Birthday, Part 4: Sock Monkey Sweatshop

This post will bring us to our final installment of the birthday mini series. I promise. Then we're on to other things. What those things are, I cannot remember right now. It'll come back to me.

At some point when I decided what I, err...we, wanted the boys' birthday theme to be, I decided I wanted to make sock monkeys for favors. I love doing favors, it's not necessary for all parties, but I think its an easy gesture to show your guests that you thought of them and wanted to give them something fun to take home. Since we're already juicy enough and honestly I can't think of a kid nowadays that needs more sugar in their diet, I did not want the favors to be candy. Not pretending we don't eat bad for us goodies, but if anything is making my butt bigger, it's going to be these. And besides, I already did candy last year.

So how did I decide on the theme and favors?

Each year we do professional shots a little before Thanksgiving for the Christmas card and to have and frame and see how much better looking we get each year. I just re-read that sentence and I made it sound like its some grand tradition, but bear in mind it's only been two years and we only do it because we found a photographer in Athens that offers a short family photoshoot for a steal. She does crazy good work. See how cute the boys were November of 2008? Try not to pinch the cheeks through your screen.

And here are two of my favorite from 2009.

 

  

In the batch of 2009 pictures, there was a very very cute picture of the boys playing with stuffed animals. I had originally wanted to use a pic of them playing with a giant 4 foot stuffed dog, but the picture only showed Cole, and that wouldn't be fair to Grady, now would it? So, next best option were the two pictures below. Seeing the monkeys reminded me of a craft I saw on one of my favorite blogs. You might know that blog as the source for the fudge pie recipe I mentioned back in January. [NumNum]. 

  

These pictures and those monkeys swirled around in my head until I decided that monkeys would be the theme, and monkeys we would make. I said this to Keith in a very dramatic manner, as I imagined Moses might have done when he came down from the mountain with his two stone tablets and ten commandments. My memory is a little fuzzy on how the Jews reacted, but Keith barely looked up from the couch. Perhaps I've overused my dramatic room entry, and it's no longer effective?

Anyway, for weeks I planned the monkeys in my head. Invites went out, and I decided against the monkeys. RSVP's rolled in, and I decided to make monkeys. A day or so passed, and again I decided I would not make them. And so on and so forth for several weeks until the day before Grammie and Grampie arrived for the boys birthday. That morning a burst of energy hit me and I thought, let's do it! 15 monkeys can't take that long, right? And, as Keith likes to tell me "think of something to keep Grammie busy". Done and done! I bought socks and gathered supplies. 

Fast forward one day to when the elder Ellermans arrived. They played all day, and after dinner, were put to work. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised at the enthusiasm the men showed in starting the monkeys. I was pretty sure at the time the enthusiasm was there because they had no clue how long it would take, but I wasn't about to squash anyone's mojo. See how nicely everyone is working?

 

At some point the giggles overtook the elders and they took to comparing sizes. It doesn't take much to entertain these two.

We had a nice system of machine sewing, stuffing and assembling of monkeys set up, and the 4 of us spent the better parts of two nights watching Olympics, complaining about the skinniness of the sewn monkeys' arms, and the pros and cons of various monkey stuffing objects. Seeing that I waited until the last minute to get this project started, there was no way all the monkeys would get done without the team effort. We all toiled, but Grammie definitely took one for the team and stayed up two late nights and one long Saturday sewing limbs onto bodies and eyes onto heads. Thanks Grammie! A lesser crafter might not have been able to let someone else do all the heavy lifting, but I was blessed with my dad's attention span and my mom's ability to boss people, so I felt very comfortable delegating. I imagine Martha does the same thing.

In the end the monkeys turned out pretty cute, no?

Birthday, Part 3: Party time

Before I tell you about the boys' birthday party, I'm sure you all want to know that I got to hold Baby Alex again this past weekend. Yes, he loves me as much as he did before and I got a shoulder snuggle. Love me some baby Alex. Not heard of Alex? Click here.

Now, on to my no-longer-cuddly children. Keith and I are strong believers in celebrating with friends and family. It's an opportunity to sit back and think about how grateful we are to be part of a loving family and to be expanding the family with two little ones of our own. Lots of people have their own opinions about having [or not having, rather] birthday parties for little ones who don't even know its their parties, and I'm not even going to go into my opinions of those people. To each his own, and for us that means a fun celebration. And let me tell you, the benefits of twins are slowly starting to show themselves. One party a year? Easy peasy.

So we had the party at one of those bouncy places. Talk about easy. Show up, have fun, eat, go home to let tired kids pass out. Whoo!

I'll tell you who else was tired. Keith. Grady has long since decided that one does not need to climb the stairs by ones self when you can convince an adult to carry you. G-baby is no dummy.

Cole on the other hand has developed a very independent streak, and prefers to do it himself. As the person who would normally carry him, I'm totally OK with that.

