Happy 2nd Birthday, Will

I don't know what to say about Will. I don't think God could have blessed us with a sweeter child. He is the gentlest, kindest, and most sensitive little thing that I have ever seen. It was quite a shock when we found out he was coming, my pregnancy with him was very challenging, life was chaotic when he was born, and yet I cannot imagine my life without him. I wouldn't give up one second of these past two years with him for anything in the world and I am so humbled and so grateful to God for this most perfect gift that He has given our family.

He has changed so much even in these past few months. His talking is kind of blowing me away. He can sort of have a conversation with me now. It is quite odd. I keep expecting him to be a baby and then he does these grown up 2 year old things that catch me off guard. He loves to dance, play music, play with his trains, kick his soccer ball, play in the pool, and have puppet shows.

He is devastated if he thinks you are mad at him and will throw himself on you and say, "I so sowweeee, Mommy!!!" His favorite books are The Big Hungry Bear, Jamberry, and Goodnight Moon. His favorite songs are "Oh God, You are My God" and "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. Yes. You heard me right.

He drinks more orange juice than any other kid I have ever known. His favorite cartoon is Cailou and he has to sleep with his monkey, his puppy, and three pacis. He loves to pray before bedtime and can't sleep unless you tuck him in, "Snug as a bug in a rug."

He loves bowtie pasta and blueberries. His favorite game is hide and seek, but he doesn't like you to jump out at him. He will always say. "Don't scare me, Mommy. Dat not nice." He adores his big sister and his world revolves around her. When she is in a good mood, he is the happiest little guy in the world. But when she is in a bad mood, it sends him over the edge.

He could play with his play dough all day if you would let him. He would rather be outside than anywhere else. He splashes too much in the bathtub. He likes his puppy pajamas the best. His favorite sippy cup is his green one.

He loves to give hugs and kisses.

He is my heart and Bennett is my soul.

Happy Birthday, little one. I hope you know every single day of your life that you are so loved.

Road Warriors and Parade Marchers

Here we go again.....

We are about to leave on a cross country trek. We are going to load up the Crimson Express and drive 18 hours to Colonial Beach, VA to spend the 4th with family. We will spend a week there and then drive 13 hours down to Alabama. I am going to hang out there with the kids while Rob flies to Africa for two weeks, and then we will drive 14 hours back to Kansas.

A total of 45 hours. Two toddlers. One Golden Lab. And lots of Advil.

And before you even think about robbing our house, we have someone painting while we are gone, our best friends staying here while their son is in a baseball tournament, and lots of neighbors watching. So, go ahead. Try to steal our 24 inch Panasonic television. It won't happen, you would be burglars.

Everyone asks me, "WHY????" Why not fly?" It's simple. We like it. We save a lot of money believe it or not, we like being together as a family, we can bring as much as we want and not worry about keeping it small for the plane, the only people we annoy are each other and not other passengers, we can bring our dog with us, etc.... It's the only way to travel.

One cool thing that has resulted from all of our driving is that my kids have been to a whole lot of states. Granted, most have been just driving through, but I think we have eaten or used the bathroom in all of them. That's how we roll. So far they have been to-

Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Plus Bennett has been to Louisiana and Texas courtesy of her visit to see her Aunt and Uncle when she was 6 months old.

And my kids will pass through North and South Carolina in a few weeks on their way to Alabama, so add two more to the list.

16 for Will and 18 for Bennett. Not bad for a 2 and 3 year old.

So, here we go again. We finally caved on our last road trip to West Virginia and let them watch movies on a DVD player. Sigh.... we made it as long as we could. But they are only for road trips. And we do try to limit them even then. But I will say, it has made our trips a whole lot smoother. Societal peer pressure wins again!

Oh, and one final note about our trip. It will take us two days to get to the beach. Do you know what those two days happen to be? My son's birthday and my wedding anniversary. :-( That stinks. Majorly.

Anyhoo, moving on. My kids were in a parade today! Kind of. A little parade with their fellow Adventure Camp campers. I wore my red, white, and blue and cheered along the parade route. This is what I saw.

The parade begins!

And here come my two adorable redheads riding in the bye bye buggy!

