The mullet
Is getting trimmed off...
Ta DA!
When Brighton gets home from school it is usually nap time for the girls, so he knows to just play quietly until they wake up. Lately, his favorite thing to do has been to set up scenes from Star Wars in the backyard.
He takes a box of figures and ships outside
And just lets his imagination go...I was truly spoiled by everyone this year for my birthday, but one of my favorite gifts that I got was the Wii Fit from Justin's parents. It is awesome! It makes getting exercise so much fun, and I just think it is so cool to get kids excited about exercising from a young age. Brighton has been my little yoga partner, but this morning all of three of them wanted to get in on the action.
When we woke up Sunday morning, this was what we saw...
Brighton got all of his snow gear on because he wanted to go and help Justin shovel the snow at our church building
Here he is playing with his Hoth characters out in the backyard
Of course, when the girls saw Brighton in his snow gear, they insisted on getting theirs, too
Siena only lasted about 5 minutes in the cold
Warming up with some hot chocolate-- Siena doesn't really drink it, but she loves to dip her toast in it
Brighton and Chelsea LOVE hot chocolate and toast
I'm glad I had gotten all of their winter clothes out last week!
The kids were excited to see their grandparents after church
Have I mentioned how much we love the Treehouse Museum? We're so glad the Barkers have a membership there, too.
My big project yesterday and today has been rotating all of the kids closets-- packing up all of the summer stuff and bringing out the fall and winter clothes. Once again, I'm coming to the realization that my children have way too many clothes.
But Siena seems to be enjoying all of her new cold-weather accessories!
Didn't you just love the Primary Choir during the second session of General Conference? Siena was completely mesmerized, and even sang along to the songs she knew.
It was such a wonderful and uplifting Conference, as usual.
When we asked Brighton what kind of birthday party he wanted, he had a hard time deciding between Batman, Superman and Spiderman, so we just decided to have a Superhero party. We sent each of his friends an official-looking letter that said:
We started the party with some superhero training (an obstacle course) so that the boys could earn their capes and be granted access to the "Bat Cave"
We converted our basement TV room into the Bat Cave, complete with dimmed lights and bats hanging from the ceiling, where they had pizza and watched a short Batman cartoon
After that the superheroes were sent on a secret mission where they had to follow clues to find a "top secret" object. The clues led them to a pinata which was hanging in the garage. They had a lot of fun bashing it with the light sabers
After that it was time for presents,
And cake (he's making a wish)
The boys seemed to enjoy themselves, and I think it was a success!
It's hard to have two birthday parties so close together (Brighton and Chelsea's birthdays are only two weeks apart), but we only do these elaborate kids parties every other year, so I won't have to do another one until he's 7 and Chelsea's 5! We sure had a lot of fun, though. Brighton came up with most of the ideas for the party, and it was fun for us to plan it together.
Here is an interesting side story: I had a bit of a meltdown earlier in the day when I came up from the basement to find that Siena had dug into the cake. Spiderman's arm was missing and part of his face was gone. Justin was disappointed that I didn't get a picture of the mess, but I was too upset to even think to grab my camera! After I put the girls down for naps and sent Brighton to go and quietly play in his room, I attempted to fix it with leftover cake scraps and lots of frosting. Not bad, right?
(don't worry, we didn't feed the fixed-up parts to anyone.)
It has been a busy week of birthdays and party planning, and I'm finally getting around to posting.
Yesterday was Brighton's 5th birthday. He woke up early, excited to open his gifts.
I took Chelsea to the store earlier in the week to pick out a gift for her brother. It was so cute to watch her picking and choosing from the many options to find the perfect gift. She was so excited to give it to him, too. You can see here that he was pretty happy with his present from his sister.
For his birthday breakfast, he requested cinnamon rolls, which he calls "Princess Leia's Delicious Do-s". How's that for a mouthful?
It was my first attempt at made-from-scratch cinnamon rolls, but I have to admit they were pretty good.I can't help but reminisce about the day Brighton was born. He was born the day after my birthday, and I couldn't have gotten a better birthday present than this sweet little boy. I went into labor early Saturday morning during Conference weekend, and he was born in between sessions. I didn't even have to take a break from watching either session! Some of our favorite things about Brighton are:
-He is very helpful. He loves to be my little helper, and will do most anything I ask him to do. When Chelsea was born, he wasn't even two years old, but he was so happy to fetch me diapers and wipes, burp cloths and binkies whenever I needed them. He's still like that, and I rarely have to ask him twice to get me something or do something for me.
-He is such a good big brother. He is very protective of his little sisters and hates to see them hurt or sad. When other kids are mean to them, or when I get mad at them, he always says, "Hey, be nice to my sister!".
-He is really thoughtful and sensitive. He worries about other people and is easily moved by touching moments. When he was not even a year old, there was a Baby Einstein DVD about animals that he loved to watch. There was one scene of a mama giraffe and a baby giraffe who get separated, and that scene would always make him cry! He still cries when watching some movies (like Monster's Inc or Totoro), and then tells me "Don't worry mom, these are happy tears."
We sure love our Brighty.
