Andrew's Antics

The park

We had such nice weather the beginning of this week that we took some trips to the park. On Sunday after church we went to Bradley Park in South Hill Puyallup, which Andrew loved! Apparently every other perosn in Puyallup thought it was a good day to go too. They have such a wonderful playground and a lake. Andrew loved the car he could sit in and pretend to drive. He got to see a live fish someone had caught too.

On Monday after we went to the library it was sunny out so we went to a park a little closer to home. Andrew really wanted to go back to the "one with the car, by Wal-Mart" but we didn't have time. So these pictures are from this one. Mostly what he wanted to do was play with the cedar chips and make piles of them/rearrange them.

I'm actually surprised I was able to convince him to swing

'Rearranging' the cedar chips

He also told me we don't eat the cedar chips and we don't throw them. We had a discussion about not throwing them when he was making piles of them on the sidewalk. When he was swinging I pushed him a little hard once and I told him to hang on, that he didn't want to fall and get a mouthful of cedar chips. So he told me no, we don't eat them.

"I'm stuck, I'm stuck!"

He wasn't really. I was chasing him on the grass around these big rocks and he went in the middle and said he was stuck with a mischieveous grin on his face. I said no, you can get out. And he insisted he was stuck, although when I started to come in and get him out he came out. :)

He only wanted to go down the slide and play on the other toys when I told him it was time to go home (I'd given him a 5 minute and a 2 minute warning by the way, and I did let him have one slide)

Andrew's Spiderman birthday party

We had Andrew's 3rd Annual Andrewpalooza at Matt's parents house. Thank you grandma and grandpa! We went on Friday and helped clean their house and start to set up the party so that we wouldn't have to do as much on Saturday, there are always last minute things to do anyway. Andrew was SO excited!! We had 27 people there, including kids and a baby! (15 of them were family and us)

Andrew got hold of the camera that morning and took a self-portrait

Mommy & Andrew and Kim & Abby

Andrew and Abby chattin'

Awww, Andrew giving grandpa a hug

Ethan blowing bubbles (with the bubble wands)

The boys doing bubbles in the yard

He did pretty good with blowing them this time

He's really cute when he's blowing them

Andrew and the grandmas

Grandma Donna & 'Muh' (grandma Kathy)

Lighting the candles

He did a really good job blowing out the candles

Mmmm....I want more!

What??? My face isn't dirty!

Daddy and Mommy

Digging in some more (can you tell he didn't have a nap that day)

We invited Spiderman and he actually came!

He even brought a present (a Spiderman car and shirt)

I asked Andrew to say thank you and give Spiderman a hug, that's when he started to get nervous.

I was trying to get Andrew to stand with Spiderman so I could get a picture

So we said goodbye to Spiderman before he really started to get scared

Opening presents....this kid got SO many presents!!

Andrew sitting in his new chair and cousin Sam

A tractor

Silly boy!!

Grumpa, Andrew, and Muh

Grandpa Brad, Andrew, and Grandma Donna

Andrew, Aunt Angie, and Andrew's best friend Tony

Mommy, Andrew, and Daddy

Pretending to have a sleepover with Grandma Donna and Tristan

Making the Spiderman cake

Last Saturday we celebrated Andrew's birthday by having a Spiderman birthday party. So....Friday night I set out to make a Spiderman cake of Spiderman's mask. I was doing very well at putting both layers together without dropping it or breaking off any pieces, and the shape came out great. I just cut it, I didn't use a pan. But when I started frosting it I ran into problems. Last year I made an Elmo face cake and I had a VERY difficult time making red frosting. So this time I thought I would use pre-made red frosting, which comes in the tubes as decorator icing. Only this is really only made for doing detail work and not frosting the whole cake, which was starting to make my cake lift up and would have taken a lot of tubes. My friend and next-door-neighbor Arien came to the rescue!! She told me to call Fred Meyer's bakery and ask them for 2lbs. of buttercream frosting tinted "Spiderman red." They had it ready 5 minutes later and it was only $2.82!!!! Cheaper than a can of buttercream frosting! I will NEVER make and tint my own frosting again!! It worked so well. Then I used parchment paper to make the shape of the eyes and lay it over the cake and I piped white decorator icing back and forth. I traced the web with a metal spatula and then I used black gel to make the web and it came out so cool!!!

THE FINISHED PRODUCT:

THE MAKING OF THE CAKE:

Andrew only saw me carve the shape, he didn't see the cake until his party.

You see the red frosting piped into the dish, totally NOT spreadable!

The finishing touches

Ta-da! I think Duff from 'Ace of Cakes' would be proud, for an ameteur.

And...it tasted delicious with a marion-blackberry filling. Yum!! Andrew loved it!

Presents from mommy and Daddy

After we got home from Seattle Andrew got to open his presents in our freezing cold house. He was very excited, he had been wanting it to be his birthday for days. We let him open the presents from us on his birthday because we knew he would have a lot of presents to open at his party.

A Curious George movie

He loves Curious George!

(He doesn't watch t.v. that much, but sometimes he wants to watch Curious George and he's just about the only cartoon that isn't 'on demand' on our cable.)