In Memory of Rudi

We lost our family dog last night.  It was a very sudden, difficult, and emotional time for our family, especially for Halle.

The short story is the doctor at the emergency vet hospital believes he ate a poisonous plant from the yard which caused liver failure.  She also believes he aspirated some vomit into his lungs which worsened his condition.  There was no saving poor Rudi.  We are all deeply saddened, and poor Halle is taking it quite hard.

Halle and Rudi were best friends.  Technically, Rudi was Halle's dog since she got him for her birthday.  Halle has a HUGE heart for animals, and loved Rudi so much.  He loved her back just as much and would literally jump through hoops for her.  They kept each other company ever since she started homeschooling.  They hung out every single day, all day long.

Arden is having a very hard time, too.  She is trying to come to terms with how permanent death is, and trying to deal with the emotions of losing someone.

Rudi was a little black and tan dachshund/Chihuahua mix.  We adopted him from a Dachshund rescue organization.  He was lots of fun.  He was playful, loving, sweet, and protective.  He loved baby carrots for snacks.

He could also be stubborn and he barked a lot.  He would drive me CRAZY with his barking.  We got a letter from our HOA at our old house because a neighbor complained of his barking.  LOL.   But that was Rudi and we loved him.  He loved to chase squirrels and frogs and sometimes brought us "gifts." Birds especially.

Here are some memories of Rudi.

Rudi joined our family back July 2013.  He was almost six months old at the time.   His birthday was February 1, 2013.  His original name was Marty. 

Arden with Rudi.  We named him Rudi because we wanted him to have a German name.  

Rudi in his make-shift bed when he first came home

weenie dog eating a weenie dog.  

Jack giving Rudi kisses

Rudi checking out the snow

Rudi with his cool shirt that said "Loverboy" 

Rudi and the rest of the family on the way to New Mexico

Rudi's Halloween costume

Rudi and Halle swinging on our back patio

this picture was just taken last week.  I had to take them both to the vet.  I only had one carrier for the both of them.  Didn't matter because they were fine being in there together.  The veterinarian and vet techs were amazed that they hung out together and didn't fight.

Rudi made many many laps around the pool.  He would bark at the splashing water.  We used to make fun at how fast his little legs would go.

We love you, Rudi, and you will be dearly missed!  

Arden's 6th Birthday Week

Arden turned 6!  We asked her on her birthday what it felt like to be six.  She said she couldn't believe it because she still felt like she was five.  She said it would take a few days for it to sink in.  Haha!  Crazy kid.  She also said she was glad she was six because that meant she was closer to be a grown-up.  When she becomes a grown-up she wants to be a boss because she likes being bossy.  

Arden, in Ardenous fashion, planned out her birthday week in explicit detail..... she took me step-by-step of how her birthday was going to go, talking non-stop for about an hour, explaining every single part.  This happened one night about a month beforehand.

First of all she requested that on her actual birthday she was to get off the bus, play with her friends for a while, and then we as a family were to head to Cici's pizza for dinner.  Aunt Sarah and Uncle Adam joined us.

Cici was her restaurant of choice because they have the famous mac-n-cheese pizza.

She can eat her weight in macaroni pizza!

When we returned home we gave Arden her presents from us: new tennis shoes, a tether ball set, and tickets to Disney on Ice-Frozen.

Her sister surprised her that morning with cupcakes for breakfast.  Arden likes vanilla cupcakes so that's what Halle made.  She's such a great big sis!  Halle made enough for Arden and her friends to enjoy at the bus stop.  Whatever the kids didn't eat at the bus stop, Jack polished off.  

The next day, Wednesday, Aunt Sarah was waiting for Arden when she got off the bus.  They spent the entire evening shopping for her birthday presents.  Arden got spoiled with clothes, shoes, and toys!  She has grown quite a bit and needed new clothes, so it was perfect timing.  Arden also used her gift card that she received from Uncle Ryan and Aunt Beth while she was out shopping with Aunt Sarah.  

