1st Birthday

On July 11th my little baby boy turned 1! We have had an eventful year with him and are so happy to have him in our family. We celebrated the day by getting our "birthday" donuts, playing at the park, going to a friend's birthday party, baby showers (well, that was just mom), babysitting and finally CAKE! We also had a few friends over a few days later for cake and ice cream when Aunt Wendi was in town . What a lucky boy, he got to dig into 2 cakes! Here are some pictures from Manti's birthday festivities....

Just getting started with cake #1.



Messy face after birthday cake #1. He is still so HANDSOME!


Messy face after cake #2. I am not sure what he was doing in this picture. I think he was smiling at the webcam or daddy.



I didn't get a picture of Manti with a birthday donut but Sebastien wasn't shy to show his off. I think he even picked them out for Manti. What a good big brother.

Playing on the swings after eating donuts. It always takes him a minute or so to really enjoy swinging. Luckily I caught him at a happy moment.


We also took a lot of video clips, this is one with Manti trying to share his cake with the camera...

AGAIN!

Once again I find myself way BEHIND in posting about our family adventures. Please forgive me as I try to play catch up. Maybe one of these days I will post things as they happen...

Depot Days

Every year the Train Depot has a big event Memorial weekend called "Depot Days". Sebastien's love for trains has become a big family activity so we decided to go. It was a rainy, cold weekend but we wanted to check it out anyway. Saturday morning they had a breakfast, train rides and a train museum. We got up early and headed out.


The boys and I are enjoying the biscuits and gravy, watermelon and orange juice at Depot Days. I am not the biggest fan of biscuits and gravy but I will admit, it was yummy!

The train rides were cancelled due to the weather but when we walked inside the depot, this is what we saw....
They had train tracks up all over and the electric trains going. Sebastien was in HEAVEN! He stood there for about 10 minutes watching the trains go by. I even got him to turn around for a split second to take a picture.
Troy was as thrilled as Sebastien and walked around all the different booths looking at trains people were selling. They ranged from $3 to $350...
While Troy looked around, I parked the stroller against the wall and the boys just sat there and watched the trains go by. They were so cute!

Next was the museum...they had a lot of cool pictures to look at and also the history of Cheyenne.
This was one of the sections in the museum, I thought it was the perfect spot to take a picture.

They had a small play area for the kids in the museum. Manti liked sitting in the Thomas Train but was really sad when other kids wanted to sit in it and he had to get out.
No surprise here, Sebastien liked playing with the train table. I am still trying to decide if this is really a good thing to have in the museum. Every kid wanted to play with it at the same time and all it did was cause fights and crying...what do you think?

We were also very lucky to be able to tour the repair shop. We got to see the largest operating steam engine! It was in for minor repairs, we loved it! It was HUGE!
Troy and the boys stopped for a second for a quick picture.
Sebastien and Troy got to tour the inside of the steam engine. Sebastien even got to sit in the conductor's seat! He is all smiles...could this day get any better??
While the big boys were touring the trains, Manti and I stood in the shop looking at this...
This was Manti's favorite thing! Sebastien loved all the trains and Manti loved the GIANT ceiling fan. After 4 and a half hours looking at trains we called it quits and headed home for nap time! Sebastien was sad to leave but was so exhausted from all the fun he fell asleep as soon as we got in the car. I think this will be our Memorial weekend tradition as long as we live in Cheyenne.

OH......HAIL!!

This post is late but I still wanted to share it...Troy and I went out to dinner and a movie, kid free, with some friends about a month ago. It was a perfect, sunny day when we went to dinner. An hour or so later when we went to the movie, dark clouds came blowing in very FAST! The movie theater we went to was in downtown Cheyenne. Parking is always a challenge and we had to drive around for a few minutes. Troy tried to drop me off but I was stubborn and said I would just wait and walk with him. As we continued looking for a place to park, it started to rain. I thought to myself "No big deal. We will just walk fast." We ended up about three blocks away from the theater and right as we were getting out of the car it started to HAIL! We had to RUN, and FAST! Of course I was wearing 4 inch shoes and forgot a belt that night so there I was trying to run (trying so hard not to fall) and we got stuck waiting at every crosswalk! There was nothing we could do but laugh. By the time we got to the movie theatre, we were both SOAKED!! I had to go into the bathroom and get a paper towel to ring out my hair while Troy found seats. We sat in a very humid theatre for the next 2 hours and never dried off. Troy said to me, "I bet the next time I say I will drop you off, you will actually get out of the car." He is RIGHT!

Party, Party!

