Happy 5th Birthday, CJ! (updated)

My grandson turned 5 today! Finally. At least in his eyes...he's been waiting for this birthday for a long, long time and counting down the days. I woke him up this morning, by singing Happy Birthday to him. He opened his eyes and said, "Is it REALLY my birthday?" Like it was too good to be true. And then he said to his dog, "Finn, can you believe it's my birthday?"

Unfortunately, his mother can't be with him today, because she's in Texas, doing some training for the Air Force Reserves. But she sent him a couple of presents. CJ really likes the "PS man" because he brings him stuff all the time! Anyway, we let him open one of them the day they came...he just couldn't STAND to wait to open both of them. It was a video game for his V-motion. He's waiting for Mama to call him right now, so she can watch him open the other one via webcam. Ahhh...the wonders of modern technology!

This afternoon, we have a party planned with his cousins at "Space Aliens." That should be fun...I'll have to post more pics later.

(update 10 days later)

Well, I'm finally getting around to adding the pictures from his actual birthday party. Unfortunately, in my rush to get to the party, I forgot to grab my SD card, so I was only able to take as many pictures as my camera's internal memory could hold.

It was the first time I'd been to Space Aliens, and it was not a bad deal. For $75, you get a party package for up to 6 kids. They have a party room, aptly called "Area 51" where they set up the party. Each child gets their own indivdual pizza, a small drink, a prize bag including 25 tokens for the game room, and ice cream. It's $10 extra for each additional child. I just wish I'd included Molly and her friend Liz as extra kids...I spent a lot more than $10 on each of them.

Tiegen, Elizabeth, Katie, Christian, Molly and Liz

Katie, Christian and Molly

Time to open presents!

First, was a GI Joe ninja sword and mask from Shelby and Tanner

Christian was thrilled with it--that's Shelby watching him open it.

Here's what he got from Tiegen & Grayson...Shelby looks like she's thinking, "Oh brother!"

Coincidentally, he got another K'nex semi truck from Katie and Liz! GMTA!

I think Katie decided to bump a balloon up in the air, just as I snapped this one.

Ray and I got him this walkie-talkie set with a base station.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and made Christian's 5th birthday a very special one!

Look (Grand)MA, No Training Wheels!

About a week and a half ago, my grandson Christian, who will be five years old in October, learned to ride his bike without training wheels. Here he is on his tiny 12" bicycle.

After a few days, with the seat up as high as it goes, he and his mom decided he was ready for a bigger bike.

Jessica is in the Air Force Reserves, and will likely be going to TX for training for 10 weeks, starting October 1st. If she does, she will miss Christian's birthday again. While she was in the AF, her 5 month tour of duty in Iraq just happened to be over his FIRST birthday...and though she did get to spend his 2nd with him, she was once again sent to do some training (I don't remember where) over his 3rd birthday. We celebrated early at a water park, before we took him home with us for 6 weeks that year. Okay, so she was able to spend his 4th birthday with him last year, but now, since it appears they will again be apart for his birthday, Jess decided to get him an early birthday present. Besides, he will get a lot more use out of it for the next couple of months than he will the months following...here during our Minnesota winter anyway.

She ordered a brand new bike online, and it arrived yesterday evening...

with "some assembly required"

Jess was able to get it all put together, before Grandpa Ray got home. She had him check it over, just in case she hadn't tightened things up enough. After inspection by Grandpa...and a bit of initial hesitation on CJ's part, he got brave enough to try out his new big bike (all 16" of it). Yay, CJ!

Festivities For A FIRST & A FIFTIETH!

Last Friday night, my friends and I were once again "partying" at church. We had a couple of good reasons to celebrate, this time though: This is my friend Jody, with her littlest "joy", Miss K. who turned ONE year old that day.

This is her Barbie cake, made by our friend, Lisa! Didn't she do a great job? She made a small cake for little Miss K. to dig into too.

We also had another friend, Miss Pam, who shares the same birthday...she just happened to be celebrating her "Big 5-0" that day.

This is the cake that I decorated for her. Being of the "over 50" crowd myself, I prefer not to be all morbid about it, and chose the much more upbeat "It's Beautiful Over the Hill" theme.

I thought it was interesting that we both put little pink flowers with yellow dots on the cakes, as if we'd planned it that way. We hadn't.

Some of the guests, waiting for the Pam to arrive...to yell, "SURPRISE!"

Meanwhile, the other guest of honor decided a little nap was in order.

Here she is digging in to her own little birthday cake.

"Mommy, is this REALLY okay?"

Singing "Happy Birthday to You"

The two "birthday girls"

Birthdays can be MESSY!