Thursday was her rest day.  This was not included in her plan, but she was worn out from all the excitement of Tuesday and Wednesday so I made her take a nap when she got home from school.  She then had to help me clean for her party on Friday.

Friday was the day of her party.  She requested that she and a few friends go to Chuck E Cheese for her birthday and then come back for a sleepover.  What inspired her to go to Chuck E Cheese was that it has a basketball game she loves.  She also wanted a basketball cake.  

I tried to make this basketball theme a little girly by adding pretty orange spring flowers.  :)

basketball cookies

I made this simple cake from the Wilton Ball cake mold, and covered it in Reese's Pieces.

Halle came up with the idea to make oranges look like basketballs.

Her friends arrived before it was time to go to Chuck E Cheese so they played a few quick basketball games.  The first was to try to catch cheese puffs in their mouths.  Here are their awkward pics.  :)

Myleigh

Maggie

Hailey

I found this game last minute, at the Science Museum of all places.  Jack and I were walking around the gift shop that morning while Halle was in her dissection class, and I found this.

you wear the basket on your head and try to throw the balls into the basket.

Time for Chuck E Cheese.  I originally intended to take the girls to Chuck E Cheese and just give them tokens to play a few games.  It practically turned out to be the same price to book a party for the small group, though!  What's funny is that I swore a long time ago that I would NEVER have a party at Chuck E Cheese.  It's always so crowded and chaotic and they rush you in an out.  Now here I was, technically having a party at Chuck E Cheese.  Ha!  It actually went really well because it was Friday night and not crowded.  There was only one other party going on, plus we got bonus tokens for booking on a weeknight.  SCORE!  The kids had a BLAST!

Arden got her own princess cut-out, tiara, and superhero cape.

this is the basketball game that inspired her party

playing a mean game of Air Hockey

ski ball

Jack and Brian playing race car games

at the table ready for pizza

singing Happy Birthday to Arden

Arden with ChuckECheese

doing the pinata.  They filled it with candy, tokens, and a voucher for more tickets

Arden in the ticket blaster.  She had thirty seconds to get as many tickets as possible.  She got the special ticket which was worth 1000 tickets!

combined from the pinata, ticket blaster, and the games they played, they had a total of 2,823 tickets!

the kids showing off the toys they bought with their tickets

We then returned home to get ready for bed.  It was 10:30 by that time and the girls seemed pretty tired.  They all made their pallets in the game room to sleep on.  I was so happy that they were settling in to watch a movie.  WRONG!!!!  They were back up running around, dressing up, and putting on makeup.  It sounded like elephants above me because the game room is right above my bedroom.  Then there was girl drama, mostly because they were tired.  I warned them several times to go to bed.  By 2:00 a.m. I was NOT a happy mom and threatened to send them all home.  They (and I) finally fell asleep.  I guess it's not a sleepover if you don't stay up way later than the parents allow and have a few girl fights.  :)  

Here's some pics of Arden's presents.  We had three tickets to Disney on Ice so we invited Myleigh to join us.  The girls felt so special that they got to go all by themselves (meaning without other siblings.)  

Brian and Arden playing with her new tether ball set.

Happy Birthday Arden!

It's broken!

Jack's talking sooo much more, especially in the last month.  Unless you're around Jack, though, you'll have a hard time understanding.  I'm here to help.

"Osh" with a long "O"- Arden (yeah, still don't know how he came up with that one.)
"Hope Ack"- Help Jack
"Meh"- Mom?  It's what he calls me

My favorites:  "Beep Beep"- excuse me. 
He also says Thank you instead of saying You're welcome.  For instance, he might hand me my phone.  I say "thank you."  He replies with "thank you."


Jack's new thing when I tell him multiple times to do something he doesn't want to do....    Or when I threaten him.  In a tired, reluctant, and defeated tone, "Okay, Okay, Okaaay."  You HAVE to hear him say it.  It's too funny.

There's a DVD that the kids have been watching in the car about Jesus.  What I love:  he can't pronounce Mommy, Daddy, Halle, Arden, Rudi, Parker, or even Jack correctly.  What he can say absolutely perfectly, though, is Jesus.

