Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Happy 4th Birthday
Gunner Lucht Bruce
Well, we survived the Birthday Weekend! It started on Thursday night actually when the first birthday cards arrived and as you can obviously see, there were stickers in a card from Grandma and Grandpa Bruce which were quickly applied to a bare chest by my goofball and he even posed for a picture. Sorry about the skivies, some evenings that is all he will wear. Friday I took the day off to get the shopping done for Sunday, and I picked up a birthday cake to take to Nana's house to share with all of the daycare kids. I drove all the way over to Leppink's in Lakeview to pick up the cake, just because the lady that decorates the cakes does such a spectacular job. So I hung out at Nana's house with Gunner on Friday while we had lunch and later cake and icecream with about 15 other kids.










Saturday Daddy was still working on the electrical side job he got roped into so it was Gunner and I for the day. I spent the day cleaning up and trying to convince Gunner to stay out of his toyroom and not make any big messes. We took Daddy lunch and then Gunner came home for a nap. We picked up the toys in the yard and attempted to weed my seriously overgrown flowerbeds. We stopped after two because there was really no point. The dogs have dug holes in them and the weeds are out of control- some strategic parking of cars will hide most of them anyways. When Daddy got home Saturday night he and Gunner mowed the grass and weedwhipped. We made cupcakes and cooked the burger for the tacos we were going to have the next day also.


Gunner scammed his way into sleeping upstairs with Gary and I, so we woke up Sunday morning with our 4 year old laid out sideways on the king sized bed. After a round of pillow fights and cheers since today was "my party day" according to Gunner- we headed downstairs for breakfast. Gunner picked (as usual) eggs, bacon and toast (after I vetoed icecream and doritos) Daddy and Gunner trimmed up the sad looking trees in the front yard then they took off to pick up the cake and balloons in Big Rapids while I chopped up all the toppings for the tacos. For the first time in 4 years I was actually ahead of schedule and not running around like a chicken with my head cut off. My dear mom showed up early with the fruit bowl and we got the taco shells frying and the chili con queso heated up.







Once everyone showed up we dug into the tacos, fruit and chili con queso. Lots of pop, juice boxes and beer to go around. It was pretty windy outside and luckily I had sat the little kids table out of the wind so only the older kids and the adults had to hang onto plates. Christian, Bry, Gunner and Paige sat at the little table together. Sam and Logan sat at the bigger table and Miss Lilly ate inside in the highchair.






I had gotten a Pablo Pinata and filled it full of candy. Mind you this is a new pinata that you pull the strings on instead of beating with a bat or stick. The whole pull the string thing didn't go quite perfectly, but after we shook the remaining candy out of Pablo the kids were happy. I hung him up inside since it was just to hot to be picking candy out of the dirt as it was getting sticky and starting to melt. The kids also had fun playing with the Backyardigans masks that Nana picked up for us. Uniqua is Gunner's absolute favorite.




We did a Dairy Queen Icecream cake and cupcakes for the party. While this cake is no where near as adorable as the one from Leppink's the icecream cake tasted fabulous! Even daddy who was not real big on getting an icecream cake was pleasantly surprised. Of course the flash on my camera only works when it wants to so the dark picture below is Gunner blowing out his candles.



Gunner's behavior wasn't too awful, but we did spend a lot of time waiting for him to get out of timeout. First we had to wait to have cake, then we had wait for him to finish up the second timeout before we could do presents.



After presents (and he got way too many nice things) the kids headed outside to play with the ball gloves (he ended up with 2!) and the ball tee and bat. That only lasted for a little bit before we had to open up the neat sprinkler he got and the kids got suits on and had fun running through the new sprinkler. How they managed to run around on the rough, nasty, dried out grass without hurting their feet was beyond me.



We relaxed and visited for quite a bit, and then everyone made their way home later in the afternoon, early evening. It was a long, but great day. Gunner didn't get cleaned up and ready for bed until after 10:00. He wanted to cuddle with Dada instead of going to bed and he literally fell asleep mid sentence on his dads lap.



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