...But it's always fun to get PRESENTS!

It's My Birthday and I'll Blog if I Want to!

So far, I'm having a pretty pleasant day. The weather is very cool today, for the end of June in Minnesota. I'm not complaining though, because as much as I LOVE summer, I can live without the sweltering heat and humidity we've been having the last couple of weeks. Having just turned 51, (I guess I have to update my profile), I've begun having frequent hot flashes the past few months. They're much worse when the weather is hot too.

Anyway, today is not only MY birthday, but also my cousin Bonnie's and my youngest sister Kathy's. Bonnie and I were born on the same day, 51 years ago. Here is a picture of the two of us when they were visiting Minnesota last September:

My sister, Kathy was born on our 11th birthday. Although you wouldn't know it by looking at her, she's celebrating "the big 4-0" today. We had a party for her on Saturday. She kinda figured her husband "Fuzz" was bringing her to her surprise party, but thought that was going to happen somewhere else after they went to have dinner and drop off her boys at our parents' home. I guess we fooled her... the party was right there at their house. Here she is in her white-tiger- print- birthday-cowboy hat that our sister Laurie got for her:

I'm hoping to go see "My Sister's Keeper" and maybe have dinner with my hubby tonight, and then possibly meet up with Kathy for a birthday drink somewhere. I'll let you know how all that goes. Happy Birthday, Bonnie and Kathy!!

Two Family Birthdays This Week!

My step-daughter, Sarah turned 28 on Tuesday of this week. It's hard to imagine that I've known her now for 10 years! I watched her graduate from H. S., and then she was off to college...earning her L.P.N. and finally her R.N. She married Brad a little over 4 years ago, and they live in northern Minnesota. They are enjoying their life together with their dog Buster, and waiting on God's timing to be blessed with children. Happy Birthday, Sarah!

The other one with a birthday this week, is my son Joel. He turned 26 yesterday. I was due to give birth to him on May 19th...but he was evidently not too eager to come into this world, and hung around for an extra 29 days! He was not my biggest baby...but he was close. He weighed in at 9 lbs .5 oz and was 22" long. He is now somewhere around 6'4" and probably weighs close to 200 lbs. He is living and working in a town just about 30 miles to the west of us. He's still single, but maybe one of these days he'll meet the right woman...and start working on a family too. Hey...I can dream, can't I?

This is Joel on his 4th birthday, with his new Big Wheel. Do you think just maybe he looks a little bit like his nephew, CJ in this picture?

This is what he looks like in a more recent photograph. Happy 26th Birthday Joel!

Depending on what time of the year it is, we either have 2 girls the same age and 2 boys the same age...or we have 4 of them in row. Now that these two have had their birthdays for the year, our childrens ages are 30, 28, 27, 26, 25, 21...and 12.

Wordless Wednesday #23 ~ Cool as a Cucumber!

Happy Birthday Dan~A Quarter of a Century Old!

My step-son, Daniel turns 25 years old today. Here he is with his wife, TerriAnna and their son, Hayden. They live in Portland, OR. Dan does construction out there. Like father, like son.

When my kids and I met Ray and his kids, (almost 10 years ago), my son Joel told me I had to get together with this guy because then he'd have a really cool step-brother. That first Summer the two boys were pretty much inseparable. They'd answer the questions in unison, and everything they did became a competition. EVERYTHING. We used to refer to them as "the twins". Joel is 7 months older than Dan, so at the moment, we have two 25 year old sons. How about that, their ages together add up to mine.

Dan came to visit us this Fall, with his son Hayden. He and his dad had the opportunity to work together again, for a couple of weeks. Ray was thrilled to be able to spend time with his son for a little while, and I think Dan enjoyed spending some quality time with Dad too. Can you tell they're related by the above picture? Like I said, "Like father, like son". The funny thing was, they accidentally wore very similar shirts that day.

Have a great 25th birthday, Dan!

A GREAT, GREAT Birthday!