Bennett looks so happy to be in the parade! Look closely at Will. He has spotted me and my Mama's Boy is about to have a full blown melt down.

Can you all see Will turning around trying to find me? Look at that sweet little face peeping around the corner. He kills me. He just does.

Bennett has now decided to get out and walk and Will has had a double whammy. He can't get out to hug his Mommy and his sister has abandoned him. It becomes too much.

He's done. Full blown melt down. The saddest little parade marcher on the route.

He sees me. It's over.

But, wait! Is that a lollipop? It's all good now. Happy days are here again. Mommy who?

And of course Bennett was happy as a lark. She loved the attention and all of the pomp and circumstance. She was thrilled and has talked all afternoon about being in a parade. Love that girl.


Okay, off to pack. Lots to do. Crazy crazy few weeks ahead of us. But here is one final picture of Will that I had to share. Here he is the day after his party enjoying his new Thomas pajamas and his new train set. This is about as good as it gets for Will Webster.

Will's 2nd Birthday DIY Choo Choo Extravaganza

Okay, let's face it. Birthday parties are expensive. Too expensive. Especially when you just want to have a special day celebrating your child. So, Rob and I set a very tight budget for Will's birthday and almost made a game of how much we could do within that budget. We ended up going a little bit over, but we still had an awesome celebration for our little Will for a very reasonable price.

I downloaded a DIY party kit from a shop on Etsy. They send you everything you need in a PDF file. Granted, it was a lot of work cutting everything out, but the whole kit was $15. So, we spent $15 on all of the decorations except for the balloon wreaths which I made for only $3 each. I usually go all out on food, but we cut way back and only did hot dogs and sandwiches. I made the cake myself and I served food that I was able to get on sale with coupons.

I had planned on doing a watermelon bowl, but watermelons were expensive and raspberries were on sale. I had a lot of coupons for dip-n-dot ice cream, so we went with that instead of the regular ice cream that we normally use for parties. I typically fill coolers with canned soda, but I got 2 liters for 99 cents each, and so on and so forth. That kind of adjusting and not quite doing what I would have liked to do, but going with sale items saved us a lot of money.

Rob and I also made a train for Will out of cardboard. We downloaded plans, grabbed some old boxes, and voila! The kids loved it and we just spent some money on cheap paint samples from the paint store. Again, it took a lot of time, but I would rather spend time than money any day.

And the best part? Doing something special for our William. I would do anything in the world for him, so just having close friends over to share in how much he means to us means more than anything.

I sent out these invitations a few weeks ago. They came in the PDF file that I downloaded. I printed them out and cut them and there you go. Same with the envelopes. I had never cut my own envelopes, but there's a first time for everything.


And a little extra on the back glues on with my glue gun. Very very homemade. Maybe a little to much. :-) But fun nonetheless.

I always have to set up a little area honoring the birthday boy or girl. I have Will's ridiculously up to date scrapbook there. Seriously. It is complete through May 2011. I may have a touch of OCD when it comes to scrapbooks. And in the middle is the video we do each year for the birthday boy/girl. I glue CD sleeves to the backs of their scrapbooks each year and then put their videos in the sleeves.

A birthday banner I printed out and then strung with some ribbon I had in my craft box.

When I scrapbook I always have tons of leftover pictures that I never use, so I recycled them into this cute little 2 to hang on our wall.

Tags for all of the cups. I think they were better in theory than practicality, but it was a cute idea.

Couldn't resist.

The perfectionist in me doesn't see the cuteness in the picture. All I can see is that some napkins weren't turned the right way. Grrr.... But still, chew chew? Come on! Too cute.

Sandwiches for the little tykes using the train cutter I use at home to make Will's Sandwiches.

My train cake. It looked a little better in my head than it did on the platter, but I had fun making it. I used angel food cake and pound cake as the train cars because I thought they would frost easier. It honestly didn't taste as good as regular cake, but I wanted to avoid crumbs.

A balloon wreath hanging on an inside door in our kitchen.

And another one on the front door welcoming guests.

Rob made the train tracks to invite guests into the house.

And finally, the best part. The train Rob and I made out of cardboard for Will. He LOVED it!! Rob and I had a blast pulling it out of the garage a night when the kids were in bed. It took us a week to make it and paint it, but it was such a fun project to work on.