Sebastien's party was centered around trains, big surprise right? :) We found some party supplies for a really good price and had little things for the kids to do outside. We woke up that morning to cloudy, windy, COLD weather. I was NOT happy. I kept hoping all morning that the sky would clear up so we could have a fun party, luckily it did. I was beginning to panic at the thought of 9 boys, 1 girl and 3 babies playing in our tiny house. Here are pictures of the days activities:

Troy is getting the pinata ready. This was a "pull string" pinata, NO HITTING involved. I will admit, it took a lot of the fun out of having a pinata but with so many kids running around it worked out great! We had all the boys stand around the pinata and they each had two or three strings to pull on. The magic string opened the pinata and a little bit of candy fell out. Troy ended up walking in a circle shaking the rest out. It was fun watching the kids get so excited and putting the candy in their bags.

Sebastien doesn't understand that you want to FILL your bag with candy. He found a sucker, opened it up and started eating it. He slowly walked around picking up a few pieces here and there but was more concerned with what all the other boys were getting.

Don't get in the way of 9 boys and 1 girl collecting candy!
Look at all the candy on the ground. It was gone in seconds.

The kids also had bubbles and sidewalk chalk to play with. I don't know how Sebastien managed to get the chalk on the tip of his nose but we all thought it was so cute. I think it was on his face until he had a bath after the party.

Some of the boys running around, throw and kicking balls. I love little boys, they are so easy to entertain!

The birthday cake! It was a big hit with all the kids...and parents too. :)

The birthday boy with his slice of cake.

I think he liked it! (notice the chalk still on his nose??)


I made these "train" cookies for a snack during the party. I had a lot of fun doing it and tried my best to make it look like Thomas the Train, with a number 2 (rather then 1) for how old Sebastien was turning. They were very yummy!

We just want to say "thank you" to all of Sebastien's friends for making his special day such a success! We didn't have any major problems with all the kids, the weather was perfect and fun was had by all. (I think!)

Happy Birthday Sebastien!

(Just a WARNING....this post is a little lengthy)

We just celebrated Sebastien's 2nd birthday on May 14th and had so much fun. We decided to start a new family tradition this year and that is decorating the house the night before a birthday. We put the boys to bed and then hung streamers in the family room and dining room above the kitchen table. Right now Sebastien is very interested in trains. We found a really cool train track at Once Upon A Child, not really knowing what it did we bought it anyway. As we were decorating the house we decided to put the train stuff together and have it on the kitchen table for Sebastien's big surprise. It came with a little microphone and you to tell the train to "go" or "stop". It also has four different buttons you can push to give the train a destination to go to. We put a present at each stop and thought it would be fun to have Sebastien open them when the train stopped. I think Troy and I played with it for about 15 minutes that night, we knew we wouldn't have a chance to once Sebastien saw it.

When Sebastien woke up the morning of his birthday we took him downstairs to see his surprise. I wanted to record him but I couldn't figure out how to take a video, Troy came to the rescue and I sat with Sebastien on the stairs. The closer he got to the bottom of the stairs he could see the streamers in the kitchen and said "oh, look mom". That got him SO excited he could hardly stand it. He went down one more step and then it happened....he saw the TRAIN TRACK! He sprinted into the kitchen and yelled "TRAIN" as loud as he possibly could. It was so cute! He ended up playing with the train for about 20 minutes, then we took him into the other room to open his presents. He had so much fun opening his new train movies, sandals, a cool bubble machine/bubbles and a puzzle.



We also decided another birthday tradition would be to go get a donut for breakfast, and that we did. Troy took Sebastien in to pick out his very own birthday donut and then we went to the train depot to watch all the trains come in.



This was Sebastien's lucky day. He not only got to see trains, but a fire truck and airplanes too...the Air Force C130's to be exact!






Manti broke out in a nasty rash that day and we ended up in urgent care (the base clinic was closed). After an hour of waiting, 15 minutes of Manti screaming because the doctor weighed him and then looked at him, we found out he had a virus. With all the symptoms he had that week, I knew that!! Another wonderful visit to the Dr's office, wasting time!



Anyway, after the visit to the doc, it was time for lunch. We don't usually go to the play area at McDonald's but since it was Sebastien's special day we decided that would be another fun thing for him. Is this boy spoiled or what?? The rest of the day was spent at home, playing outside and having fun.
There was so much excitement that day, Sebastien pooped out at 7:30!

We left his birthday decorations up for a couple of days for a little birthday bash with his friends(I didn't want to decorate twice). Anytime he woke up he would come downstairs, look at the streamers and get so excited. It was so fun to see the excitement on his little face. He is such a wonderful boy, we truly are blessed to have him in our lives. We love you Sebastien!!

(birthday party post to come soon)

Bubbles

Sebastien loves to play with bubbles. This was the first time he had done it by himself. He loved spinning in circles and seeing the bubbles fly away.

I love the smile on his face. He was so proud of himself for doing it without our help.


The bubbles fly away really fast. You can't see any in this picture because the wonderful Cheyenne winds blew them away before I could take the picture. Sebastien watched the bubbles fly away until they popped. It was so cute.