Two of my older brothers are getting ready to have the time of their lives.

This weekend is the 24 hours of LeMons race in California. I wish I could be there! My brother Joe first roped my brother Larry into joining his team last year. This year, they will be there with each of their own team/car. They’ve both been blogging about it (although Larr a bit more than Joe, *cough* *getwithitjoseph* *cough*)

Joseph’s team: Snowspeeder
Larry’s team: Volatile RAM

Here’s a couple of photos of Joe’s car complete with star wars geekiness rebel alliance logo on the side (I am married to the hugest SW geek ever, thus, I know these things), and here are some from Larry’s, who did a dandy paint job featuring many of those loved old arcade games, pac-man, blinky, & a space invaders alien.

I love this photo Larry took on their test run. I’d ask him if I could make it into a banner for Crazymokes, but I guess it’s not very applicable to THIS site…

I’ll be thinking of you guys this weekend! Have a blast! Don’t hurt yourselves!

We celebrate James’ birthday in April, so it’s only fitting to have a banner that also celebrates him – and what a great daddy he is 🙂 Happy birthday month, baby.

This photos were taken in September 2006 – and are still some of my favorites.

Previous banners.

This was a few weeks ago.

Our usual dinner table configuration has me and james at opposite sides of our small round table, and jocelyn and ethan opposite each other.

On this night, Jocelyn had decided she wanted to sit in Daddy’s spot, and she also wanted her chair scootched over until she and Ethan were sitting right next to each other.

Crazy cute sibling cuteness ensued.

Oh INTERNET! How I’ve MISSED YOU!

But enough about that. Let’s get right to the birthday business, shall we? This post has been waiting for a long time, but I’ve finally got photos up on flickr, so let’s getter posted!!

Jocelyn wearing her fairy dress up clothes given to her by the Danforths

The birthday party was a smashing success. And I was not stressed! That has NEVER happened, people! However, I need to stop having birthday parties at 10am, because that’s just a smidge too early. The balloon place didn’t even open until 10 (but the order was ready RIGHT THEN, so it was ok) and we were getting a bit close with the pizza and cake as well.

Jocelyn with pizza sauce on her face.

Despite the fact that we put “No presents required,” everyone brought presents, but I am happy to say it didn’t seem to be an overwhelming amount, and there were some really cute crafty things (stamp set, and necklace making kit) and games (dora dominoes) that evened out all the brightly colored plastic (lots of which I was responsible for getting her, so I’m not blaming anyone!). She was over the moon to have her friends there. We did a paper doll craft which held the kids attention for a while, and then it pretty much turned into kids running everywhere and screaming with delight.

Jocelyn opening presents.

HITS: the paper doll craft – everyone did one, I used up some old fabric I didn’t really like, and googly eyes bought at JoAnns were a huge hit. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of these 🙁 But here is the paper doll I printed and the kids used.

MISS: carrot cake from costco – had nuts on the side, nuts & raisins in the cake, and honestly, just really wasn’t all that good. It almost tasted like a spice cake rather than carrot cake, and several of the kids just did ice cream with no cake, and james and I weren’t even tempted to have some more of it later. When I made carrot cake for my birthday, my kids couldn’t get enough. This cake – they ate off the frosting and didn’t touch the cake. Next time we’ll be sticking with the generic chocolate or white cake.

The kids were all super cute and sweet, and we only had one girl get weepy becuase she wanted to open a present too. She became my “helper” and handed the presents to Jocelyn and cheered up a bit.

I must say, the funniest part of the entire party was near the end. Andrew, Tamara, Adora and Leia all came as the party was winding down, and Leia, who just turned 1 in January, got an adoring fanclub kneeling at her feet, before she got out of our entryway.

Leia with her entourage in our entryway.

Even my son Ethan continued to follow her around trying to make her smile for a while. It was nice to send everyone on their way and then be able to relax with our friends, chat, play with Jocelyn’s toys, and watch Leia being cute as a button.

More gratuitous cute Leia pictures.

So the birthday party was great, and Jocelyn thoroughly enjoyed herself.

It’s hard to believe my little baby is so grown up.

Jocelyn at 2 days old.

This one was a present for a boy in Jocelyn’s class.

I need to learn to get these things done way ahead of time, as when you rush and finish it the day of the party, no amount of oohing and aahing (which there is usually not much) makes up for the stress.

This is the second time I’ve finished something for a gift way too late (was a joint baby shower last time).

Still though – very cute, don’t you think?

Yeah… too cute 🙂

OK people.

