Jesse's 4th Birthday and Other News

There's so much to catch up on - where to start? First of all, Jesse's birthday was fun! We kept it pretty low-key, just some play time with the family at Adventure's On Wonderland, and he got to bring along one friend. Alex came over after school, so we had some time to do some crafts and stuff here first (open presents, eat dinner, etc). Here are some pictures:

Before school with his birthday cupcakes (you can't tell from the picture, but he had picked out gummy spiders to go on top).

Decorating Party Bags - Hey Brett, you might want to lean in a little so you don't get cut out of the picture!

Jesse chose this for a craft - painting piggy banks (Go figure - our one child that loves money as much as Alex P. Keaton)

Nathan - crawling around wondering why he doesn't get to participate in the cupcake baking, piggy bank painting and party bag decorating.

Jesse and his lovely orange drink mustache

Fun at Adventure's On Wonderland

That's Scott in the left corner having a ball war against the four kids

This past weekend Scott ran a Volleyball tournament at church. It was a lot of fun, although I didn't get to see too many of his games as I was running a Nursery for small children of some of the players (including our own). Thankfully, I had a couple of people to help out here and there, as we actually had, at one point, 23 children aged 8 years to 10 months in the Nursery. But I did enjoy the few minutes I was able to watch Scott - he's a pretty good volleyball player! Come to think of it, I can't think of a single sport he's not good at.

I don't have any pictures to share from the tournament, but I do have a couple from the weekend before. What a fabulous time we had in Cleveland! Samantha & Nathan were angels on the drive there and home. I was so glad I had Samantha in the back to hand Nathan a sippy cup or some Cheerios every so often! She's becoming quite a big helper.


Samantha & Jayna reading together the morning we left. Oh, and since it was Gibb's birthday that day, Jordana made German Pancakes with this yummy apple syrup - they were AMAZING!

Jordana and I spent most of the time shopping, of course, and we had so much fun! The first day we shopped at this great outlet mall about 40 minutes from her house where we found some awesome deals. I got tons of cute clothes for the kids. I think the best deal ever was a skirt for Samantha for $0.99! And this GAP sparkly sweater, which was 30% off the lowest ticketed price of $3.99! C'mon, that's practically FREE! The next day we went to the mall, which was a little more expensive, but I needed my Bath & Body Works fix. And I found a pair of shoes at Nordstrom at 8:59 PM on Friday night, my last night there, 1 minute before they closed. Another great place I discovered is this store called Marshalls (just like Winners in Canada). I found nice winter boots for Samantha & Brett, a winter coat for Samantha, and tons of practical stuff like socks and underwear for the kids (all name-brand) - and my total purchase was under $75.

Overall the trip was great, except for this one little thing that happened on Thursday night. It looks like this:

(In case you can't tell, that's a crack in my rear bumper. You know - the bumper on the new van we got to replace our old van that was stolen from our driveway the night Nathan was born).

So, we were driving home from the outlets on Thursday night, and I was going pretty slow to begin with as the weather was bad. This guy driving a blue Ford Mustang hit me from behind and then spun out in front of us and I had to come to a complete stop to avoid hitting him (did I mention we were on the highway?) Then he took off, exited the highway, and continued speeding away until he finally had to stop at a red light (at which point we got his license plate number). We went to the police station to file an accident report - luckily nobody was hurt. But when the officer called the guy to get his side of the story, he denied the whole thing and says he noticed me following him, but that he's not the one who hit us. We had to wait at the station while the officer drove to the guy's work to check out his car. (Meanwhile, I'm totally bummed because this whole thing was really cutting into our precious shopping time!)

After the officer saw the dent in the exact spot we described, the guy proceeds to tell the officer that the dent was "there when he bought the car". Riiiiiiiiiight. Anyway, to make a long story short... our insurance company is working it out, and hopefully we'll have a new bumper soon.

This post has grown long enough, and I need to go to bed, as I'm a little under-slept due to a flu bug that's been going through our family for the past two days. I've been the only one who's managed to avoid it and I'm hoping I've become immune after washing five sets of bedsheets and piles of blankets, plus scrubbing out carpets, couch cushions, puke-bowls, and pj's non-stop for 48 hours.

But I have one more thing to share before signing off. Uncle Eric and Aunt Chrystal had a baby boy on November 21 (Jesse's birthday)! Welcome, baby Dane - we can't wait to meet you next summer! Dane is my first cousin, born to my Mom's little brother and his wife. I think it's kind of cool that he's the same age as our youngest child - don't you just love big families?