The Party.

The Big Man was super excited about his birthday party this year. He asked just about every day for two weeks if his birthday party was that day. I had planned on having the party at a really fun park not far from our house, and Luke thought that was so cool. Unfortunately the weather was the pits (once again), so we were relocated to the house. Thankfully the Stinker didn't seem to care or even notice.

 

Once it was party time, he was thrilled to have his friends come to "Yuke's house".

I let Luke choose what kind of party he wanted this year. 

He chose cars and trucks.

 Other than requesting the cars and trucks theme, the ONLY other thing he requested for his party was a chocolate cake. The kid is a chocoholic like his mama.

He was so tickled to have cars on his cake.

After eating cake, it was time to open presents. This Captain America mask was one of the first things he opened. He wore it for the rest of the party.

Even while opening his other presents...

...and while playing outside (after it warmed up a little and stopped raining).

He was still wearing it many hours later at dinner time...

...and when he finally took it off, it was only to practice some of his super hero moves.


My big 3 year old!

I still can't believe he is 3 already. Where did the time go? It has been the best 3 years of our lives, and we love this precious boy with ever ounce of our hearts!

TEXAS!!

Luke recently got to take his first trip to visit my little brother and sister in Forth Worth. He had never been there, and none of us had met our sweet Miss Macy yet, so when Phil had to go to Dallas for work, we tagged along. It was a blast!

I mean, is she not the cutest little punkin you have ever seen? And her personality makes her even more adorable. She is a doll baby, content to just be around people and soooo mild mannered. I would have taken her home with me in a heartbeat. I am totally in love with her.

At first Luke wasn't too interested in Macy, but little by little he warmed up. By the end of the trip he was giving "Baby Macy" kisses and hugs all the time. He was on constant pacie patrol, making sure she always had her pacifier nearby. He loved that her car seat was right next to his in the car and talked to her and kept her updated at all times during our car rides. He really was a good big cousin to her and I couldn't have been more pleased.

This phone picture is the only one I have of the two of us, but I got lots of good quality time with my sweet Macers.

Luke was a big help with Uncle Ben and Aunt Abbi's other kiddos-- the dogs, Gunner and Maddie. He had the best time helping give them a bath. 

This picture sums up this stage of Luke's life so well. He was uber excited about playing with the hose and in the water and was yelling, "DA NA NA NAAAAH!!!" like a super hero at this point. He is all about super heroes and bad guys and fighting (friendly, no contact, spastic, just for fun fighting) and is constantly doing hilarious things like this these days. I am so glad I caught him in the act.

Seriously. Uncle Ben's hose and all its switches and sprays may have been one of the best things in Texas.


And it got even better when Uncle Ben showed him how to hold the hose like a fire fighter.

We tried so hard to get a good picture of these three.

Luke wouldn't cooperate.

The closest he got to looking at the camera was when he decided to show off his "bad guy hands". Are you scared? You should be scared.

Aunt Abbi gave Luke a fun fishing game, and he challenged Uncle Ben to a few fishing duels. It was serious business.

He paused long enough to take a picture with Flipper, but still refused to look at the camera.

 

He got to show off his latest baseball skills. He can hit without the tee!

Most of his time, though, was spent doing what he does best.

On Saturday we went to the Stockyards to watch a cattle drive. How cool are these longhorns?

Luke tried to convince us to buy some souvenirs. Nice try, bud.

We did pay a friendly cowboy clown for some balloon swords for the Stinker. Looks like we might need to pay for some self defense lessons to go with them.

Luckily our Big Man did regain his composure a little later and dutifully defended his family from the longhorns.

Anne and I had a quick photo op.

Then I hopped in front of traffic to take this pic of the fam.

We were all sad to have to leave Texas and can't wait to go again!

THREE.

Guess who turned 3 on Sunday??

Btw...that's a sparkler candle. His cake is not exploding.

These are just phone pictures. I have real pictures, but I can't get them to upload to my new computer. Until I can get the birthday pictures to upload, I'll finally get around to updating the blog with other pictures. I'll be back with a full birthday post as soon as I can!

Sick.

Last week Luke and I went to our beloved Chick-Fil-A for a late lunch one day. It was pretty empty due to the off hour, so when Luke went to play in the play area only one other little girl was in there playing. It was great...until I overheard her dad talking to his friend-girl about the horrific diarrhea blow-out his daughter had had at her mom's house the night before and how it was a good thing because it meant that her virus was working its way out of her system. When I heard this my first thoughts were all about how sorry I felt for that mom having to clean that up and how gross it must have been. Then I looked through the glass into the play area at the little girl and her super slimy runny nose and thought, "Oh crap." By that point Luke had been playing in there for a while and had most definitely touched every single square inch of that place. I quickly grabbed him and washed him down and hopped in the car.
 Well, just over 24 hours later he started puking. Awesome. He puked about once an hour for the next 7 hours.  The strangest thing, though, was that other than the throwing up, he did not act even the slightest bit sick. He didn't have a fever, wasn't pale, and didn't complain about feeling bad. He ran around and laughed and played just like normal. He even helped Daddy mow for a while, and it was serious business. Thankfully we didn't have to endure the horrible diarrhea part of the virus, and by the next day, you never would have known how sick he had been. We laid low for a few days, though, and may never look at a CFA playground the same.

Day at the Museum.

My good friend from college, Karen, took Luke and me with her and her adorable 15 month old, Clara, to the Indianapolis Children's Museum on Saturday. Luke was beyond excited to go.

They have the coolest, most enormous dinosaurs all over the outside of the building. They are all either breaking in or breaking out of the museum. These are just 2 of them.

For once in Luke's life he looks little.

 The first exhibit we visited was the train exhibit. We got to go in a very old train and pretend to take a ride. Luke loved it but it was really crowded and impossible to take pictures in.

 On the way to the dinosaur exhibit, we stopped at a play table to make a few dinosaurs roar at each other.

 Then we did a little archaeological digging for fossils.

After running through that exhibit like a wild man, we headed to the Mr. Potato Head exhibit.

 Somehow Luke turned into Vanna White there for a minute...

 So much of Mr. Potato Head Land seemed (to me) to have nothing to do with Mr. Potato Head. Luke didn't notice or care, of course.

 Going on safari in Mr. Potato Head's jeep?

Becoming a tour guide and taking charge.

Then we were off to the science area. Mommy was scared it was going to be torturously boring, but it was probably the best of all the exhibits.

The water table was the biggest hit and this was the closest he ever got to looking at me despite my constant begging for him to look at the camera.

 He found and put together a sail boat, only to ask if he could get in and play with it.

 When I said no, he took matters into his own hands and put his mouth in the water. Being the great mom that I am, I made sure to snap the picture before yanking him out of the water.

 There was a big area all about diggers and construction. Although he never got to drive the bulldozer because some unsupervised kids monopolized it forever, Luke was just as happy digging in the mulch for a while.

 Daddy will be so thrilled to have help later this spring when a big mulch pile appears in the driveway!

 This incredible Chihuly sculpture was right in the middle of everything and every time Luke saw it he asked if he could take some of the "snakes" home.

Then it was on to Lego Land.

 While we aren't really into Legos yet at our house (thank God), we couldn't help but be impressed with this Lego city.

 Then we found something that we could appreciate...


See that sign? We are all about it. Where do we board?

But this is by far my favorite. Not my favorite moment, but definitely my favorite picture...


We had to have a time out in Lego Land for banging on the plexiglass and not obeying when Mommy said no.

It's such a rough life.