Joel is 4!

Joel turned 4 on June 25th and we enjoyed several birthday celebrations throughout the week. The first party was at Grandpa John's house, with my extended families. My dad went all out with great food from the grill and a Thomas cake for Joel with a little train that actually chugged around on top of the cake. The cake was a big hit with Joel and Silas, as were the presents he got from Grandpa and Uncle Tim and his great Grandmas and Grandpa. When Joel opened a card that had a dollar bill inside, he was really excited to be receiving actual paper money. After that, whenever he opened a card, he'd say "No dollar" then immediately close it back up. At first, I thought, "Oh great, he has the wrong attitude about birthday cards already." But then I realized that if you can't READ yet, opening your own birthday cards isn't too exciting, and really, that dollar bill is the best hope you got for something interesting. So I cut him some slack.

Silas and Great Grandpa Leo were very cute together





We had a mini-celebration at Jorie's Aunt and Uncle's house for Joel, where we broke open a "Cars" pinata. The kids loved it, but the pinata proved a bit too tough to break for the little guys, so Uncle Jason finally destroyed it with one powerful blow. Unfortunately, our camera was out of batteries at this point, but if I get some pictures or videos from others who were there (hint hint) I will post them later.

On Wednesday night, Joel's actual birthday, we brought the boys to their favorite destination, the Iowa City Mall and Children's Museum. When we got there, we were disappointed to learn that the museum closes at 6pm on weekdays and it was already 5:55! Ouch! But we took the kids inside and let them play for about 10 minutes, and then we went to the food court to have dinner. The kids ended up having a blast doing other things at the mall, like riding the carousel and playing at the kids' climbing area they have there, so it wasn't a huge deal that the museum closed early. We promised we'd come back another time when we could have more time to check out the museum. They have a new dinosaur exhibit which looked very cool and which I'm sure the boys will have a great time exploring in more depth.

Digging for fossils at the Dinosaur exhibit

Silas loved riding with Stuart Little

Joel is piloting the helicopter





After the mall, we picked up a special birthday cookie treat and came back home and Joel got to open some presents from us.





Finally, on Friday Joel had his first real kids' birthday party, (this is birthday celebration number 4, if you're keeping track) where he invited a bunch of his friends and they got to play at the PlayStation here in Cedar Rapids for a couple hours. The PlayStation is like a McDonald's playplace on steroids and the kids all totally loved running around inside of it, jumping in the balls, sliding down the slides, and basically bouncing off the walls the entire time. Grandpa Jim, Grandma Rhoda, and Aunt Annie and Uncle Justin also came to this party and they enjoyed seeing Joel and Silas and their friends interacting. Annie and Justin will soon be joining us in the land of little kids, with baby Schumacher on the way! We are very excited for them! Annie has also started a blog, so please check it out if you want to follow along with baby Shoe's progress.

The room is all set up, and the boys are anxiously waiting for the party to begin

Joel chose "Cars" as the party theme this year and we got this great cake at Hyvee

The ball pit was one of the highlights of the PlayStation for the kids. These things are pretty rare, nowadays, and I know why! I used to clean the ball pit weekly at Great Odyssey in Carol Stream when I worked there and it was a major pain! We had a huge vacuum that would suck up all the balls into bags made of netting, and then the bags had to be run through another machine that would clean them. It sounds pretty automated, but there were always problems with jams, and the whole process took several hours.





Present opening time was pretty much complete chaos. I think it always is at this age.

And finally, the big present of the week for Joel: