Caleb’s 3rd Birthday

Our baby is tha-wee!  He’s such a big boy that we clearly needed to have a BIG party.  He picked out the dinosaur decorations at Walmart himself and with the balloons, streamers, and happy birthday banner we were ready to go! I asked Caleb what kind of birthday cake he wanted… maybe Ironman…or Umizoomi? No, he wanted it to be BLUE.  Just blue. Nothing else.  It’s like he knows I don’t have any cake skillz and didn’t want me to hurt myself trying.  I conveniently had some dinosaur sprinkles, so we spiced it up a bit… nothing too fancy. And let’s be honest…it’s all about the frosting anyway.  I could have just bought a tub of frosting, stirred in some blue food coloring and handed it to him and he would have been just as happy. The Bachman brothers… and best friend Nate the neighbor, who virtually lives at our house.  It’s a good thing.  He’s like our Urkel, Kimmy Gibler or Cody from ‘Step By Step’ … but cooler clearly. Caleb got lots of love and attention from his family and friends! Caleb’s ultimate favorite present.. a Bop Bag tiger that you can punch and it will pop back up… until it get a hole within 24 hours and takes up space in your toy box.  It was GLORIOUS for a day though, and he did the best happy dance when he got it. Caleb questioning, is this entire bag of jellybeans all for me? Nick and Erica really hooked Caleb up… he was the happiest of nephews.  Candy and a ball?  The perfect 3 year old gift. You can see Zekie was more anxious for Caleb to open his presents than he was. All Bachman functions must have a full body tackle at some point in the program. The bop bag didn’t stand a chance with this group about to pounce. Here is Nick trying to resurrect my attempt at the actual cake portion of Caleb’s birthday.  I of course didn’t let the cake cool down properly before I put the frosting on and it melted in a disgusting blob around the outside.  I tried to recruit Nick to help me and he was entirely reluctant until he saw there was no chance of survival with me at the wheel and finally took over. Erica may think twice before she buys a present for my children that could possibly be used as a weapon.  A pretty convincing cower I may add. Ta dah!  A beautiful blue cake for Caleb’s birthday.  Nice work Nick and lovely assistant Zekie… and by assistant I mean assist in eating it.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!  We had such a fabulous day filled with the usual 3 F’s… family, food and faith!  Our various activities this Easter weekend including: coloring Easter eggs at Aunt Kimi’s,listening to my mom sing with the Mormon Chorale in the Tabernacle, having the Easter Bunny come (Zekie woke up at 4:15am to see what he got), going to church (I got called to be the 1st counselor in the Primary), and then going to Rob’s family’s house to celebrate.  We ate delicious ham and twice baked potatoes, had a mini Easter lesson with the kiddos, had an Easter egg hunt and played and talked to our hearts desire.Zekie and cousin Haley busting out their best magazine pose.Knock knock jokes.  Gets ‘em every time.And of course no event would be complete without some super hero punches from the twins!

Isaac’s 4th Birthday (in Lehi)

Isaac blowing out his candles with gusto!

Here’s Isaac’s birthday again.  This time we celebrated in Lehi with my side of the family.  My mother put up some lovely decorations and bought Isaac some awesome presents.  Also she bought dollar store items for Zekie and Caleb with really helped with them not feeling left out in the present dept.  They got to play with some gel capsules that turned into sponges!Zekie made himself a pixistix parfait.Isaac and Caleb had lots of fun swirling sand while I actually couldn’t resist in peeling off the sticker art and adding various sand colors myself!  It was really hard getting the sticker peels off…I swear the box said for ages 30 and up. Thanks Dad, Lisa, Mom, Nick and Erica for another swell Thurman family birthday bash!Gong and Zekie got in some solid bonding reading the comics together… there are some strong genes running through their blood… see the similarities!WE LOVE YOU ISAAC!  Thanks for being such a fun and sweet Squeaks!

Isaac’s 4th Birthday (in Farmington)

Isaac turned the glorious age of 4, and thus to celebrate we joined with Rob’s side of the family and threw a par-tay!  Isaac is super into Spiderman, and so I attempted to have a Spidermanish theme.  For our activity the cousins and I made a toilet paper spider web.  Then we made up a game where you could get points/candy by balancing small toys on the web.Candy love.Twin love.The game’s finale was throwing larger toys at the web to destroy it.Isaac unfortunately wasn’t fast enough to get in on the earlier destroying but Aunt Kimi saved the day by helping him get THE BIGGEST stuffed bear and chucking it right threw the middle.

