Winter Fun! January 2013

 This winter seems especially long.  We tried to spur on the summer by eating ice cream.

 Chase felt so much power deciding who to give the ice cream to...He chose me! Yeah!

 We went to the circus again this year and it never ceases to amaze all of us.  This year they had a lion in with the tiger act. So cool!

The circus held Chase's attention the whole time.

 This year Kaleb took swim lessons at the YMCA. It was good to get out of the house for a little while.

 We did lots of inside activities, like making ice cream play do.

 Superhero masks...

 Jason had a project of his own to do.  We gave each other a backslash for Christmas this year.  We were going to pay someone to put it in and then Jason ended up having a slow week at work and he decided to do it himself. He did a great job!

 We did lots of finger painting.

And got all tated up.

 Chase is being his goofy self and balancing a plate on his head at our favorite Mexican spot. This just came out of nowhere.

 and he practiced being super cute!

 Chase became a master at hide and seek.

 Kaleb got some cool projects for Christmas and did some dinosaur excavating.

Chase again, hiding in his dirty clothes hamper w/o his pants!

Catch up of Christmas

 Merry Christmas at the crazy Bruns house...yes, it is the middle of may and i am finally getting around to posting christmas pictures!

 We had a busy December with lots of fun things to do like baking cookies.

 Our newest family member, Elfie showed up one day and he's been nothing but trouble since. He enjoyed our cookies.

 Then one morning I'm getting ready for church and I hear a ear breaking shriek...Chase had touched Elfie...which is not allowed, so Elfie got sick and could not fly back to the North Pole that night.

 Chase got ear tubes on Nov. 29th and we had to give him ear drops for 10 days. They burn as they go in and he found a really good hiding spot behind the Christmas tree where we could not go to get him out.  Smart boy!

 Elfie drank all of our syrup one day.

 We went to the "Breakfast with Santa" at the boys school and Chase, who is shy when anyone is around could not bear to even look at Santa.

 He did tell him what he wanted from this position. It was hilarious!

 One morning we caught Elfie playing Candy Land with Batman, Iron man and spider man and the next night Elfie dressed up as Green Super Elfie!

 We went to a Dirty Santa party and the kids even got to exchange gifts...we ended up with this "Christmas" mummy. Kaleb did not like it, so to lighten things up, Elfie dressed up like him one night.

 Elfie decorated the halls with snowflakes after watching the movie "Elf".

 Elf cousins.

 Hanging out with the doggies.

 Now that is a Christmas present!

 Making Snoopy Snow cones was awesome! Will have to get that out again soon!

 The kids left carrots and celery out for the reindeer...they are showing their carrot noses here.

 Last family picture of the night before christmas!

 When we ask my Dad what he wants for Christmas his reply is always "I don't know" so last year we threatened him that we would get him a leg lamp if he didn't tell us what he wanted this year...so, here it is! Jason was so excited when he found one! We haven't been to Virginia since, but I'm sure he has it displayed by the window in the living room.

Now there are some cool angry birds!

Thanksgiving 2012

 We spent Thanksgiving this year with my parents in Virginia. We missed having Christie and her family there, but she did send me some African stretchy pants that were perfect for the big dinner. Don't be jealous!

 Besides the sick, whiny kids it was a wonderful lunch! Jason even took a close up picture of his plate (which I will not show you) like he did in Europe when he expected the food to be fabulous.

 There was lots and lots and lots of wresling this weekend. Dad's face, went from pink to red to purple. I wasn't sure if he was going to make it at times.

 There was a train exhibit at the Science Museum that all the boys went to while mom and I did our black friday shopping.

 Chase likes trains a lot but is not obsessed with them like Kaleb was at his age.

 We dug up Christie's old trumpet while we were there and the boys had fun "tooting the horn"

 Kaleb actually got some sounds out of it.

Gigi and Papa with their grandsons.

Kaleb's 5th Birthday Party

 Kaleb has been obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog this year.  He loves to be fast and Sonic is all about speed.  I was planning to make a really cool cake that was shaped like Sonic's head but Kaleb didn't like it. He said he wanted Sonic figurines on it...So I did my research and pulled some ideas together and did a blueprint of the above cake. I asked Kaleb if he liked it...He replied with, "What if I don't like it...What if I LOVE it!" Now that made me a happy mommy!  I still can't figure out how to get the cake from coming up into the icing.

 Here is the silly boy group...Can't wait to show this to them when they are all hanging out in high school!

 Since Sonic is all about speed...and b/c we had about 20 boys at our house that needed to run off some energy, we planned different "speed" games to play.  They did a sack race, a 3 legged sac race, an egg on a spoon race. It was really fun to watch too.

 This is Mr. Eggman piñata (made by moi). Mr. Eggman is the villain in the Sonic series, so it was perfectly okay to beat him with a bat!

 Kaleb went first and then every single kid got a turn to beat it a few times.  One of the bigger kids broke the back but candy didn't fall so Kaleb got to hit it again until Jason "helped" him a little and ripped it open.

 The after mass...This was the weekend after halloween, but the kids all seemed to still want candy...

 Kaleb blowing his candles out...

This is Kylie, our across the street neighbor...Kaleb's smile seems to get a bit bigger when she's around.

 Here is a close up of my masterpiece! There are not many party decorations with Sonic (just plates and cups) so I had to improvise. It took me about 20 hours to make this piñata. Jason was very skeptical and kept saying, "It's going to break when the second kid hits it". I was so proud when everyone got a turn! And when you spend so much time doing something you get attached to it...it hurt to see it get mutilated.

Here are the Mr. Eggman eggs for the egg walk. They were a hit with the boys. Some wanted to keep them...I hope no parents found them weeks later under the kids bed...eeeewe! We had a lot of fun and the day was gorgeous. It was about 70-75 degrees on Nov. 3rd and there was a forecast of rain.  It literally started pouring 5 min. after everyone had left. Thank you God for the beautiful day!