Madeline's Birthday Party

At the very last minute, we decided to throw together a birthday party for Madeline with some friends from the neighborhood.

Here our sweet girl sits at the table, waiting for her friends to arrive. This year we let her pick out a special dress for her birthday. She of course picked out a beautiful, princess dress with an empire waist and full skirt. She now wants to wear it every day.

This year Madeline requested an Ariel cake.

Here are the sweet girls. . .Madeline, Jessica, Jenna, and Alyana. They are lined up ready to play, "Pin the Ponytail on the Birthday Girl". The girls loved being blindfolded and spun around. And they giggled each time a ponytail was placed in a silly spot.

Here's Madeline blindfolded.

The girls sit at the table waiting for their pizza. Of course we invited Chase and Lance to the birthday party, as Chase and Lance are some of Maddie's best friends in the neighborhood. It was so funny when Chase walked in. He did not want to have anything to do with the girls, nor did Lance, who was following his brother's lead. When he walked in the girls were lined up to play Pin the Ponytail on the Birthday girl. I asked him if he wanted to play and he said no. I asked him if he wanted to go down to the basement and play with Ry, and he said yes. When I called the boys up for pizza, Chase still did not want to have anything to do with the girls. As you can see in the below picture, the boys ate their dinner separately at the kitchen table. And I can understand why Chase was making the break. These sweet girls spur each other on in giggling and squealing. . .and it is LOUD and continuous.
Here are the boys sitting at the "boy" table. And I must give kudos to Matt. I was going to order Dominos for the kids. Matt insisted that I just buy some frozen pizzas. Boy am I glad that I did. My kids were the only ones that ate all of their pizza. Most everyone else just took a few bites. And the funny thing is that I gave them tiny slivers of pizza not knowing how much they would want and figuring that I could always give them more. Needless to say, the Wells' family ate frozen pizza leftovers for the rest of the weekend!!!

After eating pizza, we decided to play the Tinkerbell movie that we had given Madeline for her birthday. This is 10 minutes into the movie. For obvious reasons, we soon turned the movie off. Look how sweet Ryan and Lance are. They are sitting shoulder to shoulder, leaning their heads together. These boys love each other. . .in a masculine way. :)

The girls were somewhat more entertained by the movie. However, after they started blowing their party blowers, the movie was history. This is the point when Chase and Lance and Ryan began playing with the girls. Before we knew it everyone was blowing the blowers at each other. All the kids ran upstairs together and they all came down in costumes. Chase was Johnny Flame, Ryan was Spiderman, and Lance was Batman. All the girls were dressed in princess dresses, shoes and accessories. Of course, all the girls except Jenna, who was dressed as Optimus Prime, the Transformer. Madeline told Jenna that she could be Optimus Girl, but Jenna informed her that she was Optimus PRIME. So funny. By now the boys and girls were playing together as they all ran from and fought the bad guys.

As you can see by Madeline's face, she is SO excited to have "Happy Birthday" sung to her. Her joy and excitement is infectious.
By the time cake was served, the boys and girls were all sitting at the same table. They actually became really silly during "cake eating". The sugar must have immediately kicked in. Instead of using forks, they decided to eat their cake like doggies. . .placing their mouths over their plates and grabbing as much as they could with their teeth. Though it was messy and they were messy, we let them do this, as they were having so much fun and giggling like crazy. Thank goodness that I still have some baby wipes left!
Alayna with cake all over her mouth.
Jessica with cake all over her mouth.
Chase with cake all over his mouth. . .and shirt (Sorry Roxann).
Jenna with cake all over her face. This girl cracks me up, as she is usually the ring leader or the one who takes the activity to a whole other level. I love her liveliness!

Opening presents. The girls are so cute. They all crowd around and "oooo" and "ahhhh" as each gift is opened.

At the end of the party (7:30 p.m.), we were exhausted. Though we were leaving for the beach in the morning, we did not even have the energy to pack. We put the kids to bed and got into bed ourselves! :) It was a wonderful time.

November Crafts

November was craft month in the Wells' house. Since this is a close-up shot, you probably can't tell that Madeline is actually dressed up as a Queen ant. Once you see the below picture with the antennae, it will be glaringly obvious. I think she might be impersonating a killer ant here.

In a few of our school lessons, we learned all about ant hills and the jobs the ants perform in their colonies. As previously stated, Madeline is the queen ant and Ryan is the jester ant. :)

One morning, Mommy had a great idea after searching the web. . .make painted, hand turkeys. What a festive craft for the week before Thanksgiving. Well. . .see below.

My sweet, active Ry, quickly tired of painting on paper and decided it was much more fun to paint himself. I remember Madeline doing the same thing at 3. . .and I must admit that it did look kinda fun. I love your free spirit, my sweet boy.

Trick or Treating Day

Yes, I am more than a month behind in blogging, but I must post our Halloween pics. As usual, we had a wonderful Halloween party in the cul-de-sac. This year we ordered pizza and shared appetizers. Of course, Ms. Shanda made her special cupcakes and we crowded around the Andersen's driveway (previously, the Coulters). Right before the sun went down, we rushed to get the kids in costumes and then headed down Willingham Rd. for some trick-or-treating. Actually, Matt took the kids out, while I handed out candy, which I LOVE to do. This year, after the trick-or-treating was over, we went to Ms. Shanda's house where the kids watched a movie in the basement, the moms chatted over peanut-butter m&m's and hot cocoa, and the guys sat in the driveway handing out candy to the Halloween tricklers. It was a wonderful time.

Mommy gets a special hug from princess Belle, who is wearing a beautiful shade of lipstick.
Batman and Optimus Prime. . .best friends.