Sweet Grandma…                 Silly Grandpa…

The biggest blow ever… and the wish?  To be Spiderman when he grows up.  The other day Isaac let out a big sigh and said “It’s taking such a yong (long), yong, yong time to be Spiderman.”So proud of his blow and all the cheers from fam.  Isaac’s been quite humble lately and tells me daily about how “awesome” he is.Isaac’s love comes and goes by the minute.  If he’s happy with you he tells you “I yuv you Mama.” or maybe even “I wish I were a Mama.”  but if he’s mad he has no reservations to say “I don’t yuv you anymore!” or “I’m not going to marry you!”Nothing draws cousins like a magnet faster than a new present.The theme for presents for Isaac this year was remote control cars.  He got one from both grandmas and me and Rob…but his very favorite present was a car from Mark, Kimi, Peyton and Ryker, that had lights, blasters, and noises that pop out when you push it.  Isaac gave the best reaction of “OH!! THIS IS WHAT I WANTED!!”

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning brought happy boys racing down the stairs in anticipation of what Santa had brought. Luckily they were patient enough to wait for us to brush our teeth, set up the camera and wait for each brother to open the presents one by one. The "elves" had written To: Sir Zekealot on one of Zekie's presents. Zekie got a real kick out of that.

Also Isaac had woken up at 6:45 that morning, a full hour earlier than normal. Not because Santa had come, but because he and Dada "needed to fight the bad guys!" They played the "Wack game" (Wii sword fight) for atleast an hour before the rest of us rolled out of bed. Caleb had actually slept 13 hours at which point Rob went and got him to inform him Santa had come.

Isaac's favorite present by far was the Spiderman costume complete with a Spidey mask. You can see in his expression above that he had been highly anticipating becoming Spiderman...a dream come true really. He quickly changed from Buzz Lightyear into Spiderman by immediately stripping down completely naked...and by naked I mean BUTT naked. We tried to explain that Spiderman wore underwear but he assured us that infact he does not. It didn't take long wearing the costume for him to ask to put his underwear and undershirt back on. 40 hours later...he is still wearing the costume. I'm not sure how we're going to get it off him.

The Lightning McQueen Raceway was also a big hit.  Isaac has the best expressions!

“The twins” look like twins in general but when they become Spiderman and Ironman…they reeeally take the twin thing to a whole new level.  Isaac kept saying that Spiderman and Ironman were “friends” but I’m pretty sure he said it in the “allies” sort of way.  Also he said with a gleam in his eye… “I love ya, Ironman Baby.”

Zekie has a favorite pair of Crocs. He literally wore them out...which is pretty hard to do with Crocs. Luckily Santa came through and got him a fresh new pair in the next size up. Zekie was so pleased when he saw the neighbor kids in the street trying out their new wheeled presents he ran and got his old pair of Crocs and his new pair so he could show them. That's right...he didn't show them the Leapster. It was the shiney new Crocs that received the most glory. He also brought both pairs to my parents house later that day for a big compare contrast session.

Caleb got a counting cookie jar that says "Please give me another cookie." Caleb responded in a huff.."I already gave you some!!"

He also said on the way to my parents "Oh Doggy! I found your puppies". This is because I make a little dog out of my hand that is by the way a complete and separate entity from me, just so you know. Caleb LOVES the "dog" and will do things for him that he'd never do for me. Zekie was the same way. He made up that his two pointer fingers are the "puppies" and the dog and puppies snuggle often.

Tonight he had a major tailgate party with me out of the back on his matchcar Monster truck. I'd ask for a Strawberry Daqueri and He'd say "Here's your Stabury Dakurwy!" A couple weeks ago he'd taken a long nap and about 15 minutes after I put him to bed he came out and said " I had a nice daweem...and that's enough." I wasn't buying it so I put him back to bed. Another 10 minutes past. He came down again and said "I just had no daweems"...and shrugged like only Caleb can insinuating he was clearly not at fault and powerless to fall asleep. I put him to bed again. He came down AGAIN another 10 minutes later and pronounced this time "I just had a regular daweem." Apparently his dream was not "nice" just "regular" this time. How many two year old's do you know that use the word "regular" regularly? Funny kid.

Zekie and I picked out some lovely Adias workout clothes for Rob because he’s such an athlete!
I told Santa there was only one present I wanted for Christmas was a new flash for my camera…and Score! I got one!  Below is a before an after shot of the basement.   Talk about filling the room with light.  I’m really excited to figure out how it works.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas filled with the love our Savior and the remembering of his birth!