Ben had his friends Tristan and Max over for his 9th birthday party.  Here is Ben getting ready to blow out the candles on his SpongeBob birthday cake.

Of course 9 year olds love video games.  Up close.

We had pizza and the boys also watched “Up”, which was a hit.  Our little Max tagged along as long as he could.  They all played so well together!  Grace stayed over at Aunt Nani’s house to avoid the chaos.  Here is Max falling asleep in his lunch the following day, we all need some napping to get caught up on sleep.

Max thought all of Ben’s presents contained “Thomas” the train gifts.  Smart kid, as a good percentage of Max’s birthday gifts were Thomas related.  We’re done with birthdays in our immediate family for a few weeks.  Up next – Christmas!

Max had an excellent second birthday.  The weather was fantastic all weekend and we got to spend a lot of time outside.  Max mowed a good chunk of the yard with his toy lawnmower!  We held a little celebration on Sunday where we ate Max’s favorite food – pizza!  Pronounced “deepah”.  We got him a Thomas the Train cake, his current favorite interest.

Max actually did a pretty good job trying to blow out the candles.  He knew they were “hot!”

Finally, we opened some presents.  Max really got the hang of this event.  Here he is getting excited about a new tractor book.

When all the presents were opened, he was asking for “more!”  That’s my boy.  He is enjoying all his presents today.

We had a monkey in our woods

Thanks Gilleses!

And a cow

And a Geisha

I did not get a good picture of Ben in his Red Ninja costume.  Doh!  We had a great time trick or treating in Cedarburg with some of our friends.

One of the family games in our rotation is Cranium for kids.  The top of the box for the game has a slogan, “The Family Fun Game!”  Ben and Grace insist on calling it by this slogan, refuting any logic I dispense to the contrary.  One of the aspects of the game is quickly molding purple clay into items that the other players try to guess, similar to charades.  This is Grace’s favorite part!  Here is a photo of some of her freelance work.

We thought we’d try tossing Will into the bath with Max to see how they would do together.

Will wasn’t sure at first, but decided to enjoy the idea rather quickly.  Max, however, was NOT happy.  He had no intentions of sharing his bath with the baby.

After Sarah’s shopping trip to Costco, Grace and Max were playing well together and decided to ride the bulk toilet paper and paper towels as if they were horses.  They actually played this game for about a half hour!

Neeeeiiigghh!!

When we were last visiting Grandma and Grandpa in Bloomer, Max wanted to go outside so desperately that I let him run around for a while.  Without pants.  Or a diaper.  He discovered you should wear pants sometimes.

We’ve had a busy schedule and some technical difficulties, so I apologize for the gap in between posts.  Recently the kids had “Crazy Hat Night” at Awana.

Max also wanted to participate, so we let him wear Ben’s hat.