Here is Adam helping Cole.

Grady did spend a lot of time on the slides, but you want to know where else he spent time? Walking around with 'Manda.

Party animal Piper and her little sister Gracie, and their parents Justio and T-spot, were also there to celebrate. These two girls are so cute and so tiny. Below you can see their Momma, T-spot, helping Cole up and onto a slide. T-spots girls, and T-spot herself are both slight little things, and hoisting our dude up was no small effort. Lift with your legs, Tracy! Sara was the spotter.

When you have twins, you tend to find other people in a similar situation so you can commiserate. Here are one of our twin set buddies. Morgan, and her brother Mason. Morgan took to the slides, while Mason took to the chalkboard.

Cousins on the Bothma side,  having a good time. Cole, Rhett and Greg.

Entertaining your little cousin will wear a dude out, and sometimes you gotta just chill.

Rhett does not do much chilling. Where does he get the energy?

After working up an appetite, we blew out candles. Aunt Karen is holding Cole, Dada is holding Grady [in orange shirt]. I unfortunately did not get a better picture than this.

Morgan is our organizer, and took it upon herself to pass out the party favors, sock monkeys. Thanks Morgan!

Here is Grady, checking out pictures Ms. Carla took. He loves the camera.

In the blink of an eye, the party was over. We had a great time, thanks for coming to celebrate the boys' first two years with us, everyone.

A Different Birthday

Interrupting the marathon birthday celebration recap for a birthday of a different, but not unrelated person: Aunt Karen! The ole lady turns &* this year, so join me in wishing her a very happy birthday!

The boys say Happy Birtay, BellyMomma!

Birthday, Part 2: Snow

 

Friday brought us several inches of pretty snow. Snow that thankfully melted and let everyone make it to the party birthday the next day.

Birthday, Part 1: Visitors

Just like Christmas brings Santa, the boys' birthday brought us visitors in the form of Grammie and Grampie. Hello and welcome! 

What? you brought WackaMole with you? Sweet. Let's play so Momma can get dinner made.

 

And then we’ll watch some channel with to see how the stocks are doing.

And since it IS the boys’ birthday, we blew out some candles, and devoured the cupcakes. Thank you Keith for deleting the picture of Grady throwing a complete fit when I touched his cupcake. I wasn’t going to eat it, Grady, I was just going to cut it into pieces for you.

Presents! This was one of the first times the boys were excited to open gifts and they even said “open, open” as they started to tear into the packages. What a nice change from the blank stares they would give us the last 2 years during gift opening.

 How old are we now? Not 1 anymore, but…

2..! Or, touchdown, interpret it however you want.

Grammie brought other goodies we enjoyed playing with, including Playdo. Check out our awesome copcop [helicopters]. 

And, the fireman hats! We love these hats almost as much as we love bear.

Grammie and Grampie were here for a great weekend visit, so you’ll see more of them in the next few posts. We had a great time visiting with them and are always happy to see their relationships with the boys continue to grow. And all that mushy and sentimental stuff is great, but you know what the best part is of Grammie and GRampie visiting? Letting that relationship grow as Keith and I sleep in. Relationships are best developed at 7AM, right?. Thanks G & G!

Boys' Birthday Trip

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we like to travel. A lot. Give us a decent airfare, and we’ll think up any excuse to go to a city. Or town. Or hamlet. Or almost-third worldish country. Really, we’ll go anywhere to see how people elsewhere live.

We’re also hoping that we are raising two little men who will enjoy traveling as much as we do. Not sure there’s much we can do to foster a love for travel other than dragging them all over the US with us, so that’s the approach we’re taking. When the boys were nearing their first birthday, we decided that each year we’d take them somewhere new for their birthday. Keith and I already have a similar tradition, where we take a short vacation together instead of buying each other Christmas presents. We love this tradition since it allows us to spend time together and see new places, and while we’ll probably still give the boys gifts for their birthday, we wanted to start this tradition for them.  The plan is to explore further and further away from Atlanta as they get older, and Keith even has some grand visions of them camping in the Okefenokee. Note I said THEM, not US. Momma will be staying with Sessy in Savannah this weekend, thank you very much.  I don’t do swamps.

Since the boys aren’t quite aware of where we go, and we decided to not go very far, and we rented a cabin in the north Georgia Mountains.  It was a cold and gray weekend, which seemed appropriate to spend in the mountains in a wooden cabin, no?

So we packed up and headed just shy of Blue Ridge & Elijay. As we unpacked, the boys explored and did what boys do…find cars and play, naturally.

 

And sit atop furniture that contains those cars.

And we did some back porch sittin’. Grady loves the rockers. 

When it came time to hop in the car to go see a waterfall, the boys took off running after something.

Up the dirt road they went.