I totally fell off the wagon (oh, and in more ways than one, lemme tell you) on this photo a day thing.

I KNEW this was going to be tough, because well, yeah, I’m me.

So every day that passed w/out a photo, I thought, should I put up an ass load of photos and hop back on the wagon? Set up a lawn chair, with a little table next to it with a nice cold diet coke and wave as the wagon trucked off down the dusty road with all it’s photo goodness?

So yeah, I was on the lawn chair sipping away. But I guess I don’t want to throw in the towel yet, so here goes.. all my missing 366 photos.

As Thursday ended, doom and gloom threatened our nation’s capital in the form of.. ICE STORM A-COMIN! HIDE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN! and so, since the next day was my birthday, I greased the wheels of corporate america by saying to my boss, “boy, if it’s bad tomorrow, I may just work from home.”

Ahhh, a relaxing day of working at home on the couch in my underwear jeans covered with a blankey with Pride & Prejudice playin’ on the TV.

BUT my plans were foiled, FOILED I tell you by the nation.. well, specifically, my kids’ school also catching the doom and gloom and deciding not to open on Friday. Doh.

So I took the day off and spent it with my kids. Here is my birthday… in photos (and more words, because hey. I’m a wordy bitch.)

First, I woke up, grabbed the laptop, hit refresh on the school’s website, and saw those fateful words: CLOSED.

Unfortunately, I was up anyway. So was James. So I made him go get mE my PRESENTS!!

The kids came in and snuggled into bed, and I opened up my 2 presents.

This one was from me, that I’ve been coveting since before Christmas:

I heart Amy Ruppel. Next year, I’m buying myself a painting instead of just a print. Hopefully before next year!

Next was James’ present for me:

Isn’t this the best? Circa 1951, I am tickled tickled tickled.

I also gave james really good word of mouth with my mom later, because when I told her he got me a vintage doll making sewing book, I didn’t bother mentioning that it was rated high priority on my amazon wish list. Aren’t I a fab wife?

So after we got all that bothersome gift giving out of the way (I do have one more gift coming, it’ll be a late present) we got up and had breakfast of biscuits (from a refridgerated tube) and scrambled eggs. James kissed us goodbye and headed off into the (as far as we both could tell, ice-less) world to work.

So the kids and I got busy and made carrot cake:

Ethan insisted on NOT licking the batter, because it had CARROTS IN IT. He also insisted that he would NEVER taste this CARROT CAKE. “MY GOD woman, you know how to ruin EVERYTHING, INCLUDING CAKE, WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME?!” was pretty much, the epitome of his thoughts on the subject of carrot cake. Jocelyn took his beater and licked it clean along with her own.

I took the opportunity to take some much needed pictures of Ethan lego creations:

Here is his latest. A forklift:

Which can go up and down:

and the platform thingee comes off:

Just for the record, an attempt was made to lift the chocolate soy milk container, but we are still working out the engineering technicalities.

Then, Jocelyn let me play “hair” with her, except that it was really more like, she ordered me to do her hair in EXACTLY the way she prescribed, and WOE UNTO ME if I misinterpret her directions.

She wanted “crazy braid” hair, and pointed very specifically where she wanted each braid:

We had lunch. Notice that most of us (yes, both of them) are still in their jammies. Most of us also have soy chocolate milk moustaches.

Peanut butter and honey for Ethan:

Peanut butter and banana for Jocelyn:

Me? Peanut butter, banana and honey, of course.

Next, I sent them upstairs where they managed to not kill each other and were even reasonably quiet, for 2 hours of “quiet time” while I didn’t get any work done, but instead talked to my mom and my sister while not posting photos on this blog (which was the intended purpose of blessed “quiet time” time).

I finally unlocked the toy room door and let them out. Then I chained them to the couch and made them watch Totoro while I alternated between playing internet backgammon and mah jong.

Then I marched them upstairs and forced them to beat cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar together. I topped it off with making them lick the beaters clean.

Then we frosted the cake, daddy came home, we anxiously awaited the sitter, and we took off, hollering, “SO LONG SUCKER!” for a long night of carousing (japanese way-too-salty tepenyako, with no alcohol) and partying (hanging out in the bookstore until the movie started, watching Juno, and then heading home.)

Yeah! that’s how we party it up for 34. When 35 rolls around, I will probably just head to bed at 8.30 and call it good.

I didn’t update the banner for so long, because I didn’t have any good photos laying around, and also I liked the January banner a lot! But this morning, I got a good photo, and voila.

New banner.

This isn’t the actual show and tell item. But I think you can guess what it was.