Summer, Birthdays and Slip-n-Slides

It's been a pretty busy week. That's not an excuse for me not getting around to posting an update on here sooner with birthday and such-like pictures. I don't have any good excuse for that. But there's been a lot going on.

First, let me just go ahead and say that future summers are going to be . . . interesting. My kids are only attending school for two mornings a week right now, but I swear to god they are driving me absolutely nuts now that they are home all week. I don't know if its that we all have to see each other just that much more or if they don't have enough outlets for their crazy when they can't get away from me or what, but they are insane. Maybe it's the heat and it's not them it's just bothering me. I don't know, but they aren't even old enough for this to be a thing yet and it's a thing. I can't even imagine, when they're used to having structure and stuff to do five days a week what it will be like trying to keep them occupied for three months. As I said, "interesting" (which I meant euphemistically as "going to suck," in case I was being too subtle).

The kids' birthdays have now come and gone. It's actually pretty sweet having their birthdays almost perfectly spaced at the halfway point to Christmas. Figuring we can start the behavioral blackmail about three months before the event, we can use the "you better be good or you won't get any presents" threat for fully half the year! Pretty wise approach, really. I'd fully recommend trying to plan on a June or July birthday, if at all possible.

Anyway, it was another unnecessarily awesome birthday celebration for our kids. They have to be the most spoiled children anywhere, really. Libby simply does too much for them. She duded up the backyard with an obstacle course that ended with a big pool of water for them to play in. And she baked these two incredible cakes.

Norah's castle cake.

Gabe's Green Ninja from Ninjago cake.

I mean, come on! Each year she seems to outdo herself. Which is all well and good, except how can she possibly continue to do that? And mostly I fear that all of this effort and awesomeness is being wasted anyway since they likely won't remember much of anything from these early birthday parties.

Personally, I believe that children should get maybe two birthday parties in their lives. They should happen when they are old enough to have, say, three friends over to spend the night. They should involve a store-bought cake and ice cream, and that's pretty much it. That's what I got (except for the one trip to Showbiz Pizza) and I turned out fine. Anything more than that is showy and unnecessary.

 The obstacle course.

Naw, I'm just complaining. It was great. The kids had fun. It didn't last long enough for the parents to want to scratch out our eyes. It was great.

The day before his birthday, Gabe decided to mildly disfigure his face. Fortunately, it's not bad enough that you can really notice it unless you're looking. He put a long piece of yarn in his mouth and then pulled it out really fast, like he was trying to start a lawnmower. So he has two stripes of rope burn on his cheeks. Boys sure are dumb. Entertaining as hell, but dumb.

I've decided that the official name for a group of children is an insanity. This is a picture of an insanity of children. And the presents. Dear god, the presents. Again, our children are ridiculously spoiled. They will never value anything because they just keep getting more and more stuff. We are, I'm sure, creating materialistic monsters. But we just can't help ourselves! We want them to have the things they want if we can afford to give it to them (and, with Gabe at least, I want to play with his toys, too).

Eating the cake.

And, most important of all, it's over for another year! Having two kids with their birthdays three days apart is also kind of awesome. Sure it means that Norah pretty much has to open all of her presents on Gabe's actual birthday or she loses her mind with jealousy and then has nothing on her real birthday to do. But, otherwise, it is working out pretty well so far. I imagine things will get more complicated as they get older and have more closely knit groups of their own friends. We might end up doing two separate parties just a few days apart--and if that becomes the case, then having two children with birthdays three days apart is a TERRIBLE idea and nobody else should ever do it.

Finally, the slip-n-slide. One of our friends gave the kids a slip-n-slide for their birthday and we broke it out a couple days ago to give it a try.

To me, the slip-n-slide was always the Phantom Menace of summertime, water-based, fun-time activities. It looks AWESOME. From the pictures on the box and the commercials, it looks like doing a log jam where YOU are the log. You run and you slide on this perfectly lubricated surface, stirring up a wake of awesomeness, until you splash like an extinction-event asteroid hitting the ocean into the pool of water at the end of the slide.

But in reality, the slip-n-slide never even comes close to living up to the hype (thus my Phantom Menace reference). There are almost no spots on the run that are perfectly lubricated. Instead, most of the surface is made up of nipple-erasing bare rubber. The track is also perilously narrow, meaning you have to PERFECTLY aim your approach or end up with the worst kind of grass burns all over your body as you careen helplessly off the edges. And, if you are lucky enough to reach the reservoir of water at the end unscathed, then one of two things happens. Either you get mildly wetter or you shoot right off the end like helpless human torpedo. If you're lucky, all the water you've been running through it has created a mud hole that will at least partially cushion your deceleration. If you're unlucky, say goodbye to the skin on your belly.

The kids, however, love the thing. And unlike the two or three slip-n-slides we've bought them over the past couple years, this one is an ACTUAL slip-n-slide and not some knock-off brand. Which means it's actually somewhat durable. Besides being pretty awful at putting water onto the slide, the cheap ones tend to fall apart whenever they are used by anyone even a little bit. But this one has held up to several uses already, and the kids have not been the least bit gentle.

Anyway, here are some videos. The kids are actually pretty amusing while they use it--and Gabe got this weird catwalk, "sashay" thing going that we have absolutely no explanation for.

 

Gabe, sort of figuring it out.

 

And, apparently, I can't caption a video except the first time when I upload multiples at the same time. Dear Blogger, stop sucking! Anyway, the second video is Norah army crawling her way over the slide, and then we get into the kids just being weird, especially with Gabe's silly walks. The last video I included so everyone could see exactly how "sweet" Norah is most of the time.