Category Archives: Addyson May

Thirty Years Older…

After JJ’s 4th birthday party we celebrated this guy who is 30 years older than JJ. He joked about a trapezoid so he got a trapezoid.

Happy Birthday, Andrew. We are all thankful for you and glad God brought you to our family.

While family was in town we enjoyed digging through some very old bins of stuff.

Addy loved twirling in one of Auntie Katie’s dresses from years ago.

JJ gravitated to this infant sized superman t-shirt that he squeezed over his head and onto his body.

Some good conversations transpired.

More bin fun with Katie’s old Barbie and Ken dolls. Clothes and lots of itty bitty things got dumped on the floor!

 

Scary or Cute?

The plan was hatched between the ‘director’ above and the birthday dinosaur to scare all of us with JJ’s ‘scary’ transformation into a green dinosaur.

She was on the lookout and knew we were all in danger.

He appeared!! Cute or scary?

Fast and roaring!

 

After we were all sufficiently scared the dinosaur opened his presents.

Last but not least, his big boy fishing pole!

Finishing off the party with photos of his guests.

Don’t miss the dinosaur feet.

 

The party was a success of dinosaur proportions and we left for home to prepare for another birthday celebration in the evening. The cute 4 year old dinosaur had a nap and was ready for an evening of fun at Baba and Gramps’.

We love you JJ and pray that you will grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. May God keep you and protect you all the days of your life.

So they don’t get lost over time here are the other posts from JJ’s 4th birthday party.

Dino Food and Fun

Were You Invited, T-Rex?

Four-ociously JJ

 

Dino Food and Fun

At JJ’s 4th birthday party after the T-Rex (AKA Uncle Scott) made his entrance it was time for lunch and before we start Gramps offers up a prayer of blessing for JJ to our heavenly Father.

I didn’t take photos of all the food. We had drumsticks, meatballs, little smokies, raw veggies and fresh fruit.

After lunch we played an outdoor game before we had cake.

We had a green team and orange team and we had to fill the little dinosaurs with water and try to fill a cup up to the line by squeezing the water out of the dinosaur.

Games over it was time for cake!

So many good sports with the dinosaur theme!

Sistersaurus and her Four-ocious brother made some plans to scare and entertain us before it was time for presents.

That post is coming next since this one is already photo intense.

 

The party continues on Monday and beyond!

Happy Friday and I hope you all have a good weekend.

Were You Invited, T-Rex?

There we were just hanging out at JJ’s Dinosaur party when Aunt Rhonda exclaimed dramatically that we all needed to go outside and see what was happening! We were all shocked to see T-Rex coming up the driveway.

Amber the dog went into full protection mode barking at this creature she was confused about.

Of course we all realized that this was Great Uncle Scott in costume. He gets the prize for this huge fun surprise at JJ’s Dinosaur party. Aunt Rhonda dropped him off down the driveway for him to get in costume to surprise all of us.

Uncle Scott gets on his knee to show JJ and Addy that it is him in costume. Time to re-create a little Jurassic Park action.

So much excitement and now we head inside to have our lunch and more dinosaur fun.

After the great effort on the part of Uncle Scott and Aunt Rhonda for this surprise at the party I think it deserves it’s own post. More party fun to come with some ‘scary’ action from a cute little dinosaur. This will definitely be a party to remember.

Time is Passing Hodgepodge

The two guys in this photo above celebrate birthdays this week.

Thank you Joyce From This Side of the Pond for Wednesday Hodgepodge! Click over to join in the fun.

1. April 13th is National Scrabble Day…are you a fan? 

Yes, I enjoy Scrabble. Haven’t played in ages!

Do you enjoy word games in general? 

Yes, mostly.

What’s an eight letter word that tells us something about your life currently?

Peculiar; unusual, or particular or special. We are heading into a period of hospitality at our Country Bungalow that does not involve biological family. We are confident that it will be a blessing as we adjust in the month of May and into part of June.

2.  Do you have a junk drawer? Is it full? Do you know what’s in it? What’s in it? 

Yes, yes, and yes. It’s full of things like keys, tape measures, charging wires, and junk! Thank you so much for this question as it caused me to clean out that junk drawer and make it more useable!