Oops, my bad, it's really Lancie and RyRy. These boys love each other. Even when it's not Halloween, they love dressing up as Superheroes and playing.

Princess Ali and Princess Madeline.

After trick-or-treating, we told Madeline that she could pick out one piece of candy to eat before bed. So what did the girl do? She put her entire head, arms and shoulders into her bag to make sure she made the absolute best choice. . .I wonder when she realized that this technique does not provide much light to illuminate her choices.

After choosing a piece of candy, Madeline decided that she wanted to sort her candy. She immediately went upstairs, dumped out her four small bins and separated her candy amongst them. As of today, December 1st, she has barely touched her candy. To be honest, Mommy and Daddy have been enjoying it.

RyRy LOVES candy. When we told him that he could eat one piece, he just stuck his hand in his bag and pulled out a piece. It did not matter what it was. . .he was going to love it, and he did.

We learned something sweet about Ryan after trick-or-treating. He loves to share treats with us. In this picture, he is offering Daddy some of his candy.

So what did the Wells' do on November 1st? Went out shopping for 50% off costumes. This is a picture of Ryan as Johnny Flame (the human torch of the Fantastic Four) and Madeline as Silver Mist (a fairy in the Tinkerbell movie).

A Thanksgiving to Remember

What a wonderful Thanksgiving week we had.  It all started with a late night phone call from Bobby on Thursday night inviting us to spend the week with he and Lanie, and his family at Nag's Head.  Though Maddie had a Birthday Party Friday night and we planned to go to a UNC football game Saturday afternoon, we decided to go for it.  We love Bobby and Lanie, and Bobby's extended family. We also knew it would be a spiritually refreshing time.  So we woke up at 5am Saturday morning, packed up, and headed to Chapel Hill for some football.  After one half the kids were ready to go, so we got into the car and drove toward the Outer Banks.

The first few days at Nag's Head were spent with Bobby and Lanie.  We climbed and rolled down Jockey's Ridge's dunes, celebrated Madeline's birthday, ran, and relaxed together.  We had really special times in the evenings playing games and talking about the Lord.  And two days in a row, Lanie and I got to go out together.  One day we stopped at a coffee house with our Bibles and shared what the Lord was teaching us.  It was so awesome to be spurred on this way.  And of course, we enjoyed a bit of shopping.  

Tuesday evening Bobby's sister, husband, 3 nephews, 1 niece, and mom arrived.  It was just like being with our own family.  Madeline and Ryan loved their time with Jake, Ali, Ethan and Ben. And they got used to Rauel (that's what they call their Grandma Linda, Bobby's mom) scooping them up and kissing them all over.  All four Joynt children were a joy to be around and quickly added Ryan and Maddie to their "circle".  Madeline especially loved nine year old Ali.  She woke up in the morning excited to see Ali and play with her.  So wonderful!

Thursday morning, after Matt and I did our own 6 mile Turkey Trot, we headed to Sanford to spend Thanksgiving with Matt's dad.  It was a lovely time, although we had a major interruption just as Matt was going for seconds.  He heard Ry in the bathroom and went to investigate.  When I heard the "Lauren" from the bathroom, I knew something was wrong. When Matt arrived in the bathroom, Ry said to Matt, "I poo poo four".  Indeed he did. . .a trail from the floor all the way to the sides of the toilet.  The poor guy had diarrhea and did not make it to the potty in time.  Even worse, Grandpa Wells and Grandma Pat have carpet around their toilet.  Instead of enjoying a second helping of a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, we ended up scrubbing the bathroom and bathing Ryan.  So. . .this will be a Thanksgiving we will never forget.  Thankfully, Grandma and Grandpa were very forgiving.  As we were driving home, I realized that the diarrhea was probably my fault.  At the beach, Food Lion had a sale on high fiber oatmeal.  I purchased it and from Thursday morning to afternoon, Ryan had three packets of the this oatmeal (I was running low on food since it was the end of the week, but did not want to make another trip to the grocery store since we were about to leave).  Then he had apple juice before dinner and apple juice with dinner.  I'm pretty sure this was the reason for his diarrhea.  A lesson well learned for Mommy!

And this morning, I was at JCPenny at 4am, Sears at 5am, Target at 6am, and the Christian Bookstore at 7am.  It was SO fun and I am finished with all my Christmas shopping.  Right now it feels like 5pm, but that's okay! 

Cookie Decorating

A few days before Halloween, I thought it would be fun to decorate pumpkin cookies with the kids.  We made sugar cookies, and orange and green icing.  Madeline had her friend Jessica over and Ryan had his friend Ty over.  Madeline and Jessica beautifully decorated their pumpkins with icing and sprinkles.  Ryan and Ty had a different approach.  Theirs was to cover the cookie with icing and pour as many sprinkles over the icing as possible while Ms. Lauren (aka Mommy) was in the bathroom (really. . .what was I thinking taking a bathroom break in the middle of cookie decorating???).

More than decorating the cookies, Ty and Ryan enjoyed eating them.  They kept running to the mirror to look at the colors of their mouths, and giggling at each other when they saw each other's hunter green tongues.

Superhero Friends

Did you know that Optimus Prime (Transformer), Super Girl, and Spiderman are friends?  If you don't believe me, check out the pictures below.

This is their tough pose.

I promised Ty, I mean Spiderman, that I would keep his identity a secret.  Maybe one day you will know his true identity.

Southpoint Alert

This might be old news, but the play area at Southpoint is GONE!!!  After a long wait at the "Genius Bar" at the Apple store, we headed to the food court for dinner and play, only to discover that the play area has been demolished.  A sign says that a new play area will be build near JCPenny's.  Hmmmm. . . .  I wonder when and how big it will be.

Anyway, just wanted to spread the news.