Happy birthday!

Happy 8th birthday to my funny, sweet, smart little Benny!

This little piggy turned 2

Guess who had a birthday?
Nope.
No.
Uh-uh.
Okay stop guessing, I'll just tell you:

It was Addie!

Trying very carefully to get messy.

Addie's favorite phrases lately:

Oh me gosh! (I know, I already said that one.)

MINE!

Addie's turn.

Guess what?

Look a me! (look at me)

I have a snack?

I watch a show. (favorite shows being: Yo Gabba Gabba, Blues Clues and Kipper the Dog)

Be ca-ful! (when SHE's doing something dangerous)

I want Sini.

I luff you.

I did it!

Thank you mama, you welcome. (says all 5 words)

Most of these sayings are yelled. It's her favorite way to talk. (I HAVE A SNACK?)

Darn, I wanted to show a video of her but it's not uploading. I've been trying for 2 days.

Does this girl look 32?

Don't answer that! It's just strange. Really strange. But it's true.
Post script: does anyone else have to do math to figure out how old you are these days? I can never remember.

Elli's birthday

Elli turned 8 on Saturday. 8! I can't believe she's old enough to be baptized. She had a little movie party with all her friends. She was so excited to watch the movie Bolt with them.

A few days before, she drew her cake design. Here's how it turned out:

On the left is Elli's cousin Kadee. Do they look alike?

Here was Addie during the movie. She looked so uncomfortable stretched out like that but she wouldn't move any other way.

My sister

clockwise from top left: Lisa, Michelle, Ari, Eric, Mom, Sinika, and Lindsey

Blurry, yes. But also very cute.

My sister Sinika is one of my most favorite people in the world. We grew up wearing our jelly shoes, playing with our My Little Ponies (Moon Dancer and Apple Jacks) and with our Cabbage Patch Dolls. On the news one year certain dolls we had were suspected of having asbestos in them. (I had the boy doll that time. :)) They were placed in a box high up in the garage so we couldn't get them while it was researched by the toy company. We would go out in the garage and cry because we wanted them down. It turned out ours weren't affected so we got them back. (I still have that little guy. I don't know why. It's really not a very cute doll. None of my 3 kids have ever pulled it out of the mass of toys in our house to play with it. Maybe I should sell it on ebay.)

We were forced to share EVERYTHING. Rooms, toys, clothes. And when we weren't forced, we did anyway. Everyone thought we were twins when we were little even though I am a year and a half older. Nobody could keep our names straight so we just learned to answer to the other's name as well as our own. We had our childhood spats but by the time we were in high school, we treated each other as friends. You know how you were a lot nicer to your friends than your family growing up? That's how we started treating each other. Super nicely. (Most of the time anyway.) She has been my best friend for 30 years now. She has been and is always there for me when I need her.

We always said that we wanted to live next door to each other when we grew up. We're not exactly that close but our houses are only about 5 minutes away from each other. And I LOVE it. I know we probably won't live this close forever so I'm soaking it in as much as I can right now.

Sinika is BEAUTIFUL, loving, accepting, helpful, friendly, pure, spiritual, sweet, fashionable, uplifting, and always generous. I love how much she loves her kids. And I love that she loves mine too. :)

Today is her birthday.

Sini and our mom

Happy birthday Sini! I love you!

He still looks 5, but he really is 6

A few weeks ago we had a birthday party for Ben. We had a couple of boys over. Not loud at all. Mine wasn't the loudest of them either. Okay, he was. The very loudest of them all. Now I'm all for boys to have fun at a birthday party and be loud and crazy, but it is nice to have a small moment of quietness to gather your wits about you and be ready for the next wave of loudness. I found out how to do that. We played "Ben 10 hide and seek". What's that you say? Well, it's VERY different than regular hide and seek because you pretend to be a Ben 10 alien while you are hiding and seeking. The rest is the same as regular hide and seek.

Let me tell you though, it was very nice to have everyone be so quiet while they were waiting to be found, even if it was only for a minute or two. I was able to breathe a little, which is not possible when they are all noisy. I could look around and see what needed to be cleaned up and get the next thing ready. Then I was ready for some more noisiness. (That is the correct spelling of noisiness even if it doesn't look like it is. I looked it up.)

I'm just saying, next time you have lots of kids over at your house and you just need some quiet time for your ears: hide and seek is your answer. Your welcome.


Ben had a lot of fun though and he had his most favorite friends in the whole world there so he was in heaven.

No, Ben isn't praying in this picture. He just blew out his candles. I just had to use this one because he was making a face in this one:

Little Ollie hiding. I thought it was a very clever hiding spot but he was found right away. Maybe it was because someone was taking a picture of him. We'll never know.

Happy 6th birthday to my little Benny Boy!

Most people stop all their celebrations after Christmas. Not us. We just keep on celebratin'. Brian's mom's birthday is 2 days after Christmas and Ben's is 3 days after that. This year we all went to Boondocks on the 27th for a family party with Brian's fam. It was so fun! I didn't think that we were going to stay for 4 hours but that's what we ended up doing. Even Addie was completely happy walking around looking at everything. On Ben's real birthday we usually keep it kind of low-key and have a friend party a few weeks later.

A little look-back on Ben's 6 years of life:
I hate not having a scanner so these are of course pictures of pictures which = blurry.
Ben was the BIGGEST baby I had ever seen. He was born at 7 lbs 2 oz so he was very average/small. But he sure grew fast.
1 year old

2 years old

3 year's old

6 years. Whoa, I cannot believe he is 6! That is old age.

Here are the two birthday kids, Mary Ann and Ben at Boondocks.

For his birthday, he opened presents first thing in the morning and then went and hung out at my sister Sinika's house. Later on I was asking him what he wanted me to make for his birthday dinner and he said, "Something with garlic bread... Pizza". Well, I couldn't argue with having that for dinner all I have to do to make that is press 7 numbers into the phone. I asked him if he wanted me to make a cake or cupcakes and he said, "Nah, I don't want any of those."

"Do you want an ice cream cake or a pie?"

"No."
"Well, you have to have something. Ice cream sandwiches?"

"Yeah, okay."

Every time we started singing Happy Birthday to him he would say, "Stop! You can't sing that until it's time to eat the ice cream sandwiches!"

Luckily we had super skinny candles that fit right into the ice cream sandwich holes.

Here he is, the big 6 year old. Sometimes when I start to feel bad that his birthday is so close to Christmas I just realize that his birthday is more spread out. No one else in the family gets 3 days (or more) of celebrations for their birthdays.

Ben makes me laugh every day of my life, he is so funny and silly. The other day I asked him if he wanted to come out and play in the snow while I shoveled and he said, "No." and a few seconds later, "Aww, who am I kiddin'." and he went to put on his boots and coat and came out with me.

He LOVES robots and wants to be a roboticist when he grows up. He is so snuggly and fun. Happy birthday cute boy!

Addie's party

We had a little family party for Addie's birthday last night. I ended up not doing the bee theme like I had thought. The cake and the balloons were polka dotted so I guess there was sort of a polka dot theme.

Yummy! Pizza crust!

Time for presents and cake!!

I love those two little teeth!

Everyone had to test out the toys.

Amazed at the dog that really barks and wimpers.

This was from my family who just returned to Finland. I know some of them look at my blog so I wanted to give them all a little thank you. Kiitos, Marketta, Kalevi, Eero, Ilmi, Seppo, Maarit, ja Essi!

Awww hugs!

What a fun celebration for a little sweetheart!