Picture Pages!

Okay...you ASKED for it! The following post is chock full o' pictures. Mostly, from last weekend's birthday bonanza, but there are few randoms thrown in at the beginning!

Before you get into the pictures, I'll give you a brief update. Loki is FINALLY crawling. He's been crawling comando style for some time, now. It's been HILARIOUS to watch, but really sad because he has these carpet rash spots on his elbows from where he pulls himself along. But now he's figured out how do a REAL crawl, though he will often resort to the comando style. Luckily, he's still VERY slow - so we haven't had to too much baby proofing, yet.

I do need to post a work related post - but it just exhausts me to think about. My telemarketing empire is quickly crumbling, yet again. Good help is hard to come by.

And Whitebread is simultaneously job hunting and applying to IT programs at a few different universities.

More to come next week. Happy Easter everyone! Enjoy the pics!

A few weeks ago, we hosted a SUPRISE 30th Birthday party for a highschool friend of mine. She has a little boy that is a week younger than Loki. This is ME cutting HER cake!
















This is our fully loaded bus sitting in the Bristol Motor Speedway Parking lot waiting for a few more guests. We really had them crammed in there and we weren't even at capacity. I SERIOUSLY underestimated the size of some of these race fans!










It typically is not difficult to entertain our child. He can pretty much entertain himself - though he does prefer to be doing whatever it is that you're doing. He LOVES making the bed with his daddy. He also, really likes helping mama with the laundry. His job is to sit in the basket and throw everything out - which he does PERFECTLY. Even if he's not in the basket while I'm doing laundry, he'll pull everything out and throw it on the ground. Such a big helper!



The little cake on the left is the low sugar banana birthday cake I made for Loki - which he eventually devoured but was VERY unsure of early on. He just didn't know what to do with it and he never did stick his whole hand into it. The cake on the right is a hummingbird cake that I made for my Mom. Loki was born on her birthday! The hummingbird cake had pineapple, banana & pecans in it. It was RIDICULOUS and delicious! Thank you, Paula Dean (recipe credit - only for the hummingbird cake - Paula doesn't do low sugar)!


This is just ONE of the birthday presents Loki got - his very own pirate ship! It's actually the second pirate ship he's now received. He also got one at Christmas - but that one is really for much older children - he can (and does) play with this one, now. (Notice his lack of interest in it at the moment - he was COMPLETELY enthralled with that wooden puzzle!)






On Saturday, (Loki's actual birthday) we went to his girlfriends 1st Birthday party: Turner. Turner had a Vietnamese Bar-B-Q birthday party. Here she is DEVOURING her cow cake. I'm pretty sure that there was cake in her ear before it was all said and done! LOL!!!














This is the very NON-low sugar pig cake that Turner's grandma made for Loki. While I wasn't thrilled about the idea of him having all that sugar, I wasn't exactly going to say, "No," after they went to all that trouble. And it WAS super cute. Much to my thrill, he didn't like the icing, anyway!













Loki's inner dialouge, "Mwahahahahah! You'll never be able to keep all that SUGAR away from me, you EVIL mother!"










Check out all my TEETH! I've got 5 NOW!!! All the better to bite you with!

















"Really, Dad?! Is this necessary?"


















This is probably one of my MOST favorite pictures, EVER. The boys were in almost matching outfits - but don't they look handsome. Do you really think that Loki is a spitting image of Whitebread? Come on, there's TOTALLY a little bit of me, in there!














I think I mentioned in an earlier post about the importance of the 1st Birthday in Vietnamese culture. Part of the 1st birthday tradition involves predicting the child's future. A tray of various items is set in front of the child and whatever the baby picks up first represents their future. The objects on the tray range from a piece of cloth, a bag of rice, a CD, a bandaid, a ruler, a brush, money, a book and a pen (there may have been more - I don't remember them all).



Look! Our little Architectural Engineer! (or maybe teacher) but DEFINITELY a natural born LEADER (he picked the RULER)! Turner picked up the CD & the piece of cloth at the same time - so, she'll be a fashionable IT geek - a rather RARE pairing!








On Sunday, we hosted Aleaa's 5th birthday party in our back yard. This is a picture of her being held by her father with her half-sister, Camilla. The party was a BLAST. The magician was a HIT. He kept making things disappear and for some reason, Aleaa was just CERTAIN that they were all going to magically appear in HER hat - though he didn't do a SINGLE trick that did that. It was just super cute! We had a GREAT time - but it was a BUSY weekend and we were WORN out by the time it was all over!