Ethan's birthday party #1

Ethan turned 4 on the 26th!!! Ethan requested to have Palachinki for his birthday dinner. Palachinki is a Czech recipe that Kurt's mom taught Kurt, who taught me, who is teaching Ethan. Czech blood is a lot thicker than normal blood, and Czech people are very proud of being Czech, therefore we have and will pass on a lot of Czech traditions, recipes, and such. For instance, what does a frog say? In our family a frog says BORP. Czech. :) Anyway, this palachinki was special because the boys made some raspberry syrup using the raspberries from our garden. Delicious.

The next day was Ethan's birthday and we got to take cookies to school. I was so excited!!! Way more than Ethan. I have a summer bday and was always jealous of the kids that got to bring a treat to school on their bday. Anyway, Ethan was extra special because Kurt had some visitors in from Taiwan, so after our regular Happy Birthday the teachers asked for happy birthday in Chinese! Ethan felt pretty cool. At school they do a 'walk around the sun' which is represented by a candle cuz the sun was too big to put in the classroom. Ethan walks around the candle 4 times, putting a bead in a jar after every circle to represent his age. All the while the teacher is telling something special about Ethan.

That night the Taiwanese wanted to celebrate Ethan's birthday. We went to Tepanyaki, then went to the office for presents and a firework show. It was the coolest birthday ever!!

Tomorrow is Ethan's bday party with friends and family. He wanted the Starry starry night (vincent van gogh) cupcake cake... lucky me. Here's how it turned out. I couldn't get the colors any darker, so it's Starry Starry Night that's been bleached by the sun.

Here's how I'm protecting it over night.

Kurt took Ethan hiking up Adams Canyon a couple weekends ago. From what I hear that is a hard hike, and they did it in 2 1/2 hours. So proud of little Ethan!!!! Much different from the hike I took him on.

After dinner we've been doing a lot of sandbox playing, mainly because I can sit in a chair and watch the whole time. This day, however, I decided to show Ethan the funnest thing about a sandbox:

A couple of announcements:

Ethan started preschool!!

And we're having a baby girl.

Hiking

Ethan has been dying to go hiking. So up at my mom's I put Seth down for a nap and Eth and I went up Millville mountains. It was fun!! I didn't want to go too far into the mountains because there are a lot of mt lions, and I'm scared of mountain lions. So I found a not so imposing hill with no trees. It was a flippin' hard hike!! Lot's of scree and rocks, no shade, and straight up! Eth thought it was pretty cool though.

Sorry for the lack of blog posts.... Our summer has been busy and I'm pooped. Here are a few miscellaneous pictures:

Breakfast of champions. For some reason I thought that if Kurt were in charge of meals the kids would eat better.... guess not.

This is 'the look'. I love it! Taylor used to do the same thing.

Speaking of Tay, this is a photo just for him. It goes with this photo:

Which was done by Taylor. He has this one hanging on his apartment wall on his mission.

Here're the boys helping Kurt out with some projects.

This is Seth's sexy face. He does it when he's feeling cute.

Sorry, I have not been in a blogging mood. Actually, I haven't been in the mood to do anything...... must be the pregnancy. Here are more pictures from Cincinnati, I have some cute things on my camera, I'm sure I'll get around to downloading them one of these days.