3. When does time pass quickly for you? When does it pass slowly? 

When our family is all together, time passes quickly.

Time passes slowly when I’m awake in the night at 2am and not able to get back to sleep.

4. These eight vegetables are in season during spring-asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, collard greens, garlic, herbs. What’s your favorite? Any on the list you refuse to eat? Last one on the list you ate? 

Favorite would probably be carrots. I wouldn’t refuse any of these but I’m not a fan of collard greens. On Monday we had some asparagus, carrots and new potatoes roasted.

5. What’s the oldest thing you own? Tell us about it. 

Dear has a French Violin from the 1700’s. That is old and probably the oldest thing in our home. Dear’s dad got it from someone when Dear was 10 or 11 and decided he wanted to take violin lessons. Dear’s dad Rex has always acquired interesting things. Our baby grand piano which we got from Dear’s folks is over a hundred years old.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

This little guy turns 4 this weekend and we will celebrate him with Dinosaurs. Time flies when you have Grands!!

All of our kids will be together this weekend and on Friday evening we’ll start things off celebrating our Son-in-law’s birthday which happens to be today. Happy Birthday Andrew. Can’t wait to celebrate you on Friday!

Thankful that you stopped by to read this post and leave a comment.

Easter Day, Here and There…

Easter 2023 our western crew wasn’t able to be with our eastern crew. We will be all together next this coming weekend, Lord willing. Glad photos were taken of these two in their Easter finery that they wore to church.

We had a sermon centered on Jesus and 3 characteristics of a Risen Savior; He is calling your name, He can calm your fears, He can conquer your doubt. The Bible is a living book about a living Savior. It was good to be in the house of the Lord.

This crew a few hundred miles away had their finery on, too.

After church there was some Easter basket fun with baskets that are not of the traditional kind.

Granny was so creative using these cute umbrellas with the current themes for our Grands, Unicorns and Dinosaurs, filled with lots of fun goodies!

Finally it was time to get our rain gear on and go outside for the Easter Egg Hunt!

We didn’t get the sunshine we had last year for this Easter Sunday and we had a very rainy Easter Monday. We should be full swing into our season of mud here. We only have a couple small snow piles left in our yard. This coming weekend will be a very busy one for us as we will celebrate our grandson’s 4th birthday…with a dinosaur theme.

Easter Monday

Recovering from a glorious Easter day.

We had a little rain just in time for the Easter Egg hunt. That didn’t deter the Grands at all.

When I get my photos together I’ll share more. Didn’t take one photo of the Easter Brunch we had at church. It went well and we had good help so that was a huge relief. We had close to 200 come through for the brunch. For the service we had a full sanctuary and overflow in the gym.

Hope you all have a good week!

The Rest of Last Weekend

On Saturday the 18th, we moved from the birthday party of one of the youngest in our family to celebrate the oldest in our family, me. Our kids made soup and salad and even baked a loaf of marbled rye for us to enjoy for dinner. After dinner we enjoyed strawberry shortcake. Before the cake was cut we had the obligatory blowing out of a few candles.

I had the best helpers to help blow out the candles.

This guy had a full day of watching others open presents.

I got puzzle piece sorter trays, a puzzle subscription, a framed bouquet of flowers that represent all the months of our family birthdays. Names are written on the stems and some leaves.

Josh asked for silly faces and two of the five obliged. Time for the littles to go home with their parents and for the older folk to hit the sack after a full day of celebrating.

We gathered on Sunday for breakfast at Dan and Jamie’s and we all enjoyed some time outside ending with a nice walk down the driveway and up again.

Our Westside kids hopped into their car and headed back across the mountains for home.

I’m adding this next collage for my benefit.

Love the delight captured in Addy’s face at her ‘friends’ party a week prior to the family party. The bakery owner made those cute unicorn cookies.

Back to the Present: After a few sunny days with temps up into the 50’s we are having a brief cold snap with possible rain in the mix. Looking forward to warmer days next week and hopefully I’ll be able to finish clearing our planters of their old growth. It will be a quiet weekend after our very busy one. Hope you all have a nice weekend.

