it's birthday time, race fans!

ethan has been talking about his racecar party for the last few weeks...to everyone who asks about his birthday. i really cannot think of any other way to have celebrated his third birthday. he is still as into driving his little cars all over the house as he was this time last year! pregnancy has taken over a significant part of the planning portion of my brain, so the preparations for ethan's party this year were somewhat last minute and slightly thrown together. but ethan had his friends, his cake, and his cars there. and brian and i finished the racecar sign at midnight the night before his party. so all was well. :)

the hit of the party was the racing ramp that brian built. all the kids, big and small, loved choosing their favorite matchbox cars to race. most cars had some major alignment issues and did not make it to the finish line before falling off the sides, but that just added another challenge to the race. :)



i love these next two pictures... i didn't realize this until today, but the first shot is of the daddies, and the next picture is of their sons in almost the exact same positions! how sweet is that!!



brian really enjoyed racing with the kids. it was nice to just sit back and let him entertain them!


i'm not sure what has caught caroline's attention in this next picture, but apparently it was something pretty exciting! that is her new "turtle face"... daddy loves it!



gram made another cute cake this year! as soon as ethan saw the racetrack cake, he exclaimed, "i'll put more cars on the cake!" thank you, mom, for your hard work on the cake.




here is ethan with his sweet friends...
they helped him blow out his candle after he tried a few times.



our little cake cousins!


i forgot to take a picture of the whole setup, but basically we had tables set up around the racetrack ramp. i tied checkered flag balloons to bottles of oil (you can see them in the background of some of the pictures), and we hung racing banners around the room. the "sponsor" for the ethan 300 was chickfila. :) very appropriate since that's what we ate in a hurry right before his party!




we chose to ask our family and friends to not bring gifts this year. i am SO GLAD that we did it this way! ethan was not concerned about presents in the very least, and for that i am thankful. we wanted the focus to be on praising God for another year of his life, not on the things people could give to him. (a sweet friend of mine asked a few weeks ago, "ethan, what do you want for your birthday?" and he gave her a blank stare and said nothing! he has never been asked that question by us! it made me smile!) he is so happy and content with the toys that he has, and we surely do not need one more toy in this house. we gave him a t-ball set, complete with "waffle balls" and a bat "with a baseball man on it". the grandparents gave him "experience" type gifts... an annual pass to the zoo, and a session of soccertots that he will go to with daddy once a week in the fall. (and my mom also gave him the cutest dry erase and magnet books!) even with just a couple of presents to open at his party, he was totally content and did not notice that a pile of presents was missing. i also appreciated that today, he enjoyed playing with his t-ball set most of the day instead of being completely overwhelmed with a mass of new toys! i do not say all of that to imply that we have not been thankful for the generous gifts given to our children in the past... but that it was very freeing to not "follow the norm" for ethan's birthday this year in the way of gifts. we may not do that every year, but it certainly was the right decision this year!



sweet 6 year old natalie was so cute about the non-gift idea... she gets so excited about picking out just the right gift that her friends will love, so when her mom told her that they weren't bringing a gift to ethan's party, she said, "no gifts? really?! REALLY!? well, i'll just draw him a picture!" so she brought ethan the cutest little picture of a person in the shape of a letter "B" getting a lot of presents from his friends on his birthday ("b" for birthday, she told me!). :)

ethan loves his nana, pappy, and gram! thanks for celebrating with us! notice the trophy that gram conjured up for the party. :) so cute!



oh! i almost forgot about the tire-toss game! this ended up being really hilarious. i had it in my head that a fun game would be for the kids to toss balls into an old tire. well, i didn't take time to hunt down an old tire, but at the last minute, i happened to find a "tire" inflatable innertube at walmart. so brian hung it from the ceiling with fishing line, and we were ready to play! well, the kids got to the party, and everybody started hanging on it as if it were a tire swing. it was just irresistible! a few minutes later, we looked over, and the tire was almost completely deflated! the fishing line had sliced the float open! a big 3 inch gash! so we just taped it up and blew it up again. by the time we got around to throwing the balls through it, it looked pathetic! the kids still had a great time attempting to hit the hole, but it was a bit floppy. :) i couldn't stop laughing at it.



so another year has gone by, another party is over. ethan has grown up so much in this last year. as i've been writing this post, i've looked back at his 2nd birthday party pictures at least a dozen times. and though he seems like such a big boy now, we will probably look back at these pictures of the kids racing cars 10 years from now and just gush about how they were just babies! i do praise God for every day of his life. it's so easy to take it all for granted. every day truly is a gift. thank You, God, for the gift of ethan!

happy 3rd birthday, ethan!

my baby boy is three years old today. this morning, we started off breakfast with a special birthday brownie (your birthday's only once a year, right!?), and he got to put on his "birthday boy" shirt from nana. you can see ethan in his shirt talking on the phone to nana this morning. he was "so exciting" that today was finally his birthday! he cannot wait for his racecar party tonite!! i have several things to do to get ready for his party, so his "i can't believe my baby is 3" post will have to wait until later.

for now, happy birthday, sweet baby ethan. God has blessed us with a wonderful three years with you!

