Jackson's 3rd Birthday

Last weekend was Jackson's 3rd birthday! It's hard to believe, but it's true! We originally planned to have a party at Jump N Jungle, but plans changed when Jackson broke his leg. Instead we had a Dinosaurs Rock party at a local park, which was a blast!

Texas Avenue Park's pavilions are first come, first served, and since all the other park pavilions were already booked, we decided we'd risk it. We arrived at 8 AM to find people had shown up at 4 AM to save the tables. Fortunately, there was another pavilion without any tables (it's a covered basketball court) where we were able to set up, and it worked out great! The kiddos had lots of room to run and play in the shade.

Walt, the dinosaur guy, started the party by having the kids help him make a volcano with play dough. The different colors represented different things, and after putting dinosaurs around the volcano, they even crashed purple meteors into everything. Jackson had the honor of making the volcano erupt, which he thought was pretty cool!

Then Walt captured their attention for over 30 minutes talking about different dinosaur facts and fossils he'd brought with him. It was a very hands-on demonstration, and the kids loved being involved.

After learning about the fossils, they got to go on their very own dig. They found all kinds of special rocks and fossils, which they got to keep!

While they were digging, some dinosaurs laid eggs in the grass by the pavilion. There just so happened to be enough for every kid to get one! Inside each egg was a stretchy, sticky dinosaur. What fun!

Finally, it was time to eat! Here's a picture of the cake. Apparently, I stopped taking pictures at this point, so if I get pics from someone else of JD blowing out candles or the kids running around, I'll make an update.

I ordered some dinosaur printables for the favor bags, banner, and signs for the food. This one was my favorite. ;-)

We gave the kids dinosaur stamps, tattoos, and silly bands as a thank you for celebrating with us, and they were a hit. Jackson even decided to put a stamp in the middle of his forehead! He was pretty excited about it, but didn't really care for me taking a picture of it...

Jackson had a great birthday weekend thanks to family and friends. There are more pics of all the fun in the album.

Baby Zenter's Shower

Yesterday my friend, Pam, and I hosted a shower for Sara. She and her husband, Stephen, are expecting a baby boy in 5 short weeks!

They are decorating with blue, green, and brown, and have a space theme, which means our shower was space themed too. We had lots of fun decorating for this shower. Pam found a perfect invitation, and everything "took off" from there.

Jackson got pretty excited about all of the rockets. He helped me bake the cookies, and he colored rockets while I cut them out. He was excited for Christopher to be getting so much fun stuff, but he wanted to "share" all of it.

Here are some pictures of our decorations.

Pam did an awesome job on the diaper cake. It turned out SO cute!

Somehow, I managed to forget to take a picture of the cookies, but they turned out pretty cute too! They were rockets with Christopher's monogram on them.

We played a couple of unusual baby games at this shower, which turned out to be a lot of fun. We played a pictionary style game with playdough where all the words were some type of baby related object, and we played a scrabble type game using baby blocks. Here was the winning team's final set of words.

After games, the guest of honor opened her gifts while we all said "Oooh" and "Ahhh" about how cute everything was.

It was a fun baby shower. At the end we said thank you to all of her guests with a little something sweet.

Now, we'll just continue the count down and look forward to meeting little Christopher soon!

There are a few more pictures in the album.

Mitchell's Baby Shower

While we were all in Leakey, I helped host a baby shower honoring Leslie and Mitchell along with friends, Jessica and Dianne. If you couldn't guess based on the previous post, the theme was Caterpillar. We used lots of toy CAT equipment and black and yellow decorations. There was a great turn out, and Leslie and Mitchell got lots of great things. Here are a couple of pics. There are more in the album.

While we were busy partying, the boys took another trip around the ranch. This time Jackson got to ride with Grandad!

More pics of the ranch ride in the album.

Baby Shower #2

The second of the two baby showers was this past weekend, and it went really well! I hosted this one with two other lovely ladies, Emma and Colleen, for our friend Christie. I think the three of us could start a party planning/catering business! I was impressed with the way everything turned out. The three of us divided and conquered different aspects of the shower. Emma did the name tags and cake, which matched a blanket Christie picked out, Colleen made a diaper cake and came up with the games, and I did cookies and decorations. We had other finger foods too, but they aren't as "cute". Not to boast, but check out how cute everything turned out...