Yesterday, we got together at my parents' house to celebrate my mother's 77th birthday. As you can see by the cake I made for her, she is now a great-great-grandmother. It was probably not the "greatest" cake I've ever done, since I very hurriedly decorated it that morning, but it turned out okay I guess. The inscription on the left says, "lucky 7's" in case you can't read it. As a birthday gift, my mother had requested a "work day", meaning all of us would come out and work on the list of things that she wanted to get done around the house. That's what we did.The above picture is their lowest-level family room, that my husband Ray had covered in poly, so that he could re-spray the ceiling that had some water damage from a broken pipe some time ago. He also did some plumbing and who-knows-what-else around the house. He's pretty handy at such things. My sister Kathy did some work on the downstairs bathroom that she's been redecorating for them for awhile now. My brother Bob was filling in grout in the kitchen tile etc. She had my brother Dan fix the doorbell that wasn't working, while everyone else was busy cleaning and doing all sorts of odd jobs around the house. I'm thinking that my "job" was the easiest of all. I took all the kids, (which consisted of my daughter, Molly who is almost 12 and five kids between the ages of 3 and 5), and put together a gingerbread house with them.
I was thinking that it wasn't really "work" at all to me. I was pretty much in my element, hanging out with little kids, and decorating something with an icing bag. The only problem was, that with all of those little "helping hands" adding candy decorations all at the same time, the frosting glue that was holding our little gingerbread house was loosened up, and the whole thing eventually collapsed. Oh well, we had fun doing it anyway, and the most important part of my job had been to keep the kids out of everyone else's hair while they did THEIR jobs. I suppose I succeeded at that.

They did manage to each decorate a gingerbread snowman while we were waiting for the house to dry. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the decorated house before it collapsed.

My dad had another great idea to keep the kiddos entertained. He is a "retired" heavy equipment operator and still owns a lot of excavating equipment...and still likes to play with it.

He had pushed a pile of snow together, while plowing the driveway, and decided to make it into a great sliding hill for the little ones. It worked wonderfully, and the kids all had a BLAST on it.

This is Molly, giving Christian a push down the hill.

He would laugh his little head off, all the way down the hill and for a few minutes after he'd reached the bottom. I was having fun just watching the kids.

When the work was over, we still had to celebrate Mom's birthday too, of course. The really cool thing was, that my niece, Missy was able to come out, along with her daughter Kasey, her son Kurt and Kurt's daughter, Mya.

Kurt and his little "dolly", Mya are pictured above.

Does Missy, the gal in the baseball cap with her daughter Kasey on her lap, look like a grandma to you???

Would you believe my sister Laurie is a great-grandma???

Or, does the lady trying out her new bike that her kids got her for Christmas here, appear to be a great-great-grandmother to you??

Here they all are, 5 generations of the Felix family:

(l to r), Great-Grandma Laurie, Great-Great-Grandpa and Grandma Felix, Grandma Missy and Daddy Kurt. And of course, Mya, (their "great"est grandchild), is on my mom's lap.

It really was a GREAT day, wouldn't you say?

Happy 6th Birthday, ALEX!!!

I can't believe my firstborn's firstborn is 6 years old today! Alexander James (AJ) lives in Arizona, so we haven't seen him in quite some time. And now, a personal message for my grandson:

Alex, I hope you have a super 6th birthday, and that you enjoy the Christmas and birthday presents that Grandpa Ray and Grandma J sent you! Maybe Daddy or Mom will let you call Grandma one of these days so we can chat again. We're sending you lots of ((((HUGS)))) and kisses *****! WE LOVE YOU and MISS YOU very much.

Maybe his Dad will bring Alex to Minnesota for a visit in March, when Jeremy turns the big 3-0!!! Boy does THAT make me feel OLD!

Wordless Wednesday # 15 ~ The "Hunting Party"

Happy Belated 4th Birthday, Christian!

Saturday was my grandson Christian's 4th birthday. I can't believe he's such a big boy already! Here he is sitting on his mom's lap. I made him a birthday cake, but since I wasn't able to make the 600 mile trip to see him this year, I sent it out there with Jessica's dad, who was going out there for CJ's birthday weekend. He ordered a SpongeBob Squarepants cake. This is what it looked like when I had finished decorating it: However, I couldn't get the dome to fit on it with the figurines on it, so I took them back off and sent them along with the cake. When it was reassembled, the characters had switched positions, but other than that, it looks like the cake made its way there in one piece. Here's Christian (CJ) with his birthday cake:

Here he is checking out his birthday presents us. He specifically asked for "lots of robots" so I found this transformer type robot that can either be one big or 5 smaller robots. I also sent him the new "Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" DVD which he seemed to enjoy in the theater on his 3rd birthday.

Here he is with his "lots of robots":

I wish we could have spent this birthday with him, but I was glad his mother got to spend this one with him. She is in the USAF, and was serving in Iraq over CJ's first birthday. He was with us for 5 months while she was there. I believe she did get to spend his 2nd birthday with him, but last year, she was sent to Mississippi for some training over his 3rd birthday, so we met half way and spent a weekend in a hotel with a waterpark where we had an early birthday celebration for him, so his mom could at least be a part of that. I hope she doesn't have to miss any more of his birthays, since she has decided to re-enlist for another 4 years. Happy Birthday Christian! Have fun being FOUR!!!!