say it like it is, son

last night after dinner, we showed the kids the video of my sonogram, and ethan was more than thrilled to see the baby's heartbeep... again and again and again! i think he actually understood that the chicken nugget-shaped black mass on the screen was the baby in my tummy! i wanted to show him how it would end up looking more like an actual baby as it grew, so i whipped out caroline's 20 week sonogram video. we hadn't watched it since the day we brought that video home 2 years ago--how neat to watch it with that little baby sitting on the couch with us exclaiming, "baby! baby!" ethan loved telling her, "that's YOU, caroline! that's YOU!"

anyway, after we watched her heartbeep several times, i reminded ethan that this baby would get bigger and bigger and that mommy would also get bigger and bigger. as i put my arms out to show him how big i would get, he replied so matter-of-factly....

yes. fat.

baby's first picture!

i just got home from my first dr's appointment this time around...and everything looks great! there is one baby, carrie. just one! we could see little arms moving and a strong heart beating (174 bpm... and caroline's was 171... hmm, another girl?). i even learned that the egg came from my left ovary! did you know that the ovary that produces the (ultimately) fertilized egg has a small cyst on it for the first three months that produces progesterone... which is the cause of first trimester nausea?

well, i am pretty ready for that cyst to just disappear!!! i have not been very sick, but if i do not put food in my mouth every 30 minutes, i am out of commission for awhile. it took me a few weeks to figure out that eating that often would help, so i have not been the most fun summer mommy since the beginning of june! i'm thankful to have finally discovered what my body needs to stay happy, so i just eat a little bit all day long, and i can make it! the kids have already grown accustomed to hearing "it's for the baby!". so far, that has worked!

ethan was "so exciting" about my doctor's appointment this morning. my mom stayed here with the kids while brian went with me, and she said that when ethan woke up, he exclaimed, "mommy is going to bring me a picture of the baby!" then later this morning, she said that he was walking around singing, "baby number 3! baby number 3!" that cracks me up because i haven't really used that term very much around him, but we all know that kids hear everything.... then my mom asked him who baby #1 was, and he gave her the most puzzled look! she tried to explain that HE was baby #1, but i'm not sure that really stuck. :) thanks for trying, mom!!

we already can't wait for january to get here. :) caroline is totally in love with babies, and ethan is convinced it will be a boy and he will name him "goggles". never fear, we do not give our children everything they want!!!

they go way back

i guess you could say that ethan & steven's friendship began during water aerobics while kristi & i were pregnant! twice a week, we'd feel weightless (or at least less weighted!), and i guess the boys enjoyed the extra buoyancy?! who knows! but those boys had no choice but to be friends. :) for the first year of their life, they played together (with lydia too!) several times each week, and kristi and i talked about how we were so excited for our kids to grow up right down the street from each other. well, down the street changed to several states away when they moved in 2006, but we have been blessed to be able to get together with them several times since then. ethan talks about his sweet friends often, and as soon as he finds out that a trip is planned to see them, it is ALL i hear about until we leave! ethan loves every minute that he spends with lydia & steven!

and this time was no different... we arrived at the beach house around midnight, and lydia & steven had just given up on waiting up for us. we snuck into their room so that ethan could wake them up, and the three of them got so giddy seeing each other!


here are the boys bright and early the next morning... they were already laughing and playing before 7:15 in the morning... hey, at least they like each other, right!? :)




the kids got a big kick out of the jello guessing game we made up! they covered their eyes and guessed what flavor of jello was put in their mouth... oh, the little thrills of life!

ethan & steven are showing their muscles. :)
this will be a great one to show in 15 years!

"who wants ice cream!?"

sweet, sweet, friends. we love you, lydia & steven!

caroline & meredith are also on their way to never forgetting each other. :) they even packed matching pants for our beach trip without planning it! i didn't get very many pictures of the two of them because they were always walking off in different directions, in someone else's shoes, dragging a random bag or blanket around...only to swap 30 seconds later. (they are so in that bag lady stage!)


how cute are these girls devouring ice cream sandwiches?! of course, we'd just given them baths a few hours earlier, and now melted ice cream had dripped into every little place possible! oh, but that's what vacation is for!

my kids loved being with their friends, and i sure did enjoy being with mine. as usual, we stayed up too late and didn't get to talk nearly enough, but the fellowship was sweet. (it was an extra special blessing having my wonderful sister-in-law there, too! kristie's heart spills over with encouragement, and it was just what kristi needed that week.) kristi and i talk several times a week (sometimes several times a day!), so in a way, it doesn't feel like almost a year since our last visit. i love that. i do miss her smiling face & the fun of feeling her baby kick, but what a blessing it is to know that my friend will be ever so close to my heart even if our visits get fewer and farther between.

we have walked a long road together this past year... and so even more than the talking face to face, my favorite part about this visit was the wonderful reality that i could hug my friend, belly and all, whenever she needed one. you can't do that on the phone, and sometimes, i just don't know when to stop talking. and that's where a hug is so great. so we shared lots of hugs, me, kristi, and shepherd, and we laughed when i plowed straight into her belly for a hug because i momentarily forgot she was pregnant. :) praise the Lord for this much-needed time with my friend!