Saturday 24 January 2009

Mattias's 9th Birthday

Mattias's birthday began with mom cancelling school, except for the Friday spelling test. Then we invited a friend over, Kerstan. The boys played Wii sports, and we all went swimming. Kerstan brought over some brownies to share. If you stack 9 matches together in the center of a pan of brownies, you get an enourmous flame!



Mattias did decorate his own cake, which we had later that night as a family. He decorated it to look like a NXT lego brick. (This means something if you are into robotics.) He had all the buttons, and the screen decorated onto it.


Here is one of the many robots Mattias has made. He attached a set of gears to it, built some blades at the end, and programmed it to spin. He used it to whip up some scrambled eggs for Sylvia.

Because I grew up in a family of 9, where every birthday, every year, we would play "drop the clothespin in the jar" for a party game, it now seems like you can't really have a birthday without some version of that game. So, here we are, since I do not stockpile clothespins like my pioneer mom, playing the game with some bean bags and plastic buckets.




Sylvia found a plastic cone in the beanbag game, and thought it looked like a "party hat". She wore it for the rest of the night. She couldn't move here head at all, so she kept shifting her eyes around like a criminal. :)



Here is our shifty eyed Sylvia, next to Mattias who is opening presents. He is pulling out the contents to a Wilton Cake decorating class. He loves to decorate cakes and took Course One this fall. Now he can go on to even more amazing sugar creations.

We found that piling 9 candles on a cake together does create a flame as impressive as 9 matches on a pan of brownies, in case you had ever wondered. Both are fire hazards. Do not try this at home.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

McMullin Medieval Archers

Sean and Asher have been driving into Madison Wed. nights to hang out with people who dress like this....

They grab swords, pikes and sheilds and practice battle skills inside a large UW stock arena. Do they do this in case some Medeival army descends on Madison to steal the local livestock?

No, it is merely the local chapter of the S.C.A. (A group of medieval- interested people that have very cool events.) Sean and Asher go for the archery practice. They drool over the longbows and wish they lived in Merry Ole' England with not a care but where to get feathers to fletch their arrows with. Here is Asher checking out the competition. I'm sure you'll be seeing more of this sort of thing here.

Ribbons and Curls

Sylvia has begun to ask to have her hair done every morning. This morning we added some curls in her hair, and she was sooooo proud. She says "I so pretty!". But the best part is that then she will grab my face, stare into my eyes and say "You so pretty!" She is right, of course.

Sunday 11 January 2009

"Party over here, Party over there... OOh OOh!"

Noel's 12th birthday get together was a Twisted affair... (hahaha! Love the pun?) Here Espi and Suzannah compete against Asher and Sylvia.

Noel was also part of the action, but it was difficult to keep up with the future yoga gurus, Suzannah and Espi.

We had a photo session, where the most important thing was to get all of Espi's hat into the picture.
The fish cake smiled co-operatively when its turn for glamour shots came around.


Suzannah helped decorate Noel after presents had been opened... she is a cutey birthday package, I'd say, but I may be biased.


Noel's grandparents in Idaho sent Noel some money to buy a winter coat for a present. Here is a picture for them to see how stylish she looks in it. Thanks mom and dad!

Tuesday 6 January 2009

"Tea, anyone?"

We have had several soggy tea parties in our dining room as of late. One evening, at a loss for something to entertain Sylvia while I made dinner, I asked Noel to get down her little tea set from her closet and introduce Sylv to the world of tea parties. It was a hit!

When Noel is not available for tea, Asher is a good substitute. I was doing dishes in the kitchen while he was pouring out tea for Sylvia. I laughed when I heard him ask her, in a very proper voice "And what have you been up to lately?"

Many thanks to our friends in Sweden for the tea they sent us!