Charlotte's Birthday (I Made a Ginormous 3 Cake and Threw Sprinkles)

Okay so Charlotte turned 3 last Friday, of course, and my sister was here, of course, so we were surrounded by a many cousins, of course. And it was chaotic and joyful and somewhere in the middle of it all, Ashley and I managed to turn two big ol' bundt cakes into a giant number 3.

(I figured this was my year to do it, since bundt cakes are made for curvy numbers like 3, and I won't have a 3-year-old again. But then Ashley pointed out I could save the idea and use it someday for an 8, and then Mark pointed out that "someday" would be next year and NO, NO, NO SIR YOU HUSH YOUR MOUTH.)

Anyway. Charlotte turned 3. We made cake. She and Liam helped.

We baked two bundt cakes and then Ashley and I cut chunks off until we could kinda stick them together to make a big 3 (you can see this also involved... adding some wedges back in. I'm super professional over here). Then we frosted the whole thing and threw sprinkles on it.

No, literally. I threw the sprinkles. If someone has a better way to get sprinkles on the side of a cake besides just kinda... tossing them? and hoping they stick? PLEASE TO INFORM ME. (In related news, there are still a lot of sprinkles all over my deck table. Which is better than the kitchen floor. But... there are many.)

Meanwhile, Charlotte spent most of the day trying to learn to hold up three fingers to say she's three. (She just learned to do two, and now she has to change? Life is tough, yo.) Anneliese helped her a lot.

But she still isn't quiiiiiiite getting it.

Almost, okay yeah now put that one down... okay that one up... wait now maybe with less anxiety in the eyes... okay yeah you know what, good enough. Three!

At some point during the day, Marky went to the grocery store to get some balloons, and he took the birthday girl with him, and apparently one of them decided she needed A GIANT OLAF BIGGER THAN SHE IS. So, we own this now:

I have no words for that thing. Secretly it scares me a little. She adores it, of course. IT IS BIGGER THAN SHE IS. Okay just needed to say that again. I'm done now.

that is a *lot* of cousins for a birthday lunch!

Anyway so then we opened presents, including a new purple cape (soo-poo) which she put on and has barely taken off since that moment, and had costco pizza and cake (the Goettsch Birthday Special™) and after a scramble for candles where we came very close to putting one candle on her cake and letting her blow it out three times (how do we not have candles? it was just Nathan's birthday!), we scraped three together and sang to her and all was merry and bright.

And then we ate cake for days and days, because hello, two giant bundts. Good thing it was actually delicious this time.

Happy birthday, Booler!

Dinosaur Pool Party

Nathan and I are headed to Montreat for a week for a youth conference, and Montreat (from what I can tell after two short afternoon visits last summer and last week) is where the internet goes to die. So who knows when this will be actually posted complete with pictures.

But. Nonetheless. We had a dinosaur pool party!

Yep, that is what Nathan asked for. Mark and I didn't know what it meant either. But it turned out very okay!

Inflatable dinosaurs! In a pool! What is a dinosaur pool party if not EXACTLY THIS?!

We cut slices of pizza into dino shapes with cookie cutters. Note: this is not for the faint of heart. Pizza-cookie-cutting is approximately one million times trickier than you are picturing it in your mind. I know, because I pictured it that way too. Um, nope.

I made adorable (if I can say so) (yep, I can) favor bags from foam masks. I loved them. They were maybe my favorite thing all day. Besides Nathan. Of course. My sweet big boy six-year-old. Okay whatever LOOK AT MY DINO BAGS THEY ARE SUPER.

Charlotte adopted and rode a new pet. You know, like you do.

We set up the table outside with paper and dino stencils and things to color.

We made a dinosaur cake complete with rocks and dirt, obtained in the form of toppings from a pay-by-the-ounce frozen yogurt place where Mark went and bought... just toppings. Parenting makes you do weird things, yo.

This is a portrait I like to call "Birthday Happy Frantic with Daddy and Paralophosaurus" (heck yes I know dinosaur names) (no I just flat-out lied, I had to ask Nathan before typing that) (and then google for spelling) (I am a sham of a dino-lover mother, is what I'm saying).

And then we opened presents and played. Oh and yes those are indeed dinosaur bones in that bowl. Thank goodness for Pinterest or I would have just thought they were yogurt pretzels. NOPE! Dinosaur bones.

Happy dino pool birthday, dear Nathansaurus.