Everyone seemed to have a really good time too. Christie has some wonderful friends and family. It was so much fun getting to know them better. Here's a pic of the hostesses with the guest of honor. Of course, there are more pics in the album.

Catching Up

So we're a little behind on our posting as far as the events in our lives are concerned. This has been a busy week for the Taylor family. Last weekend our friends Heath, Barbara, and their son, Carter, came to visit. We had a great time! It was a short visit, but filled with quality time. Whenever we go to Louisiana we always spend time with our families, so we don't get much time to spend with friends. We didn't really do much. We just spent the time visiting and catching up, and of course doing a little shopping. :-)

Jackson got an exersaucer last weekend, and he has been loving it. I can't believe how many parts they come in! I guess this is probably just the beginning of many, many hours we will spend putting together toys for Jackson. Even Carter put in some time helping us put all of the pieces together.

Columbus day was a holiday for those of us that work for the government, so Ross and I took advantage of the extra day and started working on our front yard, which was in desperate need of some attention. Since Jackson came along, it's been left untouched with the exception of the occasional mowing that the summer necessitates. Ross spent several back-breaking hours extending flower beds and putting in edging. In the process he took out a good chunk of a root from the tree in our front yard, so we're hoping it doesn't die or fall on our house! We finished the majority of the planting work yesterday. We still have a few more flowers to plant and some mulch to put down, but it's looking a lot better! We have some plans to extend our front porch/patio as well, but that will have to wait until after Ross gets back from Hawaii.

I spent most of my evenings this week preparing for 2 baby showers. The first one for Jennifer and Eric was today, and the second one for Christie will be next Sunday. I had a lot of fun putting together these "sweet thing" favors and making a diaper cake for the shower today.

This will be Jennifer and Eric's second baby, so they mostly got diapers and clothes, which was perfect. Their first kid was a boy, and they are expecting a baby girl, so some fun girly clothes were a must. You can tell Dad and big brother, Scott, are excited about them...

Of course, we can't have a summary post like this without at least one picture of Jackson, so here's a picture of Pam holding our sweet little boy. He had his 4 month checkup this week, and is continuing to grow at about the same rate. He's a little above the 50th percentile in height now, and he's still in the 25th percentile in weight and head circumference. The doctor said we could start him on solids whenever we're ready. It may not be long, but I'm not ready just yet!

We've posted pics from the shower today and our visit with the Tims in the album, so be sure to check them out!

Baby Room Woodworking

First, a quick update...we are still waiting for Jackson to decide he is ready to come. As E said last week, labor will be induced on Thursday unless he decides to come before then. However, E has gotten sick with a stomach bug that has been going around. She checked with the doctor and they may delay the induction if she still isn't feeling well tomorrow. I guess we'll see what happens...

While we wait, I figured I'd talk a little about the woodworking in the baby room. Elizabeth posted pictures last week so have a look at that (because I don't feel like posting more right now - sorry). The dresser was a fun project and it turned out pretty good. I talked about the plan a while back and have posted one update. The project went pretty smoothly because of my experience with the desk. It is a fairly simple MDF case on a stained birch base. The tolerances were pretty tight because of the overlay drawers but it worked out pretty well. The one new experience is that I got a paint/stain sprayer to try to make finishing easier. It worked really well and I am happy with it. The biggest problem with the dresser is that I didn't realize the "clear" polyurethane actually has a bit of a yellow tint. You can't really tell in the pictures but it is noticeable in person. I guess I could sand it down but I don't think it is worth it.

I'm really happy with the wall art...it is just three pieces of MDF glued and screwed together. I got a circle jig for my router that made the circles pretty easy. After setting it up and cutting, they just needed a little sanding to fix the irregularities. They are hung with my standard keyholes. This particular project made me really feel like a woodworker because I had the required materials laying around and didn't have to go buy anything. I'm not sure that will happen very often though since I usually take on big projects.