Arden has her own pronunciations that are worth mentioning.  Brian, Halle, and I crack up over this one:
Diva Dee (holding out the "Di" part too long as well.)  DVD

She puts an N sound in front of words that begin with a vowel
Use it- Nuse it

She'll be 30 and still be calling remember, "renember."

At last is my funny Jack story:
When Jack goes to the potty, but can't make himself go, he'll say "It's broken!  It's broken!"  Hahahahahahah!  Then today, when he actually did go, he was doing the manly shake-off (I've been encouraging this because he had been wiping like a girl.)  The manly shake-off wasn't working, so what did he do?  He started to blow on it!  Like a birthday candle!   Oh.  My.  Gosh.  I. Die!!!  :)
He huffed and he puffed, and he blew the pee off.

Jack's Mickey Choo Choo Express Birthday Party

After the last few parties I swore I wouldn't plan another party ever again because it was too much work.  Yeah.  Right.  I think I have an addiction.  I didn't work quite as hard on this party, though, knowing that the main attraction would be a hit in of itself...... a train!

Jack loves Mickey Mouse and Jack loves trains.  I combined the two for the party. This was Jack's invitation.

The forecast said it was going to rain on the day of his party.  A high of 49 degrees and 80% chance of rain.  I prayed hard that the weather would be nice because the weather has been yucky for a month.  The kids have been cooped up inside and we wanted to to be able to surprise the kids, Jack especially, with a train

Thank God it did not rain.  The weather was in the high fifties and was a nice day for a party.  We got over 200 pics of the party between Sarah and me!  Because I don't want to skimp on the pictures, I've made a lot of collages so I can condense this post.

here's the cake table.  I combined Jack's Lego trains and a Mickey wooden train together and put the cupcakes on top like cargo.    

the 3 birthday cake is made out of two bundt cakes.  Some cupcakes are lime, some are strawberry.  The cake was chocolate.   Let's just say they were a little bit better than the Paleo cake I made for Brian's birthday.  ;)  In all I made 48 cupcakes and they didn't make it through the rest of the weekend.  I'm not mentioning any names.  Adam.  Brian.

So I've been into cookie decorating lately and it's harder than it looks.  It's tough stuff to get cookies perfect!  I'm quite proud of this batch of cookies, though.  This is my third attempt at cookie decorating and I'm improving.  I've been reading lots of blogs and tips on how to bake perfect cookies and decorate perfect cookies.  Halle is a huge helping hand in this.  It's quite fun!

These are the theme-y signs and quotes from Mickey Mouse clubhouse.  Aw crap.  I just realized I didn't get a pic of Halle's "Mickey Mouse Club-sandwiches" sign.  She came up with that all on her own.  In addition to sandwiches, we had hot dog hot dog hot diggity dogs, in honor of Mickey Mouse's hot dog dance.

"We've Got Ears, Say Cheers!"  I made character hats out of construction paper and lined them on the stairs so the kids could have their pick.  I've never been to a party or thrown a party where the kids actually wore the party hats.  But this time, the kids LOVED them.   I had Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy, Daisy, and Pluto hats.  A lot of the kids wore them on their own, and the three Spafford boys wore theirs to church the next day!  LOL.

The moonwalk was a last minute addition.  Since the weather was going to cooperate I decided to splurge a little and add a moonwalk to the party.  Like I said, all these kids had been cooped up because of the weather, so I wanted to make sure they had plenty of fun.  This is a shout out to iJump Inflatables (Houston area) and their great customer service.  I forgot to hand out their business cards at the party, so this is me making up for it by recommending them here on my blog.  We got to keep the moonwalk for the entire day.

