More Birthday Fun!

Today was our stake conference. We spend two hours chasing Ivy around the back of the cultural hall and tried to catch snippets of the talks. Isabelle and Aidan were content to draw the whole time. Aidan’s turning into a serious little artist. He can literally draw for two hours straight, which he’s been doing for several days now. He loves drawing the Disney alien character, “Stitch” (notice the great detail with the two sets of alien arms below) and dinosaurs with stripes on their backs, heads, and anywhere else!

In the evening we had a birthday dinner and cake for Jason. I decided to try something new, so I made spaghetti carbonara (Rachel Ray’s recipe) with breadsticks and red grapes. I overdid the black pepper on the carbonara, so it had a major kick, but otherwise it turned out great. Jason said it was like eating food from a fancy restaurant. Aw, shucks. Then we watched some Even Stevens episodes (that Shia LaBeouf is super funny…they should put him in comedies…how did he turn into an action movie star?). Then Jason blew out 34 candles, and we gorged on cake and ice cream. Gotta love these birthday traditions. We are gearing up for another crazy, busy school week! (You can click on the photos to view them larger.)

Jason's Birthday Extravaganza!

On August 26th, for Jason's 34th birthday, we went to Disney's Magic Kingdom. In the photo of Jason you can faintly see Cinderella's castle in the background. Jason and the kids had school, so we went as soon as they came home. For 2009 Disney has been doing all kinds of fun birthday stuff, like free admission on your birthday, etc. Since we have season passes, they gave Jason a "birthday fun card" for $79 to use for merchandise in the park. Jason had a ton of fun on his mini shopping spree. He loves Halloween and we don't have many decorations, so he used his money to to stock up on those. He got a stuffed Jack Skelington doll, a hologram placemat, a Mickey Mouse pumpkin soup bowl, a Nightmare Before Christmas figurine set, some cool colored glass light boxes with Mickey on them (you put candles inside), a bobble-head of one of the Haunted Mansion ghosts, and a Jack Skelington top hat. He was nice and used some of his own birthday money to buy Isabelle a Tinkerbelle necklace and Aidan a Stitch stuffed animal. We went on Small World, Pirates of the Carribbean, and Haunted Mansion (well, Jason took Isabelle on that while I took Aidan and Ivy on the carousel. Then we all watched the fireworks, which were amazing! They were just starting to decorate the park for Halloween. They had brown and orange banners everywhere and lots of pumpkins up already. We're excited to come when it's time to trick or treat Disney style. It wasn't as hot this time either, and that made things much more enjoyable. It was lightly raining the whole time, and we all decided we much prefered that over the blazing sunshine. Jason said it was "quite possibly his best birthday ever." All of our kids konked out on the drive home...except for Ivy. She was glued to the portable DVD player watching Baby Einstein. It's how we survive any car ride that lasts for more than 10 minutes!