Birthday Party 13 and 3!

This past Sunday we had our traditional Memorial Day weekend combined family birthday party for Mitchell and Grant. I always enjoy inviting our families over and celebrating with them. It is really one of two times that the families come to our house each year and even though it requires work to get the food and the cake ready, I always look forward to it. I am always appreciative of my sister who always shows up early and usually gets stuck making pickle roll-ups for an hour or more and then continues to help me throughout! I definitely hope to pay-back the favor someday.

I guess you could say the boys both got what they desired as far as cake goes. Grant requested MONTHS ago, a "Piston Cup Race Track Cake", and Mitchell's request was a white cake with white frosting. Let's just say Mitch got his all to himself, as Grant's cake required 4.5 cake mixed to complete. It was giant sized, but I had to choice, since it had to be in proportion to the cars from the movie "Cars" that were to go on it, of course:)

A big hit, the "Air Hog" airplane from Uncle Jon and family.

Mitchell's new facebook profile picture!... not:)

Apparently we forgot to teach Grant to blow before his birthday. The air is going straight up, as you can probably tell...

Underwear!

Hooray!! The Benson house is officially a Diaper Free Zone!

Karate Kids

The little guys are officially signed up for 6 more months of karate! We had an introductory 8 classes and then had to decide whether to keep going with it of not. I love the focus/discipline/listening/respect aspect of the sport so much that I just could not say no, despite it being a little pricier than I woud like. We'll see if it pays off I guess:) They both wanted to continue and said they want to "got to a bunch and bunch and bunch of karate classes", so, we will go... every Tuesday and Thursday for the next 6 months!

Mini Maple Grove Vacation

Lately, between the little guys activities and Mitch's activities, early bedtimes for Joel and Grant, late bedtime and friend happenings for Mitch, it seems that it is rare that the 5 of us have the chance to just be together. Hence, we decided (since this past weekend was one of the last totally free weekends of our busy summer), to take just a little get-away together. We only made it about 40 minutes from home, but that was just fine. We booked a room at the Holiday Inn in Maple Grove and had a nice little time.

Thanks GOD for the game room, since at about 6:30 pm, immediately after the large pool had finally opened after someone had thrown-up in it RIGHT before we had arrived, everyone had to evacuate the pool AGAIN because of a tornado warning. This time, the pool was closed for about another hour and a half!

Finally, it was time to swim again!... no more torado warnings, no more sick people in the pool:)

Movie time in the room... "Tangled" was the choice... a princess movie the boys like:)

The special morning treat went over quite well, powdered sugar donuts...can you tell they don't usually get donuts for breakfast!?!

How nice of Grant to bring one to a still sleeping Mitchell (notice the bite out of it).... lol

It was a fun weekend, overall, despite the "pool problems" and aftermath of seriously over-tired kids:)

Baby Grant is THREE!!

We had a great Saturday celebrating Grant's Birthday. I loved our quiet morning at home that started with a birthday donut and gifts. Grant knew exactly what he wanted for his birthday this year... (a "blue with white race car") meaning a stock car from the "Cars" movie, which his dad found (of course), and I believe that our fleet of race cars is now up to 16!
showing me how old he is...
2 race cars, a Chick Hicks trailer, a big Lightning McQueen, and an Imaginext bad guy (Grant calls him a robot, or a monster.

Singing Happy Birthday, round two, when Papa John and Nana Jane came over.







Saturday also marked Day 1 in underwear for Grant, so I will have to post an update on that soon... could it be we are almost a diaper-free house!?

Friends

Joel had a field trip this morning for preschool and Grant was SO sad that he didn't get to go with Joel to Gymnation, but his eyes lit up when I told him that two of his little buddies were going to come over while Joel was gone. He was so proud to have his own friends. These are his buddies Andrew and Will (they were both in his toddler ECFE class this year) and are son's of friends of mine, Daina and Julie. Aren't they cute little buddies!?

Paint!

Thanks to these fun little wooden toys from Grandma Jane...oh how

these boys

just

love

to

paint,



and paint!