CHOO CHOO!  The train is here!!!  I rented a train for an hour.  It came with a driver and an attendant that managed the kids.  The train took the kids for about ten minute rides through the neighborhood.  IT WAS A HIT!!!  Jack was acting very whiny until the train arrived.  Then he perked up and rode the train for the ENTIRE time it was at the party, which was an hour.  All of the other kids would sit out once or twice, but Jack only got off in order to switch cars.  He was sooo sooo excited. 

a great shot of the train in front of our house.  It had three cars and each car could fit about six kids.

the parents are waving bye to the kids.  See I did this on purpose.  Now all of sudden it just turned into an adult party.  ;)

 look at all of those happy faces.  And... does Arden think it's a roller coaster??

Did I mention he loved the train?  He loved waving to the neighbors and passers by.

GAMES

Crystal is helping me with Toodles.

For games, we played like we were on a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode.  We had Toodles.  I had the kids yell, "Oh Toodles!" to call Toodles for mouseketools.  They were so cute doing that.  The first activity we needed to do was the hot dog dance.  One of the mouseketools was music notes, so we picked that so we could dance!

here in this collage you can see some of the kids doing the hot dog dance.  The bottom right picture is of them looking at Toodles and figuring out what mouseketool they need.

The next activity was to put a puzzle together.  But when I looked in the box, the puzzle was gone!  We had to call Toodles again, and this time the kids chose the mystery mouseketool.  Pluto was the mystery mouseketool.  Turns out that Pluto ate a piece of the puzzle (because it was missing and I had to come up with something) and he hid the rest of the puzzle pieces with his bones.  The kids had to find the bones so that they could find the pieces to the puzzle so that they could put the puzzle together.  They all raced outside to find the "hidden" bones.  Once they found the bones and the pieces they started putting the puzzle together.  They did a great job at teamwork.  I was impressed.  I chose this puzzle because 1) Jack already had it and 2)it had a picture of Mickey's Choo Choo Express on it.    

 They got down to the end and realized there was still one piece that needed to be found.  The kids scattered like roaches to find it.  So funny.

this was such a cute moment.  Tobey came racing down the driveway with the last piece, yelling "I found it!  I found it!"

So they finished the puzzle (sans the piece that Pluto, ummm, ate.)

The next activity was the pinata.  Arden, Halle, Jack, and I made this pinata.  I've never made a pinata before and wasn't planning on it, but somehow we did.  It's made out of cardboard, crepe paper, glue, packing tape, paper plates (for the ears), a hanger, and a whole lot of hopeful thoughts that it would stay intact.  I was surprised that it did such an excellent job of staying together and that it came out halfway cute.  Jack and Arden LOVED helping me make it. 

The next mouseketool was rope to hang the pinata.  We sort of botched that part because the pinata was set up prematurely.  Let me tell ya, the boys that were really into the Toodles game were very aware that we skipped a mouseketool.  

as you can see, the pinata made it through many of the kids.  Once the pieces started flying out, though, Nik ripped it open. The dads were worried the kids would get whacked in head by the bat because they would run and snatch the single piece that flew out.

Jack showing off his booty

If the kids were not riding the train or playing on the moonwalk, they were running around playing with all of the other toys.  Jack's birthday present from us was a Power Wheels four wheeler.  It was given to us by the Watts, so all we needed to do was buy a battery for it.  The kids played with it during the party, too!

Cake Time.  What did we need for our cake? We called Toodles one last time for our last mouseketool.  Candles!  Candles was our last mouseketool.

The kids (and parents) sang Happy Birthday to Jack in their best Donald Duck voice!  The result was so bad as most of us can't talk like Donald Duck.  Haha!

After presents the guests were off, and we sent them home with Mickey lollipops and whistle trains (I know I'm a mean party host.  I send the kids home full of sugar and annoying noise makers.  SORRY!!!)

party favors

At the end of the party Jack went upstairs and saw his big present from Uncle Adam and Aunt Sarah.  A train table with all the works!!!!

He was enthralled.  Such a great gift!!!  It has kept him entertained for many hours!!! 

he looked up just long enough to give us a cheese.  Then he was back to playing.

  

This little man was spoiled rotten for his birthday.  What a great day!

p.s. it has not stopped raining since the day of his party, 6 days ago.  I'm so thankful that his special day was spared from the rain.