, and Casey kept stealing candies off of it.

It was a great day to be a kid!

Golden Ticket

Despite the accident, this has been Ava's lucky month. Since the 1st of August she has been showered with gifts, cards, and food from family, friends, doctors, nurses, etc. With all of the excitement, her birthday could have just been an after thought. However, we are very glad she is still with us, and wanted to give her a party with her friends this year like we did for Elizabeth's 3rd birthday. Even though, she seems like she has been three forever.Ava has always been independent, so a good question is who are her friends. First there is Analiese, her best friend from pre-school. Then there is Jena (5) and Ben (4). Elizabeth and Ben played T-ball together, but I think Ava has a bit of a crush on him. Jena and Ben have a brother Ryan (2), Ava really doesn't really like him but he got invited by default. Ava is also friends with Abby (5), Natalie (4), both from Elizabeth's gymnastics class. We have also done play dates together and all the girls have a blast. Abby and Natalie have a little sister Madeline (2) who once again was only invited by default. Since a gymnastics party was out of the question, we opted to take the kids to musical "Willy Wonka" at the San Antonio children's' theatre. It was suppose to be "Beauty and the Beast," but it got switched up last minute. Hey, who doesn't like a show about candy and chocolate. The kids all behaved beautifully during the performance. I am sure it helped that I put little bags of candy on their seats to munch on, and they all really liked the show. However, Ava was quite concerned why all the kids were disappearing when they ate too much candy. She wanted to know if they were going to come back. Luckily, they all re-appeared a the end of the show. I am sure there are good lessons to be learned. Ryan who has become quite the Betty Crocker made Ava's birthday cake. It is something he enjoys, like I enjoy making the kids' Halloween costumes. Elizabeth went for Spiderman back in February, Ava has a bit more girly taste and opted for a princess cake. Ava got the doll in the hospital from a nurse, it was the only one she owned that fit in the cake. Otherwise, we normally wouldn't have chosen a character from High School Musical 3. She enjoyed cake and chasing balloons with her friends in the theater lobby after the show. I think she would give this birthday a standing ovation. We did a family party on Sunday with Gram, Andrea, and the rest of that side of the family. Ava did some swimming, and even jumped off the side of the pool. I would say that she has recovered over the trauma of her accident. The kids decorated cupcakes, and successfully managed to make a whole weekend out of gorging themselves on sweets. Luckily, no one had to be juiced, stretched, or rescued from being turned into fudge.

One year ago!

Now!(Note the T-shirt)

Some Bunny's One!

Casey got double the fun with his birthday falling on the Saturday right before Easter. The girls enjoyed the week of activities as well including four Easter egg hunts. I am sure they rank Easter right behind Christmas. I have taught them the religious significance of Easter, but they were much more impressed with the amount of candy that came along with this holiday. Easter Sunday was overload. The morning started with an egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpa Friesenhahn's house with all of the extended family: cousins, aunts, and uncles. This being only their second year of egg hunting, the girls were not to sure what to do. But thanks to the help of some of the older girls, they walked away with a full basket of real and plastic eggs, bubbles, and other goodies. Even Casey got a couple of eggs that were promplty snatched away by Ava.

The morning was good practice, because in the afternoon most of the party headed over to Gram's house for additional Easter activities. This time the girls were on top of their game, and really got into running around the back yard scouring for eggs. The Easter Bunny has gotten much more generous in the 21st century, and the girls not only got an Easter basket full of candies, but they also got some bigger toys as well.Ryan had to work during the day, but was able to join the rest of us in the evening to help celebrate Casey's birthday. By this time, poor little C.J. was exhausted and the girls were hyped up on suger after eating nothing but candy all day. Nothing like cake to round out your daily caloric intake. Sometimes, you just have make exceptions as a parent.Happy Birthday Baby Boy! Bouncing like bunnies.

Elizabeth is 4!

Don't believe me, well we have birthday party pictures to prove it. First, there was a party at school. That is the great thing about sharing your birthday with Valentine's Day, there is always a big to-do at school with lots of cupcakes, candy, and cards.

Then we took our cruise, which is a pretty nice way to celebrate your birthday. To top off all of that, we had a joint birthday celebration (BBQ and bouncy house) with her friend Joshua(3) and all their friends from our military playgroup. Ryan made the cake.I did some face painting. She did have a pirate eye patch also, until she wiped it off. Next big milestones... Casey turns 1 and Ryan turns 30.

