Good To Know He's Learning Something...

At the grocery store tonight, Logan helped me count the gallons of milk in our cart:

Logan: "One...Two...Three! Just like me! I'm three!"

Summer: "Yeah! That's right!"

Logan: "And the Cheetah Girls have three, and the Jonas Brothers have three!"

Who says you can't learn anything from the Disney Channel!

Logan's Potty Party

Logan filled his potty chart!!! That's over 88 stickers for using the potty! He has even been wearing underwear at night and keeping them dry. I think it's safe to say that Logan is potty trained!Logan chose to go to Chuck E. Cheese last night to celebrate this big milestone. Yay, Logan! We are so proud of you!

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

...Andrew had a birthday party!

As each guest arrived, we taped a Star Wars character to their back. They had to ask each other only 'yes' or 'no' questions in order to guess who they were. Then they got to wear their character on their front.

Hello, Princess Leia!

To test out our Younglings' shooting skills, each one had a chance to sit in the "pilot seat" to try to hit the space ships.

Once they proved their shooting skills, they were asked to save the Universe by destroying the Death Star. (Bryan painted this Death Star, by the way. Awesome, huh?!)

The next mission was to follow clues to rescue 10 Jedi action figures who were being held captive in various places throughout the house.
Luke Skywalker was freezing until these young Padawans came to the rescue!

For dinner, we had "Pizza the Hutt" and "Yoda Soda".

Logan got pretty upset when Andrew opened his presents: "I don't have any presents in my hands!"

Good thing Nana was there to make it all better!

The Padawans had passed all their tests, so they were presented with balloon "lightsabers." For practice, they were told to use nothing but the Force and their lightsabers to keep a balloon from touching the ground...

...and as you can imagine, all chaos broke loose!

The birthday Boy, in his best Jedi pose!

We ran out of time for the TIE Fighter cakes, so we sent one home with each guest, along with a little Darth Vader backpack ($1.00 at Target!!!), Star Wars goodies, pretzel "lightsabers", and their balloon lightsaber.

Jedi Treats

This year, I wanted to make a Darth Vader cake for Andrew's Star Wars birthday party. Andrew, on the other hand, wanted a Darth Maul cake. Wow! I didn't think I could handle that, so we kept thinking. Finally we agreed on individual mini TIE Fighter cakes.

From Wikipedia: "TIE fighters are fictional starfighters in the Star Wars universe. Propelled by Twin Ion Engines (hence the TIE acronym), TIE fighters are depicted as fast, fragile starfighters produced by Sienar Fleet Systems for the Galactic Empire."

Whew! I feel geekier already!

I made mini bundt cakes and drizzled them in vanilla frosting, then topped each with an Oreo, decorated as the window and piped vanilla frosting stars around the window.
Nana covered graham crackers in chololate and trimmed them to the shape of the wings. The wings were then attached to the ship cockpits with vanilla rolled wafer cookies (Pirouettes).
Look at all the chocolate covered scraps! DARN! Someone's going to have to eat those!
Here's our little fleet of fully edible TIE Fighters. What Jedi wouldn't love to devour one of these?
Nana dipped some pretzels in red and blue chocolate for awesome "lightsabers" for the guests to take home.

Sneak Peak of Andrew's Cakes

May the Force be with me!

Yeah...It's THAT cold!

That's ice on the INSIDE of our window!

School was actually cancelled today. Not because of the snow, but beacuse of the COLD!!! Really.

Hannah's First Steps

Guess who took her first steps today?!


Hannah's First Steps from Summer Anderson on Vimeo.


Untitled from Summer Anderson on Vimeo.

I don't get it!

My mom and I were comparing the Twilight book and movie today, discussing what we liked and didn't like about the movie, when Andrew walked in.

Andrew: "Are you you guys STILL talking about Twilight?! I've seen like a thousand commercials and it doesn't look interesting AT ALL!"

Splish Splash

Don't you like fun?!!

Logan: "Mom? You wanna play with me?"

Summer: "Sure. What should we play?"

Logan: "How 'bout LegoAna Jones (Lego Indiana Jones) on the Wii?"

Summer: "How 'bout something else? I don't really want to play Wii right now."

Logan: "But MOM, it's FUN!
DON'T YOU LIKE FUN?!!"

My Silly Logan

Logan: "Hey Mom, come take a look at DARTH SILLY!"

P.S. YES, those are UNDERWEAR he's wearing! Day THREE of no accidents! Yay Logan!

Just a Little POTTY Update...

I know you're all DYING to know how things are going on the potty front! Well, there has been a lot less fighting about sitting on the potty and a lot more stickers on his potty chart. On occasion, he has even been going without us asking him to! I think he only had one accident today (and we were outside playing, so I'm not really going to count that). And the most exciting news of all - yesterday...drumroll, please...WE GOT SOME POOPY IN THE POTTY! Woo-Hoo!

The things you get excited about as a parent!

Happy 7th Birthday, Andrew!

For his birthday dinner, Andrew asked for Italian Chicken and homemade cinnamon rolls.

Name: Andrew Bryan Anderson
Age: 7
School Teachers: Mrs. Bates and Mrs. Devine
Best Friends: Noah W. and Brian L.
Favorite Food: Italian Chicken
Favorite Book: The Iron Giant by Ted Hughes
Favorite Activity: swimming and playing Wii, especially Lego Indiana Jones
Favorite Movies: Star Wars (of course!) especially Episode III:Revenge of the Sith
Favorite TV show: The Suite Life on Deck
Favorite Website: Poptropica
Favorite Colors: red and gold
Favorite School Subject: PE and Science
When I grow up I want to be: an engineer
What I like best about myself: I do really well in school.
Do you feel different now that you're seven? not really, no.

What would we do without you, Drew? You are the best big brother we could ever wish for for Logan and Hannah. You are so patient and loving with them! You help your Dad and I around the house and always have a hug and a kind word for us. Your sweet cards and drawings always make me smile! We are so proud of how well you are doing in school. I am so grateful for you! Happy Birthday, Buddy!

You Can Lead a Horse to the Potty...

...but you can't make him pee!!!

We are on DAY 3 of intense potty-training with Logan. We have been encouraging it for months, but have been pretty easy going about it because he has shown little or no interest. But now that he's graduated nursery at church, several of his fellow preschoolers (all boys) are potty-trained, AND he's coming up on four-years-old (for heaven's sake), we decided to really start pushing him. Plus, we don't have many plans outside the house right now, so what better time to run around bottomless, right? So we've been trying to get him to drink a lot and have basically followed his little bare bum around the house with his little potty, making him sit on it every 20-30 minutes.

Potty-training Logan has been a very different experience than training Andrew. Andrew took his sweet time too, but he was very easy to bribe. All it took was a sticker on a chart to get him to try. Logan however, is much more stubborn! We've tried every bribe we can think of, but if Logan doesn't want to sit on the potty, NO bribe will change that. It usually takes a threat of time-out just to get him to SIT on the potty. Here are just a few things I'm really tired of hearing:

"NO!"

"NO, I CAN'T!"

"NO! I already did!"

"NO! The air won't let me!" - not really sure what this one means, but he sure likes to use it!

Once in a while he does cooperate and has actually peed in the potty a total of 5 times! YAY, LOGAN! (I won't tell you how many times we've had to clean up puddles of pee on the floor and/or in Big Brother's Spongebob slippers...it's much more than 5!) When he does succeed, we make a big deal about it and let him put a sticker on his sticker chart. It warms my heart to see how proud he is of himself at those times. That helps me remember that he really is trying and wants to succeed, and that he's not peeing on the kitchen floor just to spite me...I think.