And then it became apparent what they were chasing after, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Dogdog! See the little dark speck at the top of the dirt road? Someone in another cabin let their little Chihuahua out for a potty break, and BigEars [as I called him] came near our cabin only to be chased back to his cabin by to eager little boys. DOGDOG, COME, DOGDOG! Echoed over the foothills as Keith and I chased the boys. Or, Keith chased the boys and I laughed and took pictures. 

Keith and I are easily distracted, and while we were trying to stop the boys from getting into mud on the sides of the road, Keith noticed the frost line on the mountains. See below. Pretty, no? And pretty cold.

Grady was not happy with their DOGDOG excursion being cut short.

 

We had a fun ride to the waterfall, and along the way saw lots of cows. MOOOOOO-wah says a cow, according to the boys. MOOOoooo. And horses. Hortses. HOH-ses.

See? A cow!

Several fields of farm animals later, we arrived where we wanted to be.

We [Keith, he’s really the brains of the operation] figured the walkways up to the waterfall would be frozen over, so we drove to the top to enjoy the view down.

Not sure if Grady understood what “stay on the sidewalk” meant, but he did so.

 

Appears that Keith did not know what it meant.

 

The walkways were indeed frosty.

 So we looked at the creek that turns into the waterfall. Wah-tah! OOOhhhhh. Wah-tah.

I have an overwhelming fear of the boys falling into water. Fall from a piece of furniture, no problem. Fall down stairs? Can handle that. But into water? Sends my heart into palpitations. Consequently, most of the pictures of the boys near the railing have me following them with outstretched arms.

 

Yeah, let Momma hold you, G-baby. Much better.

Or, stand between Dada’s legs.

Here’s the view, and why I was so terrified.

Once we were cold enough, we hopped back into the car and drove to the bottom to get one more final glimpse of the waterfall.  

And so we come to the first of a few random sidenotes. SIDENOTE: Grammy is a Reece. As in, her maiden name is Reece. It was an option for a baby name for us, had we ended up with triplets. [pretty sure Karen’s heart just had palpitations. Dodged that bullet, huh?]. On the drive to Amicalola we noticed the Reece name all over the place. See.

Neat, we thought.

Looking at waterfalls will built up an appetite, and we saw several signs for the Pink Pig near the cabin, so that’s where we headed next. Not gonna lie, Keith and I felt that there was a 50/50 chance that the Pink Pig is either BBQ, or a local strip club with a Miss Piggy theme [to each his own, people]. 

It was the former, thankfully, and we partook in some decent food. Decent. Not great. The funniest part of the meal is when Cole pointed at the menu with the logo [above] on it and said COW! I replied with “no, that’s a pig. Pig”. He squinted his eyes and looked at me like someone needs to learn her animals, and with the same teacher-ish tone told me COW, COOOOW. Hahaha. 

Speaking of learnin' things, this brings me to the second sidenote: At some point in the weekend we also stopped at a local park, but couldn’t play for long because it was icy and muddy. The playground was next to a pool, and I couldn’t help but notice an error on one of their signs. Bonus points if you can find it. Hint: In one sign the word “personal” is used properly, in another, it is not. 

We actually didn’t have the camera with us when we stopped at the park, but this was so funny to us that we doubled back the second day to get the picture.

 Near the park is a choo-choo! We stopped and let the boys run around near, and on, the choochoo. The choochoo does run, and when the boys are older and it’s choochoo season [March-December, if you’re wondering], we’ll go back for a ride. I think that will make for a fun family outing, and even better if we can get some cousins to come join us…hint…hint…

 

Grady loved the choochoo.

 Cole loved being held. If Keith had angled the shot just a little to the left, you would have seen the “stay off the engine” sign. Grady lives on the edge.

Now, if you ever see any of our pictures, and you notice in the progression of the blogpost that there are more and more pictures of babies being held, [as opposed to walking by themselves] it’s a good sign that boys were getting cranky and parents were starting the mental countdown to bedtime. I should say that “cranky” is very relative, and compared to one year ago, the boys hardly get cranky at all. A little whiney, sure, but overall they’re mostly pleasant. When they’re not sassing you for not knowing the difference between a cow and a pig.

After walking, and playing, and seeing wah-tah, we headed back and sat by the fire.  HOT! HOT! And just like that, it was bedtime and the end of a very fun weekend with our boys. Next year, we’re thinking Disney World. 

A final sidenote: When it’s freezing outside, and you let your husband talk you into skinny dipping in the hot tub on the cabin’s back porch after the kids go to bed, it’s very important that you do at least one, if not all three of the following things: 1) take your clothes outside with you, 2) make sure the door doesn’t lock behind you, or 3) know where the cabin owners keep a spare key. Thankfully Keith knew #3, or else this blog entry would have had an entirely different tone.

Happy birthday boys! We look forward to many Boys Birthday Trips so we can explore this world together.