Clark's 3rd Birthday Party

Fire truck cake!

We had Clark's 3rd birthday party today. It was incredible. We rented a room at our local Fire Department and invited our friends to come eat yummy foods and a fire truck cake!  The kids played in firetruck costumes, with fire truck toys, in a fire truck popup house, play with a fake burning city,  colored, and got to wear firefighter hats! We even had a tour of the fire station by Fireman Dan!

I don't know why we are laughing, but we are. This non-Greenwell is Mary, and her daughter Josie who is 3 months older than Iris and considers herself Iris' babysitter/keeper/bestfriend/2nd mom.

Little Fire Truck House and friends.

Kids playing "nicely"

Owen playing sweetly by himself. Driving fire truck over to burning city to save the day!

Mr. Precious! (that's John Paul over in the corner. Hasn't he grown?!!)

Lots of friends. Will Clark and his mom, Katie are in the front.

Fireman Dan demonstration

Fire station tour.

Watch how fast he gets dressed!

High Fives for the Fireman!

Happy Family!

Touring the ambulance.

Checking out the Ambulance. That girl in pink is little Bernadette!

Clark drives a firetruck with Iris by his side!

I'm driving the truck!

Happy Birthday time!

Blowing

Blowing

Gone!

We did 3 candles with 1 to grow on. This was an Averill tradition, but not a Greenwell one. It turns out about half of our guests did it too, and half didn't.  If you watch the blowing out the cake photos, Iris is blowing too!

We've been talking about this firetruck birthday party for months, and I'm so glad the day was finally here. It completely fulfilled all of my own dreams for an awesome birthday party and I'm pretty sure Clark and everyone else loved it too! 

I'd like to thank "The Cake Boss" for inspiring our fire truck cake. I'd like to thank Tom for buying and prepping all of our delicious gluten-free food. I'd like to thank all of our friends who came to have fun with us today. Finally, I'd like to thank Clark for making my dreams come true by being my baby (although he would say, "I'm not a baby, I'm a boy!"), and for turning 3 and allowing us to have this awesome party! 

The best .25 cents I ever spent.

The kids love this fire engine that I bought at a yard sale. It was featured in Clark's halloween photos!

Sofa fun!

I washed the slip covers on our sofa today. I was babysitting and both kids enjoyed playing in the sofa sans cushions and also in the cushions. I would hear giggle giggle giggle, thunk, pause, giggle giggle giggle, thunk. the thunk was one of their heads hitting the floor as they rolled off of the cushion pile. It was pretty cute.

Going to the park and the zoo!

We've been going to the park and the zoo lately. Here are some of our top experiences~
Here are the three of us


We pulled out "the monkey shirt" and took Clark to the zoo. His favorite zoo things are: rocks, rails, posts, and fences. He also enjoyed the small mammal house.

This is from a different zoo trip, last week. We saw two elephants pee and one poop! Everyone loved it! The zoo is building a new Elephant zone, its going to be 5x the size of the one the elephants have now. Its almost finished being built and its going to be more fun for them!
The zoo has a farm with farm animals. Here is a pig, we also saw cows, bunnies and Clark and I both touched a goat. I know that many people go to petting zoos, but not me. One of the very first assignments you get in Public Health School is to write a press release for a local petting zoo who has an outbreak of e. Coli. If the animals are different heights and in the same enclosure, you can almost bet that the tall ones are pooping on the small ones. Then your kid touches the little cute animal and gets poopy gross on them. The goat we touched was only with other goats and we washed immediately.
Tiger! I know its fake, but whatev... The zoo has a nice big cat exhibit (I think). You can usually see one or more of the big cats doing something cool. This day we saw one male lion and two female lions. At one point, one girl lion went to sniff the boy lion, and he was unhappy about it and roared at her. It was awesome! Then they fought a little bit and then spread out and lay down again. Clark liked that!


We checked out the free range Orangutans too!

We've also been going to the local parks almost daily. This is Wheaton Regional Park. They have a train, carousel, a green house and outdoor botanical gardens. They also have many different playground equipment stations, appropriate for different levels of development. There's a nice area for little kids like Clark. He is really interested in dogs lately. He found this one, and wanted to play tug-of-war with its stick. I took the picture and made him stop so he didn't get growled at. He liked the dog a lot.
Here's Clark getting ready for football season or boot camp. Tires!


Clark and Bernadette playing on the CrAzY steps!!!!!

Latest fun stuff!

Here are pictures of our Spring so far.
I'm still babysitting Bernadette. Here she is sitting in the garden like a little flower.


We played in the yard for a few hours this afternoon. I got a play kitchen for them, but both found their favorite yard things. Bernadette's is a block that she can step up and down on. Clark's is a solar powered lamp that lights up the back yard at night.

Here we are!
Clark loves to walk around the house carrying a big noisy pot.
Yesterday, we went to a nearby park and Clark had a blast.
He climbed (and slid down) the slide.
He had fun playing with the center of the gears.
He got lots of fun toys for his birthday but (a lot like the fun toy kitchen! / lamp issue in the back yard) he really loves this box and plastic "beer cups" or "solo cups"
He also loves hanging out under the sink.
Last week Josh, Ashley and John Paul came over to play because it was spring break.
"I give you my blessing"
Bernadette was over that day, so we had a big fun play group.
What cuties!
We've been taking lots of video lately, and need to upload that next. We send love to everyone! xxoo.

Happy New Year!

I took a few weeks off from blogging. Of course, last month, I posted a picture every day or so and called THAT blogging. Here is an actual blog update about the family.

So January...

For New Year's Eve, we went across the street to our neighbor's house. We played Garage Band and celebrated the New Year by illegally lighting fireworks off on our street. (The ones we bought on Labor Day). It was much fun.

On January 1st we had planned on having one friend, Matt, over to play Monopoly. Our friend, Lauren, called and she invited us to hang out with her family. Instead we invited them over to our house. Then we texted all of our other friends and invited them over. We ended up with Matt, Lauren, Paul and Bernatte Z, and Katie N. and Will Clark. We hung out, played Monopoly and had happy times.

On January 2nd, I went to the gym and ran 5K. It was awesome. Tom and I are both doing Weightwatchers and are having great success so far. I'm back at my pre-pregnancy weight! Yay!

The next day we all started feeling bad. We all had a cold (caught from little Bernadette mentioned above..) It was annoying and I'm glad its over with. We fought back by eating Pho. Clark had his first taste of Pho and enjoyed it. We fed him noodles and warm broth from the fat asian spoon. He ate it really well, it was his first soup experience. The pictures below are from his first and second Pho times. It was very comPhoting to share it with him.



I started teaching The Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth on January 8th. I have two couples as students. Tom is watching Clark and teaching the segments on Coaching. I am really enjoying it and even more excited to be a part of these women's birth experiences. They seem to be getting a lot out of the classes as well.

We had our 4th anniversary on January 7th and had a date night on January 9th. Clark was babysat by Lauren, Bernadette's mom. Tom and I went to Red Lobster and saw the movie Avatar in 3D. It was nice to have some time to ourselves. We walked in the town square and checked out the dessert shops, finally settling on Ben and Jerry's for a scoop of icecream before heading back to our little boy.

Things returned to normalish in our lives. Tom went to work, I managed the house and prepped for classes, and Clark played with his toys.

He really loves brushes, pens, spoons and paper. To harness some of that energy. I gave him some markers and he colored his first piece of paper.

What am I doing?? Is this fun? Wee heee!!! I LOVE Coloring!!!!

Here is the masterpiece itself. I cut it into 3 pieces. I sent one laminted strip to both grandparents and Tom has one in his office.
On January 15th, John Paul B. had his first birthday! I can't believe the first baby in Clark's Cohort is 1 already! He will be one in a month and a half! If he was born on his due date, it would be a month from now! It's crazy how fast time flies. Here are some photos from the birthday and other hanging out with JPB.

Clark and JP both LOVE walking with the walker. JP has already taken some unassisted first steps, as has Bernadette. Clark usually learns from the older babies, so he might take some any day now (or months... whatev..) Here I am with JP and Clark on JP's Birthday.

Having a cold kind of derailed our early month, nature was also having a cold and was keeping outside temps below freezing. It finally warmed up to 40!!! YAY!!! and maybe hotter at lunchtime. The whole family went for a hike around Lake Needwood a few miles north of our house. We put Clark in the hiking backpack for the first time. It was wonderful to get outside and move around, see nature again, and breathe fresh air. It was the first exercise I got since running that 5K and I was glad to be back.

We've been eating much healthier since Clark started eating solids and we started weight watchers. Here is a delicious meal I made. It was a whole roast chicken that was cooked with Terriaki sauce. The "fries" are baked carrots, cut into strips. The green stuff is lots of different vegetables (onion, turnip, garlic, bell peppers, and kale). It was a delicious dinner and looked beautiful (hence the photo and blog blurb).

Last week at my weightwatchers weigh-in, I had lost a total of 18 lbs since November. It was 10% of my starting weight so I got this keychain that is a 10. When I hit goal weight I get another charm for it, and same for when I become a lifetime member. I've started WW so many times before and this is the first time I got the damn keychain. I'm so proud!


Tom is doing great on it too! He lost about 5% of his starting weight, even with having c-diff. We are really glad we are doing it together and are going to sign up for another 3 months when our program ends next Thursday!

Thats it for January. Maybe I'll post again soon.
Peace out,
V