Happy Birthday Griffin 9-24

Griffin had an amazing birthday party on Saturday! He had a Star Wars theme, snacks to share and a double decker chocolate chip cookie cake with ice cream! His friends and family were there with him, Porter, Philip, Gaetano, Ally, Ella, Allison, Brandon, Cassandra, Savannah and Alyssa. Mimi, Gumpy, Papa, Nancy, Miss Amy, Aunt Julie, Uncle Andy, Uncle Doug and Baby Jake came too :)

We played some games like "pin the light saber on Yoda" and an asteroid scavenger hunt (candy wrapped in alum foil) and some Star Wars coloring pages. Aside from activities and food, they ran around like cray people! ;)

Here are some pics that I took. My mom got a lot of kid action pictures so I'm sure those will follow soon, she hasn't sent them to me yet.

 Savannah and Yoda "feeling the force"

 Alyssa, Griffin, Cassandra, Cousin Allison, Savannah

 Indiana Jones DS Game from us

 Star Wars action figure from us

 Nerf gun and candy from friend Porter

 More Star Wars from Andy and Julie! (he got shirts too)

 Cool card

 Bedding from Mimi and Gumpy

 cool dancin' monkey paper from Papa and Nancy

 oh ya Nancy...way to go on the cool Nerf Gun!!!!

 R/C Iron Man from Papa and Nancy

Me and Griffin

 New Bedding on :)

More September Fun

Hello!

Well we are keeping ourselves busy and out of trouble (for the most part) around here! School is going well, we only have two weeks until our fall break! I can't wait! Oh, and the kids are really excited too. This is a super busy week, I had Sam's Club shopping yesterday. That is MY first shopping since doctor clearance on Friday. I am sore today from putting everything away. Today is cleaning day. Shane did all the laundry this weekend for me so that was a big help. Wednesday is haircut for me, back to Sam's Club for what I didn't fit on the flatbed cart and shop for our PTO ice cream social! That day is a half day at school so I'll be rushing home, getting kids and then getting homework done and showers before we go to the Family Game/Craft Night, Ice Cream Social at school from 5-7. It should be a lot of fun!

Thursday I have to shop for Griffin's birthday party. His party is Saturday, Star Wars theme. He is pretty excited :) I can't believe he is turning 7. I admit, there were many days I wondered if he'd live to see 5 with a sassy as he is. So, he has surpassed my expectations ;)

Cassandra's class did a big project on Geneology. It was really fun, she wrote stories about her heritage and family recipes, traditions. She made a 3D Family Tree with shamrocks hanging in it with the family names on it. I went to her class for the presentations and brought along the geneology stuff my Great Uncle Joe Frazier had given to me along with some early 1800's pictures. I made my Grandma's pumpkin bread for the class. Mike and Nancy went too, shared some stories as well. Nancy made her family recipe for snickerdoodles :)

Savannah and Griffin are working hard too, we're coming up on parent/teacher conferences soon. Savannah joined school choir and she loves it! The kids are currently in their Percy Jackson and the Olympians phase so they play that ... a lot. It's fun to listen to them though ;)

Shane is good, I think he's glad to have the break from being "me" now. He's still being a big helper though so that is nice. I'm not allowed to lift anything over 15 lbs for 6 weeks so he's got a lot of that duty.

We celebrated my Dad's birthday at Benihana's on Saturday! What a great time :) The kids LOVE that place and our chef was excellent! and so begins the birthday rush....................

Well I have rambled long enough. I will try to get some pictures up soon too.

OXO
wow, I just reread the post and realized how much I repeated from the earlier post :( I'll blame it on post-surgery memory loss LOL

September Randomness!

First of all, Happy Birthday to my dad! I think he is the big 51 today! :)

September kicks off what we affectionately call "the birthday rush" at our house. We have 2 birthdays (minimum) PER month of either our family or immediate family until March. What does this mean? This means lots of fun celebrations to host or go to and lots of saving up earlier in the year to pay for the kids birthday parties. We don't do extravagant parties but we do nice parties with their friends and family :) We are all looking forward to our San Diego trip in November! I am wondering if we'll have the 80 degree temps we had last time we were there or the 50-60 degree temps we had the previous times? I guess not knowing is part of the fun LOL!

Things are rolling along, we had such a nice week of temps below 100. It spoiled me terribly! Now we are back up to 105, 106. I hope it breaks again soon. September is an odd month that way, back and forth with the temps.

I am healing up from surgery pretty well. I feel better a little every day. I graduated from sleeping in the recliner to sleeping in the bed. That was awesome. I still don't comfortably sleep on my side yet but at least the bed is more comfy and cozy than the recliner was. And the funny thing is the recliner was leaps and bounds better than the hospital bed LOL! I see the doctor on Friday for my clearance to drive, etc. I think they also will check my blood to see if the pancreas and liver enzymes are back where they belong with the stones out now.

The kids are good, busy. Savannah joined school choir. She has practice 3 afternoons each week. They are gearing up to perform at the Grandparent's Day Celebration on Sept 24th. That is also Griffin's actual birthday. It will be a busy day! Cassanda is working on a Geneology project at school. Tonight and Thursday we work on her 3D family tree. On Friday she does a presentation and I'm taking in a family recipe she chose (Pumpkin Bread) and some old family photos that my Great Uncle Joe sent me years ago. He worked on the Frazier side heritage back before it was the cool thing to do. He traced the Fraziers back to the early 1700's and some really neat photos to go with it.  Griffin is good, he has had a bad bout with allergies but he's on a nasal spray and an oral med so he's doing better. Tis the season I guess.

Shane is good, he did very well being "mom" for the week I got home from the hospital! He is back for 1/2 to 3/4 days now since I still can't drive. Work is busy, it's budget time :(

So I have a couple of videos to share if they will upload. One is of Alyssa doing "Piggy to market" on my toes. The other is of her doing her "Fudderwhacken" dance she learned from the Alice in Wonderland movie! I hope you like them.

Gall Bladder Surgery :(

Well this isn't the way I planned to kick off my September. I'll keep this brief because I just got home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. Shane took me to the ER on Friday and I was admitted for my Gall Bladder and gall stones in my bile ducts. Thankfully they were able to do the surgery by scope and the ducts were taken care of by a tube down my throat. Even better was the doc who suggested that they do both procedures while i was under rather than doing them separately. You gotta love a doc who thinks :) plus he gave me good drugs LOL

so that is all I have to say for now...I will be back later with other details!

xo