Happy (Lego) Birthday, Nathan

Happy birthday, sweet Nathan!  FIVE YEARS OLD! 

(That deal we made about staying five forever? He's telling everyone about it. He's on board. So get used to us saying FIVE YEARS OLD! ok?)

We had a very sweet day with Nathan to celebrate. A coffee date, one-on-one reading time, a lunch outing, and a little lego party!

Yep, he has been counting down the days til he can play with the "big kid" legos (the ones that say 5+ on the box), which we have been resisting because of that one little baby we have around who puts everything in her mouth. But we held him off for long enough, and finally agreed to the "real" legos as long as they're put away in their own box which needs to stay in his room. (We'll see how that goes.)

So for his birthday he wanted to play legos and swim with his friends. Um, done. Hi there easy. We told him he could invite five friends over. And they were all actually available! Yay! So then I pinned All the Lego Things and we celebrated!

We made lego favor bags...

... and lego ice...

... and a lego cake...

... and then all the kiddies played with legos in hundred degree heat! Ahhh, july birthdays.

And ahhhh, swimming in the heat of July birthdays.

Related: five year olds in other families are brave! These kids were jumping in the deep end and swimming around like future olympians. Nathan and Anneliese mostly marked their territory over by the steps in the shallow end. (Just kidding, they didn't mark their territory. No peeing in the pool! I digress.)

And then there was also the part of the party where I was standing in the kitchen with melting colored lego ice dripping from my hands, pool water dripping on the floor, towel hanging half off me, when the governor** walked into my kitchen. So, yeah. That happened. Sometimes I wish I were classier. {{sigh}}

When the party aftermath had died down, Nathan finally got to do what he has been craving for months. Read instructions (this child is all! about! the instructions!) and build legos like it looks on the box mommy! He's basically living the dream here.

And then, with daddy on night shift, he got to sleep in mommy's bed (I was not complaining for extra birthday boy snuggles). He looks exactly like he did the day he was born. You know it's true.

Happy birthday, baby boy. FIVE YEARS OLD! We love you, Nathan booler.

*Truth: Another Nathan mostly did the bags. He's more... exacting than I am. (I mostly subscribe to the theology of good enough. It usually serves me well, but notsomuch in crafting.)

** Yes, we knew she was coming, to pick up her granddaughter who is one of Nathan's friends from school. Remember this?

More Things to be Happy About

So, things have been better in these parts.  For those of you who have been asking. (And thank you.) I mean, not perfect, but better.

One of the things I'm supposed to be doing when I have a barrage of negative thoughts is a cognitive exercise where I replace the bad ones with positive ones. Cheesy but it actually kinda works.  And since the last few days have been uncharacteristically (for the recent past) hard, I figured it's time for another good old fashioned Happy Things* list. Here are five more things to be happy about.

Things Going Right in My Life This Week:

1.) The gym. It's been six months and I still love it. I think my weight loss has pretty much tapered off, so I might need to start doing it for fitness instead of happiness, but for now I don't feel like getting it up for fitness. So I go to my weightlifting class twice a week where I now feel confident and strong and somewhat like I know what I'm doing. And most other days I go and run on the elliptical or stairclimber or some such machine where I can log my time and my miles while reading twitter. And wearing cute gym shoes. While the kids play happily under gym nanny supervision. Sometimes for an extra few minutes so I can do some weight machines too. It's a good gym life.


2.) My bestest friend. After a weird and fighty weekend, Another Nathan and I are back on. (Yes, we fight. Yes we're almost *ahem* thirty, which is far too old to fight with your friends, but we fight like siblings. We've made peace with it; you should too.) And in the midst of some (totally unrelated) (and kind of related) hard spells over the last few days, I'm reminded that with the tumult comes strength and safety and confidence, to have a best friend who loves your husband and your kids and your life and your Crazy and your soul. And who's a damn good Wednesday coffee date.

for those who say I never post pics of myself

3.) I dyed some green pants. This seems random.  But I had been craving green pants, and couldn't find a non-capri, non-jegging variety (jeggings do not make hott Erin) that fit well at a normal price anywhere, but then I noticed OH HEY white pants are apparently in (please don't ask me to jump on that bandwagon), they're everywhere and in plentiful variety, so I will just buy some of those and then dye them.  And apparently pinterest has made me wildly confident because I did. And they are cute.

No full-length mirrors = standing on the potty.

