honorable mention {2}

In July, Henry turned five. To celebrate we had our family and some friends over to the farmhouse for a superhero birthday party.

{warning! This turned into a monster post. refill your coffee cup and come right back.}

{Dessert table. Cake by Sandi. Cake stand and cupcake platter by Holly.}

{Sandi designed this cake to compliment the party invitation. She made the fondant; rolled it and dyed it to match. Amazing. She is an artist! My dad baked the cakes and they turned out delicious. This cake tasted every bit as delicious as it looks.}

 

{Fondant cupcake toppers are from this shop. A new Etsy favorite. Charynn is exceptionally talented, super sweet, and a total doll to work with. My frosting was supposed to look more like this. Something clearly went wrong. It was a hot day, I think it was a combination of my bad baking and the heat melting it, it was a total flop. Please don't judge the darling toppers by my terrible frosting.}

{Marshmallow pops. I dyed the white almond bark blue to match, dipped marshmallows on lollipop sticks in the chocolate, sprinkled them with red sprinkles-from the cake supply store-and once they dried I wrapped them in cello bags and tied them with ribbon. By far my new favorite thing to dip. I ordered extra large jumbo marshmallows, but they didn't arrive in time. These worked fine though.}

{Sara made each and every one of these darling sugar cookies. The design was all her idea and the execution was flawless. After she baked and iced the cookies with yellow, she added the blue icing and then the letters to spell either "Bam" or "Pow" made out of--get this--chocolate. Yes, they tasted every bit as yummy as they look. Amazing! These were the favors for the adult guests.}

 

{Water bottle labels. Holly helped me make these using strips of coordinating scrapbook paper; the comic graphics are from a Batman book I bought at the Goodwill for 25 cents.}

{Favor bags for the children. Simple stuff: superhero Pez, mini squirt gun.}

{Crunch! and Chomp! boxes, were prepackaged lunches for the children. They included a simple sandwich, bag of chips, pickle and apple. The boxes are these from a cake decorators grocery in Bloomington. My mom assembled all of the boxes and the lunches. And thank goodness for her! She worked hard and fast to finish on time.}

{Super Z: gigantic, uninvited super sized zucchini, plucked from our garden on the party morning.}

{Henry took to plugging his ears for the first time this year.}

{And a party is not a party without the homemade chocolate chip cookie/ice-cream sandwich that have become a summer party tradition.}

{I made capes and masks for each child with their initial using no sew/heat transfer iron tape and sticky felt. Super easy peasy.}

{This was our first ever party pinata. Henry was so excited to pick this out himself. William was so thrilled with his pinata loot.}

{Holly made this super darling party game. All hand drawn. Another artist! The children played pin the mask on the super hero. Dan ended up winning!}

My most favorite part of any party is the crazy/silly/downright exhausted fun that is had sometimes during, and always after the party:

A super special thank you to Sara who took so many of these pictures. You got a gift, girl! And to my mama, who came early so Patrick and I could have a date night Friday to celebrate our {8th} anniversary and who helped with every small and large party detail and everything in between. I am blessed.

One of my favorite memories that weekend was the next day, a Sunday. Dan and Sara spent the night so the boys got to have a slumber party. It was another steamy July day and Sunday morning, the boys had a major water fight.

happy fifth birthday to my sweet, sweet Henry! Around here birthdays are a big deal. Another year of life deserves a big celebration.

major.

{I love the stripes in this picture. Could there seriously be any more?}

Today it was back to business as usual at the farmhouse. It's Friday, but felt like a Monday after enduring the agonizing battle of getting Henry ready for school, and saying too many times, "because you can't go to school in just your Batman underwear" {just in case you forgot during those three days away}.
William has really taken to books lately. He will stack them, find a cozy place and read through them one by one, stacking them again when he's finished.
He has also taken a liking to using the word 'major', as in "look at all of that snow Mommy; it's major". I will confess that once (maybe twice?) I happened upon The Rachel Zoe Project {I'm pretty sure my mom is rolling her eyes and sighing right about now}, and I think she refers to amazing fashion as 'major'. It stuck with me and now I hear my William using it as a lone adjective to describe something. Isn't that major? It will just hang out with shootfire for a bit.
I hope your weekend is off to a good start. Fridays are major.
:)

good life.

