Birthdays & Flies

(Charlie helping set up for his party)

Be warned, this will probably be a lengthy entry. I'm not one to ramble much or volunteer too much information but we turned 1 at our house so I gotta fill ya in on the mayhem going on around the Jensen home.

Dylan & Charlie had their birthday this past Wednesday. One. Can you even believe it?!? We celebrated their birthday this past Sunday at our house. We woke up in the morning to massive amounts of rain. Mind you, our party was to be held in our backyard. I was planning on about 30 people being there and I just did not want the chaos in my house. During the terrential (sorry, probably spelled wrong) rain, Brandt and I stood outside in it and wondered how we all of a sudden found ourselves in Kauai. I love that kind of rain, don't get me wrong, but not on our Party Day. I checked the weather channel online and they said it would clear up until 4. My party started at 4:30. So we waited. I checked again about 2pm and it said the rain wouldn't begin again until 9. Ok. I could live with that so we set up shop. It was a great party. Good company, good food, good babies, and good weather. Best part, however, was the cakes. My sweet sister-in-law is a cake-maker extrodinaire and made the cakes for us and the boys. They looked like this:

and this:

Here is a shot of the backyard in it's glory.

Dylan being a cutie eating apples off our tree. With that one tooth he has I don't think he got much to chew on.

Here's the cook. Brandt make a mean burger on the grill.

I know it probably sounds stupid but I haven't given my babies cake. They've had some sweet things but not much. I especially was adament that they not have cake until the big day. I think they liked it. Here's the play by play:

Hmmmm, what's this we have here??

Mommy & Daddy had to step in to make sure they knew it was something to eat since I've kept them in the dark this whole year. Mean. What now? It tasted good, just not real sure how to get that big ball of goodness in my mouth. Hey Charlie, whatcha got over there? Mind if I come over and have a look?

Charlie is sayin', "Yeah, this is good." Suckin all the yummy frosting off the fingers while Dylan's sayin', "Yep, I'm gonna come over and try yours out. Looks good."

Whoa baby. Hold it. We've crawled over our cake to get to the better one apparently.

There ya go. Get it boys!

Ok, we got this down now. Happy as can be sitting here eating pieces of cake. At least Charlie is. My A.D.D. child is already ready to go find something else to do.
Love this of Charlie. Dad is trying to convince Dylan to eat more cake.

Double-fisting it Charlie. Who do you think he takes after, me or Brandt?

I love this one of Dylan. MMMMMMMMM......You were right, Dad, it is good!!!

Now to the "flies" part of this blog. After cake we were going to open presents but the rain came. It was only like 6:30 I think (thanks weather channel) so we moved inside. We opened presents upstairs and both our back door and the front door were left open the whole time. It was raining and it was nice to have the cross-winds but it was also an opportunity for about 100 flies to make their way into my house. After the party we cleaned up but left the boys toys just out in the living room that night until I could find homes for the new toys. Monday morning we woke up and I normally will let the boys play while I get their milk and breakfast ready. They were quick to jump in and play with the new toys strewn about the living room. My wonderful brother and sister-in-law gave us these toys.
This is D & C playing that morning. They would push the buttons over and over and so you would hear "twinkle, twink, twinkle, twinkle, twi, twi, twinkle, twink..." over and over and over and over. You get the point, right? So that was just the cow. Charlie was doing the same thing but to another song with the monkey. Brandt and I have bought their kids a set of drums, clappers, anything that is loud and obnoxious so we are reaping the benefits of payback. It worked Tree...good job on the toy choice.

Back to the story at hand. So as I'm doing our morning routine it is NOISY. I am a quiet person that enjoys a peaceful and calm morning and I'm not used to the ruckus. I set the boys in their chairs and fed them breakfast. Flies were EVERYWHERE so as we are having breakfast, I have one hand on a spoon feeding the boys and the other hand on the fly swatter swatting flies. After killing about 42 of them, we were done and had to take a bath. I took Dylan out, took his clothes and his diaper off, set him down and moved to Charlie. As I am stripping him down, I look over and Dylan had peed on the carpet. Nice. Cleaned it up. Threw the boys in the bath to play for awhile and then pulled Charlie out to dry off, pulled Dylan out to dry off and in the meantime, Charlie has crawled off and I look over to see him sitting in a puddle of urine. Nice. Picked him back up, put a towel over his mess, threw him back in the tub to rinse off, and back out to be dried. I dragged them back to the living room to diaper up and put on some clothes and once that was done, mom was ready for the nap. It wasn't even 9 yet and I was done. I sat there on the couch and thought, "Welcome to 1 year olds". I have a feeling I'll have many more moments like that. It's just the beginning, I'm sure. I was killing flies for the whole week and I think there are a few stragglers, still. I know I got one yesterday but haven't run into any more unfortunate flies today. Hopefully we've gotten them all.

Here's Dylan. We have tons of new fun toys for the boys to play with. What is his toy of choice? Yep, the old yogurt container. Seriously, why do we even give them toys?

Thank you everyone who came to celebrate Dylan & Charlie's birthday. We had such a good time and will have so many good memories. You have all been so great to help us through this first year with two babies. We would have never survived without you. xoxoxo