An Expolosive birthday

Jake is 3! all he wanted for his third birthday was a volcano cake! he is obsessed with volcanoes. To make a long story short he can tell you about magma, lava, ash and steam, dormant volcanoes, extinct and active volcanoes. His favorite volcanoe is Mt. Vesuvius! Crazy... anyway, he wanted a chocolate volcano cake with a magma chamber, lava, ashe and steam. Mom and I delivered!

Jakes first look at his cake

here are a couple more pics from his bday!

Happy birthday sweet boy!

Moms Bday-- its all about the chocolate

For Mom's Birthday we made reservations at a chocolate cafe. There was an advertisment in the paper for a "chocolate tasting" and I thought what better way to celebrate. We had never been to this place so thought we would give it a try. We decided to have a light dinner of salad and make the chocolate tasting the main meal! We should NOT have eaten dinner! I figured at $15/person for the tasting we would get small slivers of things to try. I was wrong. we each had a choice of: flavored hot chocolate, piece of candy, piece of cake and fondue. However since there were 5 of us the owner brought out Fondue for 2 and 4 other deserts! So we had: 5 hot chocolates, 5 pieces of candy, 5 pieces of cake, chocolate fondue with fruit, banana split, an avalanche (icecream with brownie), waffle delight (2 belgian waffles with ice cream, bananas and stawberries with chocolate sauce and whip cream. We were is chocolate heaven! And I am proud to say we DEVOURED it! the hot chocolate decision:

the piece of candy and hot chocolate (1st course)

The cake:

Chocolate Avalanche

Wafflw Delight

Fondue and Banana Split

the Chocolate kiss

The Chocolate Overload!

OPeration Potty Training

I took an entire week off of work to hang out with the family and start getting some baby stuff/house stuff done. Then Kurt had an opportunity to go to a Firefighter conference (with work paying) so he left for Indianapolis for the week.

So I here I am, a week off work, just me and Jake, nothing to do. I thought I might as well give potty training a goood solid try! I want him to be trained by the time baby 2 comes and this was the perfect opportunity.

So far so good!

He spent 3 days naked or "maked" and now we have transitioned to big boy underwear.
He has loved being naked, what little boy doesnt? I have a lot of naked pics I am not going to post but will file away for later blackmailing!

We have not been out of the house/backyard for 5 days and I am starting to go a little crazy. We did take a 25 min walk around the neighborhood today and no accidents so we are going to try to run some errands tomorrow, maybe get some ice cream!

Jakes Potty Chart, gets a sticker every time he goes in the potty. this was day one, he has a LOT of stickers now!


The weather was perfect for the naked days! we played outside most of the day











Had to get creative with art projects, must keep child occupied!




Jake also got creative and decided the computer chair is now his perfect TV watching chair




Well-- I think he has it figured out!

Lots and Lots

These past 2 weeks have been busy! The parents all had spring break so my parents came down the first half and Kurts parents came down the second half.

I guess the biggest announcement is that we are having a GIRL! We were keeping it in until we saw our parents and could announce it to them in person.

I have really been wanting chocolate cake so to get it I decided to make a cake to announce the sex of the baby.




The weather wasnt very good while our parents were here so we didnt do too much. lots of indoor playing!

Donna and Alan gave us a huge treat and replaced our sink. Our other sink was leaky and we had NO water pressure. I LOVE the new one. We picked out a big one basin sink and its working out great. Thank you, thank you!

Jake and Gangi decorated Easter eggs while Alan and kurt put the sink in, with occasional help from Jake









Easter was fun, we had an easter egg hunt in our back yard. Jake discovered quickly that the eggs were filled with candy. after gathering about 10 he decided he was done and just wanted the candy-- ohh well. One of the ladies at work gave me a giftcard to Walmart for Jake so I bought him the truck with that. he needed a new bigger beach truck. This one is perfect.



He finds the first egg:



Realizes there is candy in there:



And he's off:












A couple days later the weather was perfect and we tested out his new truck at the beach.







After a nap we played with a rubberband airplane. he told kurt " this is the most fun I ever had!"







We had a lot going on but it was all fun!

Look for the next blog on Operation Potty Training!