This morning we woke up to a warm home, lights that flipped right on and coffee that was a brewin'. The sun rose high and promised a day full of light, shining on the piles and piles of freshly fallen snow and making the fields glitter like diamonds. All of that really does sound like the makings of a perfectly perfect morning. Snowed in for the 3rd day counting.
But I could feel that cooped up angst rising up in my chest. Snowed in for the 3rd day. And when I snapped at Patrick before 8 am for daring to suggest it was warm enough for me to take the boys outside to play, I knew that trouble was a brewin', right along with the coffee.
I read this, in Psalm 39
"Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span on my years is nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you."
Then I made this,

For them,

And a bunch of these,

for me.
I added this song to my playlist. And I've listened to it, oh, um, maybe 20 times today.
How fleeting really is my life. {Psalm 39) So, Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? {Mary Oliver}
Today it was simple; bake cupcakes, build a fort, fold a basket of laundry and be present with my children. Tomorrow it may be more grand, but I doubt it. There are always days of grandeur mixed in with the ordinary ones, but mostly my days will fill with laundry, dishes, dinner, minivan driving, story reading and bedtime tucking. I want to be sure to make the most of every moment God has given me in this one wild and precious life.
{By the way, Holly is back. Check out her post, and the link to her Etsy shop! }

rescued

{The big red tractor. This is exactly the blur that it looked like at 5:30 this morning. The wind causing the snow to swirl around.}

We were rescued this morning by our farmer in shining tractor. He said he didn't sleep well last night. He woke every hour praying for us and devising a plan to come and take us out of here. At 5:30, we woke the boys, dressed them in full snowsuits, mittens, hats, scarves and boots and prepared them to be rescued. He came through the field and took us 2 by 2.

{It took two pick up trucks with snow plows to start to dig out.}

We spent the day there. Patrick and his dad spent much of the day shoveling, running back up generators here at our house to keep our pipes from freezing, and towing his truck out of the ditch. We were greeted with a warm breakfast and steaming coffee. Thank the Lord for electricity. I was most sad last night thinking of a glum morning without coffee.

{Look who trudged through the snow to find us?}

Thankfully this evening, 24 hours after we lost it, our power returned. We are so thankful to be home and settled back in. Thankful for lights, a warm house, coffee. And thankful for Patrick's hospitable and loving parents who welcomed us, cooked hot meals for us and who were prepared to let us stay as long as we needed to.

we lost it

{William watching out the window by candlelight while we waited for our rescue.}

Well the snow came down, and the winds blew. We had an entire day of hunkered down fun; the boys made suncatchers, played indoor baseball, perfected puzzles, read books and sipped cocoa while listening to the whistling wind outside. We laughed at the snow blowing in through the closed front door. Not funny, but so blizzard-worthy.

And then, at 6 p.m., our hunkering came to a halting stop. Our power went out and we went from hunkered to huddled. We lit candles, found flashlights and laughed as we ran around in the dark and waited for farmer grandpa to come pick us up in his pick-up truck. But my poor father-in-law never made it the 1/4 mile to our house. He was blinded by the wind and snow creating a complete white-out and his truck went into the ditch. He was safe and he walked safely home. Patrick was determined and went outside to check out the driveway. When he got near the garage he found himself waist deep in a huge snow drift. {His car was already parked in a tractor shed.} He came in and said there is no way our minivan is going to bust through that drift. It's capable, but that is just not happening.

So we huddled and hunkered and bundled and cuddled and we made it through the night. We slept, all four of us, in our queen size bed in our room which for once I was so thankful does not have windows.