And here's the birthday boy himself enjoying his new digs. I wish I had a video camera on when he first saw it. His gasp of delight was worth every second we spent on it.

A better shot of the train with all of the cars as the birthday guests started to arrive. Please pardon the dead grass. Sigh.... my husband and I may be creative, but please don't call on us to work in your yard. You will be very disappointed.

Side note. I really love that Will has different friends than Bennett. Of course she knew everyone there and adored them, but I kept the party small and only invited specific friends and adults that Will loved. Some were his best friends (Rachel, Levi, Ridley, Brooke, etc....) and some were adults that he talks about and wants to see (Mrs. Shelby, Aunt Mary, Uncle Terry, etc....) It was awesome having friends here that truly love my little boy and that he loves in return.

Bennett was so happy to see the party guests as well.

Here is sweet little Rachel checking out the digs. Will loves his best buddy and her Mom, Mrs. Krista. He wants to go see them all the time.

This isn't Will. This is Ainsley. Just in case you were confused.

Fisher and Carter checking out the digs. They are unsure of their findings.

Our attempt to get all of the kids in the train did not work so well. So, here are some of them clearly looking happy at the thought of a group shot.

Of course Bennett and Levi found each other right away and attempted to ride off into the sunset in the Webster express.

Brooke enjoying the ball pit we set up for the little ones.

Can someone please tell Crosby to stop growing up? I cannot talk about how much older he looks in the picture. I love this shot of him and his beautiful Mommy.

Daddy with the birthday boy.

Dinner time! Thank you Levi for being the only one to actually smile for the camera.

Time for gifts. Will wasn't too sure about opening his presents, but fortunately he had a lot of little helpers.

This is looking promising....

.....but opening gifts is a lot of hard work. I'm pooped.

Cake time!! The kids were just a teensy bit excited. I really need to post the video of them jumping up and down and screaming for cake!

My parents joined us from Alabama on Skype so they could be a part of the festivities. Sniff.... snifff... It's hard being so far away from home.

Levi says, "Enough with the skyping business. Let's eat cake!"

Will got extremely shy when we were singing to him. Bennett though this was hysterical. I don't think she's ever had a shy day in her life.

This train cake was a hit with the kids. Again, the texture and type of cake I chose to make didn't work the best, but the kids loved choosing which train car they wanted. Definitely a blast.

Love these friends who are my family in Kansas.

Here is "Aunt Mary" and "Uncle Terry" with the birthday boy. They truly are our family here in Kansas and I really don't know what we would have done the past few years without them. My children adore them and think of them as their family members.
We were shocked that Will let Terry feed him. He stopped letting us feed him at 12 months. Seriously. So Terry kind of rocked here.

Enjoying cake and ice cream on the back porch.

What??? Is Levi in the train car with another woman? What is this? Bennett may need to step up her game.

But can you blame him? Look at beautiful Ridley. She's a sweet one, that's for sure.

My daughter dragged her horses outside, of course, and insisted they take train rides. Here's Will taking a break from a long evening by petting Beauty.

Me and my girls. Love you ladies!

Rob with our dear friend, Terry Haines.

As the party was winding down, even the babies were getting in the action. Walker decided he needed a ride on the Webster Express.

I posted this picture on here for two reasons. 1- Levi is STILL in the train car with Ridley. Bennett should be getting nervous. 2- The horse looks like he wants to kill someone.

Final jumps on our brand new bounce house. Thank you Craig's List.

And final swings on the hammock for Caleb and Fisher.

Train whistles to thank everyone for coming to the party.

And final hugs from Mommy.

And kisses.


What a wonderful evening. A very fun party that was done on a very tight budget using coupons, sale ads, my own craft supplies, and a lot of time. But we had a blast doing it.

I have to end by saying that when we moved here, I was 3 months pregnant with Will. I had only met a few people by the time he was born and it was a time that was very transitional and a little lonely. So it meant so much to have a home filled with people who loved my little boy and who wanted to be here to celebrate him. I teared up watching him play with his friends and hug the adults who love him. There isn't a better feeling in the world.