4.) Youth choir. It started as an extra adult on hand for a Harry Potter movie outing, and turned into my legitimate advisor-capacity involvement. It's a fun and lively group of high school girls, growing in numbers and in confidence. I look forward to hanging out with them on Sunday afternoons maybe more than I should as a real grownup, but y'all, they are fun! They're full of stories of proms and new nail polish and shoes and summer jobs and college visits, and also faith issues like what's happening in our presbytery, and talking through texts of songs we're working on. Talking and tweeting with these girls is connecting me to church in a new cool way and I love it. I remember how important my youth choir advisors were to me at that age, and the idea of a generation cycling forward resonates with me. Plus, new friends are always awesome; teenagers are extra so.


5.) Delurkers. In the last week, I've had some people making blog comments who rarely do. Yay! And by people I mean mostly MARK. You know, my dearly beloved who reads every word of every post before anyone else, yet never posts any witty commentary, has commented! Let's harness this energy into a delurking week ahead! Y'all know you want to give me more fodder for my happy lists. Delurk already! If nothing else, tell me something that makes you happy and I'll feed off your delurky gladness too. Don't make me call you out #NathanReneeElizabethRyanMelissaAdellBradJennyDavid and others. DO IT.

Okay, hard days are officially behind me and I feel better. Positive thoughts... check.

Now lurkers, delurk!

That is all.

*Sarah, Katie, Kelley, Merritt - I know you're reading this. Praise me.

Pins and Circles and Tweets

Because I wasn't addicted enough to the internet already, and I'm clearly in the market for more time-sucking online {shakes head}, I've been killing some waiting-for-baby days (read: naptime, per my usual) playing around with new internetty things!  Fun!

First I got re-hooked on Pinterest.  It's a cool place to bookmark (pin, if you will... that's right, I'm down with the lingy-loo) stuff you find online and want to remember or share with others.  Recipes, organization, ideas for travel or reading or your house or kiddie activities, whatever.  It saves them on these virtual bulletin boards with pretty pictures and your thoughts or ideas, and a link back to the original place you found it.  You know I love a good old fashioned list, but pinned pictures are a way more attractive and fun way to save ideas.

(I confess that in a former life I was a magazine-ripper.  If I saw something I liked in a magazine and wanted to remember it, I'd tear out the page and keep it... somewhere.  Binders, pockets, stuck in other books, floating around the bottom of  my purse.  You get the idea.  It might or might not have made me look like a crazy person a few times.  Pinterest is way better for this kind of habit.)

So I had been on it before with a junkmail email, but somehow I messed up that account and started over with my real email, and now it's way better since people can find and follow me, and I them, so it's also got a social media slant.  Which totally works out in my favor.  Because of Pinterest, my internet soul mate Erin saw that I loved this beautiful white and floral purple letter, and made me one (!!) to hang over Sprout's crib.

(No, Sprout's name does not start with an A.  Yes, the correct letter Erin made and texted me pictures of is even more beautiful than this and I can't wait to get it in the mail tomorrow.)

It's also where I'm storing the link for this oh-so-sweet (but way too expensive) print of Hattie for Anneliese's room, for whenever I decide it's worth the splurge.  (Hattie is real!  She's a character!  She's holding an elephant!  I almost fainted when I saw it.  Must. Remember.)

And it's also where I found and re-pinned the idea for cement molded stepping stones with kids' feetprint in them.  Do one per kid each year, and eventually you have a sweet path of baby and kiddie feet through your backyard.  Awesome.

Anyway, Pinterest.  You should be doing it.  It's my new favorite corner of the internet.

Then I got an invite for google+ ... but, um... I don't get it?  I think I'm usually pretty social-media savvy, but g+ makes me feel dumb.  I have yet to share anything on there because I don't understand how to share with which groups circles.  I'll figure it out, I just haven't spent much time on it yet.  Sometimes I think google just invents products and tools to remind us that they rule the world and we will always be inferior.  Remember when it was just a search engine? Yeah, that.

And this week, I finally joined the twitter revolution.  Like facebook, I resisted a long time, but eventually I have to cave and be part of it.  It's a little overwhelming (so many tweets! how could you possibly read them all?  why would you want to?) but I think I'm getting the hang of it.  Mostly my biggest frustration is I don't know who to follow (suggestions, please!) or how to find people I know. So if you're on twitter, tell me! (And I'm @eringoettsch if you're looking for me.)

Find me!  Follow me!  Let's be internet friends!