Just Add Another Table

Ronny has great friends in his office. We have gotten to know the "guys" over the years as we try to have them over a few times a year for dinner. Our kids love to play with them and get rather excited when they come over. Anytime they have family in town they usually ask if we can have a big dinner. (I see this as quite a compliment personally) Well the first of them defended his dissertation this week and is moving to New York. On Sunday we had all the guys over for a celebration and farewell dinner. Well the group has grown over the years so the last time we had dinner we had it in our community room, this time however it was booked so we had it at our home. The guys now bring their current girlfriends and as Charlie was graduating his father was in town so he naturally joined in.

In total we were expecting 14 adults and 6 kids including our family. Well if you have been to our house you know its not exactly large. In preparing for the night Ronny and I were stressing over where we were going to sit everyone. In the end we borrowed a neighbors card-table and chairs, joined it to ours and were able to sit 6 adults and 5 kids in the kitchen and the rest at the card-tables in the family room. In setting the tables I thought to myself, if Stephanie (Ronny's Mom) can seat 40+ at her house during Christmas surely we can seat everyone for dinner here, just add another table, we can find more room.

I wish we had taken a picture, unfortunately I didn't think that far ahead. It was a great night and everyone had fun. They stayed until 9 at which point they decided to go to a movie allowing Ronny to put the kids down. I was called away earlier to visit a friend in the hospital so I wasn't there to say goodbye. The night started at 5 so they were there a total of 4 hours, they ate a ton and laughed a lot so I consider it was giant success. Good times!

Swimming Lessons, Weddings, and Carpet Cleaning

What do all these have in common? They can all be thwarted by pink eye. We are guessing Sam got pink eye from swim lessons, it presented itself at my cousin's wedding reception, and we had to cancel our appointment for the carpet cleaning and swim lessons today because of it. Chances are the other kids will follow in a day or two. It is in these times we are very grateful for a Papa who can call a prescription in on a weekend, otherwise we would have had to wait until this morning to get him into the doctor for the prescription. After only a day and a half of the drops Sam is looking much better and feeling much better. He is not a big fan of the drops but we manage to get them in. We will of course finish the series off so as to not invite the illness back. Hopefully we can reschedule the carpets soon, they really need cleaning.

We had a great time on Saturday as a family before the pink eye presented itself. We started off going to the Farmer's Market and found a local grower selling pluots. They weren't as sweet as Papa's but the kids were so excited to have them. We then made our way to Portland. We did some shopping and had dinner at IKEA. The store in Portland just opened so it way extremely crowded but the kids had fun playing in the kid room and we all had fun in the cafeteria. You can't beat it when you can feed a family of 6 for under $15 with good food. I was so distracted with everything that I forgot to buy the kid chairs we went for in the first place.

We then went to my cousin Lauren's wedding reception. It was great to see my cousins and do some catching up. Sam and Ben were complete rascals during a family picture, thankfully everyone was patient and understanding. There was another little boy there (I'm not quite sure who he belonged to) who enjoyed running around getting into all kinds of trouble with our boys. They had a blast. The reception was outside in a garden and was beautiful. Lauren does floral arrangements for several hotels and businesses in the Seattle area so you can imagine how great everything looked. I forgot our camera so we unfortunately have no pictures. We noticed Sam had goop in his eye while we were eating cake. We wiped it out not thinking too much of it and then it was back within 5 minutes. By the time we got to the car his eye was pretty swollen. Thankfully he was able to sleep on the drive home.

Joseph's 5 year check-up

Joseph had his 5 year check-up today. He would have much preferred to go to his swim lesson. Joseph passed his eye test with flying colors 20/20 on one eye and 20/15 on the other. The doctor also officially diagnosed Joseph with asthma. So its now in the charts. As of right now its not bothering him when he plays so we will refrain from daily medication for the time being and keep up the nebulizer treatments when he gets sick.

The doctor also looked at his toes. He said they are definitely curved and will be an inconvenience but not worth fixing. Apparently surgery would be involved and 9 times out of 10 they would become infected. I told him we were happy to accept his diagnosis and Joseph will just live with crooked toes, he agreed. He had two shots which he cried through but was willing to sit still for. I told him he is now ready for kindergarten, that didn't seem to be enough to stop his crying and whining but maybe later it will be.

Joseph's 5th Birthday

Saturday was Joseph's 5th birthday. As it was an odd numbered birthday he had a friend birthday party. We sent out 8 invitations and 15 people showed up. Surprisingly 3 of the people who received an invitation didn't come. Joseph on the other hand decided to invite all the neighborhood kids and then of few parents called and invited all the other siblings along as well. So needless to say, we had a full house. It was great fun and Joseph had a blast.

I went and found a Yoda poster so we played "Pin the light-saber on Yoda". Two of Joseph's friends are from Korea. When I was explaining the game I asked if the kids knew how to play Pin the tail on the donkey, they had never heard of it. They asked what else we would be doing at the party, when I mentioned we were going to have cake and ice cream the two bothers looked at each other and shouted "ice cream" in unison. It was so funny. We also had a pinata which almost made it to the very last person before breaking but after so many kids it really didn't have much of a chance. Unfortunately we couldn't find the camera at that point.

I went to the dollar store and found those pool foam noodles, I cut them in half and then in fourths down the center and then wrapped electrical tape around the ends to make each kid their own light-sabers. We sent them all outside to duel while we got lunch together. It was fun watching all of them. Ronny and I were tired after they all went home but I know Joseph had a great time and he made out like a bandit, not hard when there were so many kids. We'll have a talk next time about why we send out invitations in the first place.

Sam and his buttons

Sam has a habit of pushing buttons when he's not supposed to. I don't know if he just can't resist it or if he is more curious and wants to see what happens. Last month at church I was right in the middle of photocopying the YW calendar when Sam reached up and turned off the copier. We had to start all over and right after I started it again he pushed the off button again. He was sent behind the partition after the second time. Well a couple weeks ago I was making chocolate milkshakes for a treat after Sunday dinner. I turned off the blender opened the top to pour it into the cups. As I was reaching for the cups Sam reached up and turned the blender on. As you can imagine chocolate shake went everywhere. Here are a few pictures although they don't give the mess justice. Do I think that this mess will make him think before he pushes another button, not a chance!