Three Birthdays and a Surgery

The title pretty much sums up the last three weeks at our house. Three of our children have birthdays in March. We start with Bethany on the 14th, then Jonathan on the 22nd and finally Andrew on the 28th. So, we have had a birthday dinner or lunch three Sundays in a row and cake (or in Bethany's case pie) three Sundays in a row. Jonathan's fiance Kristin said today we were going to be going through "cake withdrawl". For Andrew's birthday we went to Chuck E Cheese's. This is all the boys talk about when it comes to birthdays. We went for the first time last year on Maicol's birthday and now I think it will be a requirement for a few more years worth of birthdays. We just went to play the games and then out for ice cream afterwards. We did the cake and present thing the day after his birthday since that was when the other kids could be here. He has been very excited about having a birthday and being four. So we now have children from the age of 4 to 24. What a range!
Bethany had her tonsils out last week, so she had been hanging out at our house for about 3 days. Mostly sleeping on the couch, taking her pain medicine and eating slushies. She's slowly getting better, but is still pretty uncomfortable. But, she is back in her apartment and so we are a little more back to normal here.
That's the big news. We continue to go the proverbial "two steps forward, one step back" with Maicol. Just when it seems things are going well for him, he has a day where nothing seems to go right. Oh well, we are making progress. Juan Pablo is still slowly becoming more comfortable. I have always kissed and hugged him when putting him to bed, but he never reciprocated. Recently he has started hugging and kissing me before bed. And he has started hugging me spontaneously - something he didn't do before. Before we met them, we were told they would probably be very affectionate and want to be near us and touching us all the time. It took Maicol about a year to start that and now at the 1.5 year mark Juan Pablo has become more affectionate. As I sat reading to them before bed last night one sat on each side of me with their arm around my neck listening to the story. So, it seems we are still moving along in that attachment thing. It has been a slow, but steady process.
On to the pictures...



Bethany's Birthday and her pie. Andrew looks pretty excited too!

Jonathan's birthday - with Kristin trying to stay out of the picture.

Juan Pablo and Maicol at Chuck E Cheese's. I love this picture of the two of them.

Jonathan helping Andrew feed his tickets into the counter so he can get a prize.

Licking the blue icing he requested off of the beater. Is there anything better?

Andrew blowing out his four candles.

A very happy birthday boy! He is not only excited about his birthday, but he loves cake!

Worms, Trees and Houses

What a fabulous day! It was finally warm enough to get outside and play! Everyone is so much happier (and ready for bed at the end of the day) when they have had a chance to run and play. They managed to get their schoolwork done right after lunch, so we had the afternoon to go outside. I cleaned up the yard some and the boys did boy things - climbed trees and dug for worms. Maicol and Juan Pablo are trying to teach Andrew to climb a tree. Not sure if that is a good idea or not, but they had a great time together working at it. Then they moved on to looking for worms. Digging in the sandbox and looking under things for them. I'm not sure what they were going to do with them once they unearthed them and fortunately I didn't have to find out. :) We were hoping to have a fire outside tonight and roast marshmallows, but it was just too windy.
Enjoy the pictures of our first outside play day in way too long! I need to explain the last picture. Juan Pablo is into building houses. He started one in the backyard and was going to sell it to us for the bargain price of $6.00. He never got it above about 4" high before we made him put back the boards he used, so then he moved on to a brick house. That's the last picture - he and Maicol standing in his brick house. Unfortunately it had to be disassembled recently too. Who knows what he will build next.