Birthday Mania

As I mentioned previously, the kids had another friend's birthday party coming up that they were really looking forward to. Their friend, Rich, celebrated his 3rd birthday this weekend at Lifetime Fitness, a national globo gym chain. The party started right by fueling the kids with pizza, juice, ice cream, and cake before proceeding to the party games. The gym staff coordinators tried to wrangle a bunch of 18months-5 year olds into two teams for an organized game of soccer. That lasted about 5 minutes and was not a pretty sight. The staff quickly decided they need to take this party in another direction and brought out a giant parachute which the kids loved playing with, under, and on. They probably got about 15 minutes of fun out of that one. Then came the scooters!I don't know if anyone else had used the scooter before, but we had them at my elementary school and would have a blast during gym class playing scooter hockey, where you sit on your butt and scoot yourself around backwards and forwards and hit a wiffle ball with mini hockey sticks. At this birthday party, the kids didn't play anything that advance. In fact, they couldn't quite figure out how to get the scooter to move while sitting on them, which resulted in "Mommy, push me!" They did manage to figured out that if they laid down on their tummies they could spin themselves around in circles. Then some how the two activities were combined., an before you knew it parents were slingshoting their kids around the gym. You just grab a foot or two, spin around in a circle and then let them fly towards a wall (preferably padded).That lasted for quite a while, and then while I was taking Casey for a ride on a scooter, my girls came over to request another ride. These scooters are a little more high tech than the wood ones from my elementary school days, and hook together. So what started as a 4 person train with my kids and I, quickly turned into me trying to push all the kids at the birthday party across the floor on a mega scooter train.At its largest, I think we had 10 kids on nine scooters racing across the gym floor. Fortunately, a couple of the other parents took a few turns pushing the train also, because it was a beast to get moving. I know I worked up a sweat. Even little Casey got his exercise, practicing crawling across the gym floor. Don't be fooled, he still isn't going anywhere.

Mammoth Caves and Mammoth Celebrations

I turned 30 earlier this year, The kids and Ryan made me a very nice cake and we had a small quiet celebration (See previous blog entry). My birthday wish was really to delay celebrating my birthday since I was 9 months pregnant and couldn't really have much fun. Well, my wish came true. We didn't make it to a topical island with beautiful beach and fruity drinks, but we did have fantastic time crawling around with bats and cave crickets, racing down alpine slides, rappelling off a cliff, and drinking some beer. Most importantly, we were kid free for the weekend!!!

My two great friends, Siusan and Crystal, joined me from DC for these adventures, and to also celebrate their 30th birthdays. (Don't we have some great legs!)

Here we are getting ready to launch ourselves down the alpine slide (think bobsled without the ice).

The caving was awesome. We spent about six hours underground and did about six miles. Mammoth caves has 376 miles of mapped tunnels, so we hardly made a dent in exploring this cave system. In fact, the say that the wild cave tour is different every time you go. We spent the first half our our trek spending a lot of time crawling on our hands and knees and shimming through tight places. The second half was more vertical walking through the carved out stream beds and hiking on the old cave tour trails (circa 1900). We also managed to stay dry on this cave trip (just very dusty), where as I have done caved twice before and have had to wade in waist deep water and mud.

Ryan and his best friend, Mark, had wanted to come back to Mammoth Caves since they were teenagers, and they had planned out their whole trip to include camping, the wild cave tour, and rappelling. I was accused of stealing his vacation, when I suggested that my girlfriends and I go caving for our 30th birthdays. I told him that he has had the last 15 years to take this vacation, and it was his own fault that he hadn't made it happen. So, I let him tag along on my vacation. He and Mark opted to fulfill their teenage dreams and camp in the national park, while the rest of us stayed at a bed and breakfast. As you can see he also got his rappelling in, so overall he can say that he accomplished everything that he wanted to on this trip.

I wasn't dumb enough or brave enough to go off the cliff face first. Overall, all parties involved had a blast, and we can't wait to plan our next adventure.

Happy Birthday Captain Destructo

Ava (aka Captain Destructo) turned 2 this weekend. We celebrated this milestone with Ryan's family in New Braunfels with a family dinner on Sunday. Ava of course picked out a red/pink cake for her birthday and couldn't wait to dig in.

Note the Captain Destructo T-shirt that Ryan got Ava for her birthday. I got her one of her other favorites, balloons, as a gift.

Some of the other weekend fun enjoyed a picinic lunch in the backyard, some pool time, and of course popsicles.Ava continues to lead from the front. For example, she is sporting to new horns on her head from crashing her bike and take a spill down a few stairs.

She also enjoys "tearin' it up," which include running and biking at super sonic speeds.

We are hoping that "2" is going to be a great year for her, but first we need to get her screaming and whining under control.

The Lost Boy

Here are all the important stats and of course some pictures:

Casey Joel Knight 11 April 2008 @ 5:52pm 6 pounds, 9 ounces 18 inches grey/blue eyes, blonde peach fuzz hair

Over the Hill

It is official as of March 19th, I am now 30 years old! Since Ryan is 13 months younger than me, he is always looking forward to an opportunity to rub his "youth" in my face. Despite the fact that we were very busy with getting the house ready for sale, traveling, and work, we took a short break to go out to dinner and celebrate this milestone.

Now that I am....

(The candle also played music.) The girls and Ryan made me a beautiful cake.

But I thought we might have to call the fire department.

Personally, I wanted to postpone my birthday for 6 months to a year. Not because I was afraid of turning 30, but rather because I wanted to be able to really CELEBRATE!!! I would have loved to take a long weekend and fly to some tropical resort and lie on the beach with a drink with a little umbrella in it, instead of painting my kitchen, 9 months pregnant. But I am glad, my family gave me small but great birthday celebration.