September 2011

Parker turned 7 years old on September 6th. To celebrate, we let him have a party with his friends. We already had things going on both the weekend before and after his birthday, so we decided to have his party on Labor Day. I was afraid we wouldn't have a very good turn out, but we actually did and he had a fun party!

This year Parker wanted a Mario themed party. So for one of the games, we made a bunch of yellow balloons to look like the Question Mark blocks on the Mario games that you hit to get coins. Inside the balloons were chocolate coins. One of the balloons held a special paper, so whoever popped that balloon got a special surpise.

Kind of a cool action shot on this one:

Next we had a pinata. It was a Mario mushroom! (or we pretended it was) :)

And then Parker opened the presents from his friends. He got some really fun things.

And last, we had cupcakes. Mario mushroom shaped ones. Parker and his friends had lots of fun! He has such a great group of friends. :)

The next day was Parker's actual birthday. We woke up early so he could open his presents before school.
He got a bed tent (a tent that goes on top of the bed), a Phineas and Ferb Wii game, a couple of little lego sets, and Robots the movie. He got a bunch of cool little toys and candies from Grandma and Grandpa Chappell and later got a pogo stick from Grandma and Grandpa Bell. He'd been wanting one of those forever!

This year Parker wanted a blueberry cheesecake for his birthday cake. BUT, he wanted a Yoshi cake. I couldn't think of any way to make a cheesecake look like Yoshi, so I ended up just finding a little Yoshi figurine that I put on top.

A few days later on September 9 was my birthday. My family spoiled me. :)
They gave me an immersion blender (Yay! So nice for pureeing soups without having to move the soup to a blender), some flower bulbs, The Harry Potter movies, season 1 of the Smurfs cartoon (my favorite when I was a kid), and a dock for my iPhone (we actually ended up taking that one back because it didn't work the way Josh thought it would).

Josh made me peanut butter cheesecake brownies for my birthday cake. WOW! It was amazing. It was a fun day! :)

Parker's 1st grade class put on a cute program this month. It was all about America. They sang all kinds of songs about the flag and our country. It was a great program. Parker had a little part and did a great job! It's interesting to me that most of the songs the kids sing at school are the SAME songs that I sang when I was in school. You would think they would have changed after so long.

Quinn was five months old in September and such a happy, mellow baby!

He had fun laying out on a blanket while Josh and I gardened.

About a week before he turned six months old he tried his first solid food. He thought that was pretty cool! :)

We had fun with our garden in September too. We ended up with a few little watermelons. They actually tasted pretty good even though they weren't very big.

Lots of tomatoes and some cucumbers.

Purple and regular green beans.

These were Black Krim tomatoes. We really liked this variety!

More carrots,

cabbage,

a couple of little pumpkins,

and tons of kale, Swiss chard, and beets.

This is our cat Pete (named after Pete the Cat from the book since he had white "shoes"). We got him over the summer. He was a fun kitty. Very friendly and fun to play with. He ended up running away not long after this picture was taken though. :(

And on the very last day of September, my sister Cammie had her baby girl Briley! We got to watch Sydney while Cammie had the baby, and then later brought her to the hospital. Sydney thought her new little sister was pretty neat.