I Choose Joy Hodgepodge

Wednesday Hodgepodge is back this week. Thank you Joyce From This Side of the Pond for the questions!

1. Did you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in some way? If so tell us how. Are you a fan of corned beef? Cabbage? The color green? Yes, yes, and yes. 

This year St. Patrick’s day landed on the Friday that our kids drove over from the Westside to celebrate birthdays over the weekend. All of us, except for Andrew, gathered Friday evening for a Corned Beef and Cabbage meal. Our weekend was packed solid with celebrations. Addy’s party on Saturday afternoon and a belated celebration for me Saturday evening.

2. March 22nd is National Goof Off Day…will you celebrate? Your favorite way to goof off? Last time you had a whole day to spend ‘goofing off’? 

My favorite way to goof off is to do nothing and stay in my jammies and robe for most of the morning. Wednesdays is not usually a goof off day for me. Wednesday morning I join some other gals at church for prayer meeting at 9am. After prayer I usually stop at Wal-Mart or Super 1 to pick up any needed groceries since I’m in town already. On this particular Wednesday we are having 2 other couples over for cards at 5 so I’ll be making some kind of a dessert for us to share during our card evening. Hand and Foot is what we play (Canasta?).

3. Something on your to-do list that has been there more than a month? Will this be the month you finally cross it off? 

Usually in late Fall the planters should be cleared of old growth and prepared for winter. We had early snow that covered our planters and Dear had a stroke on November 5th so any outside work got put on the back burner. Before March is over I hope to be able to clear out all the soggy and dead growth to give way to the Spring growth. On Monday and Tuesday of this week the weather was right to get a start on this task. My back can only take so much each day. I have 4 of the 7 planters done. Dear was able to gather many of the fallen branches from our evergreens and chop them down to size for the burn pile. So thankful that we are still physically able to accomplish some of these tasks.

4. In your opinion, what emotion is the most beneficial? Which one is the least useful? 

I think many emotions can be both beneficial and detrimental depending on the degree they are felt and acted upon. Example: There is healthy fear and a debilitating fear.  There is a place for sadness and grief but not despair.

Since we are asked to choose. I’ll choose JOY! Joy lifts up and it is encouraging to be around a joyful person. For my least useful choice I’ll go with anger even though there is a place for anger we are apt to go overboard if we let this emotion take over.

5. What was your favorite thing to do as a kid? Elaborate. 

Read! I can still remember what a joy it was to be able to hold a book in my primary years and read it. Dick and Jane most likely. Then that joy grew. My siblings and I would walk to the library and check out our quota of books to bring home to read. I remember scanning the shelves of books to choose the right ones. In later elementary years a bookmobile would come to our school and I enjoyed that chance to choose books to read, too.

It was 1.7 miles one way from our home in Pico Rivera to the Montebello Library that sat on the grounds of Montebello City park. That library is now a Senior Center. We walked out of our neighborhood (Montebello Gardens) to Whittier Blvd, across the Rio Hondo River bridge and straight on to the library.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Our sweet granddaughter who turned six on the first day of Spring, Monday.

Her party was on Saturday. We are so thankful to God that we get to have a granddaughter and grandson to love and watch grow. Posts of the Magical Unicorn Party Here, Here and Here.

We had a wonderful packed weekend. Our Westside kids drove home on Sunday.

Cake, Presents and Party Games!

This money roll from Granny Great and Jim was sooo much fun!

It was so sweet that she tried to read each card before diving into the gift.

Our card read, “Baba and Gramps thank God that He made you and that we get to love you forever!”

Auntie Lolo and Uncle Josh bought the birthday dress, amazing sequenced unicorn jacket and shoes for Addy which was her birthday outfit.

We played a game where we had to hold a plate on top of our heads and attempt to draw a unicorn or a rainbow without taking the plate off of our heads. Addy was the judge and she looked at each drawing carefully and chose the unicorn winner and the rainbow winner…

The winners!

Outside for unicorn ring toss!

Brother preferred riding his jeep.

This party was over and we went home where our kids had planned another meal for dinner and cake for my belated birthday celebration. The fun was constant from our Friday St. Patrick’s day meal through Sunday breakfast before our ‘Westside’ kids drove home. That will be another post.