The Best Birthday Party Ever

Will and I went to a birthday party for his new school best friend, Chance. Chance lives in downtown Micanopy in one of the beautiful historic houses. I didn't think to take a picture of it, but you can see it at the end of the Cholokka Blvd. They've lived in the house about 10 years and done lots of remodeling to it. Will is probably going to spend a lot of time there in the next couple of years. Chance's mom also has a really cute hair salon in the back of the house that I might just have to try sometime.

Chance's parents apparently throw really good parties. This was one of the best kid birthday parties that I've ever been to. The whole thing was Star Wars themed which Will loved. They had finger foods like Wookie Cookies, Padawan Pizza, Darth Vader Dip. They did a Jedi training obstacle course, light sabers, and had a big blow up slide thing. Will had a great time and I got to meet some of the other moms from Will's class.

Will wanted to look really nice for the party, so he wore his cool cap. It was a good thing he did cause it started getting colder and probably kept his head pretty warm.

This was the blow up thing. We've never been to a party with one. There were only about 15 kids there, so they didn't have to wait in line and got to play on it a lot.




They also had a Millenium Falcon set up which the kids played with for a long time. John had one of these as a kid and still talks about it regularly. We might have to get one for Will (and John).


Another party highlight was a visit from Darth Vader and a Storm Trooper (aka uncles). They were good sports.


I hope Will doesn't expect anything like for this party. I don't think I could top it (or would want to).

Pardon this Kitty Interruption

We've been experiencing a lot of kitty cuteness at our house lately, so I thought I'd share. Smokey is currently very feisty and fuzzy.

My Bunsies are Burning!

We've been having fires in the fire place for the last couple nights. Will and Kaity are very used to this and usually follow all the rules around fires. I'm not sure where their brains were last night, but after dinner as John and I are cleaning up, they decided to play on the hearth and see how close they could get before it got too warm. They're old enough now that I shouldn't have to watch them all the time - I mean they're almost 4 and 6 and they're in the house and understand the rules! But, I guess I shouldn't make that assumption especially with Kaity.

Anyways, they're playing this game and I'm not paying attention to them when Kaity starts screaming bloody murder and running through the house. Apparently, she'd backed up against the screen or stood there too long and burned her leg and bottom. She was wearing jeans and didn't have any marks on the fabric, but when I pulled them off her leg was all red. John ran her to the sink, while firmly lecturing her on fires, to run cold water on her leg. I got an ice pack out and we put that on her leg for a couple of hours. After awhile, the redness had gone down and she was fine. Good thing she was wearing jeans. I think she's learned her lesson (for once!) and won't be doing that again any time soon.

56-6

Does anything more need to be said? It was a blowout and a pretty amazing on at that. They didn't even get a touchdown. Way to go Gators!

We had a great time attending TailGator (the alumni event) and the game yesterday. The game is never as enjoyable for me as it is for John. I can't see since I'm so short plus it was cold and rainy. We did stay through the third quarter. And, then headed home with pizza.

TailGator was nice. Erin and Alli both came and then took the kids home with them. The kids had a blast. Kaity LOVED the baby gators and they actually had to ask her to stop petting them so other people could. Will spent most of his time in front of the live bee hive. Ask him some time where honey comes from. He now knows.

Before we left the house, Erin took a picture of us while everyone was still fairly clean.


It's not often that all three of us are together in one place.


This is my boss, Dr. Nell. He's great. He came and supported me at TailGator. This is the "tall and short of it" picture. He's 6'7" or so and I'm 4'10" - we look pretty funny going to meetings.


The kids met Alberta and, of course, loved her. Who doesn't love a 5 foot gator wearing lipstick?




Kaity's been fascinated with cheerleaders since football season started. She has these great moves that she does and really cheeses it up. Once our new Y opens, I think I'll have to enroll her in cheering or at least gymnastics. Here's a series of photos of her "moves."






We have a ton of these photos where we're trying to get a good family picture. This was after the awards part and after the kids have had quite a bit of frosting and cake. Most of the photos are terrible. They shoot finally ended with Kaity crawling through Daddy's legs - which Alli actually captured.


Here's the one good photo we got of us.


John got some great pictures of the field (since I couldn't see it.) It was fun and I've been to my annual game. That's enough for me till next year.




After we got home, our friend Cathy came over and Scot and several of his friends. We ended up staying up to watch the Kentucky/Alabama game and the kids didn't go to bed till 11 or so. They were tired this morning.

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Okay, several corrections - first we watched the Kentucky and Alabama games. Two separate games apparently. I don't know - they kept flipping back and forth.

Second - Jen kindly pointed out that I didn't say what the plaque was for. I received the CALS Alumni Horizon Award which is for successful alumni who have graduated in the last 10 years. Dr. Nell came and supported me at the big TailGator event. John had never met Dr. Nell until this weekend (he kept saying that he didn't exist), so he made sure to get a picture of us to preserve that he's a real person.