Jon's Birthday Weekend

Here's an attempt at covering the events of The Festival of Jon. A day (or days as the case may be) in the summer that we all look forward to spending together each year.

Thursday kicked things off when we got together with some close friends. We love spending time with the Hillers and Wasuitas. Mia especially loved the homemade pizza. The girls loved the Italian sodas and I loved the dessert pizza. Oh wait. I loved all of it! The pizza, the Italian sodas and the dessert! We went swimming after dinner and the girls didn't ever want to leave. Never. Never ever. In their words, it was, "THE BEST NIGHT EVER!!" They got to watch Rani and Claire do some synchronized swimming and float with Jon on some huge water pillow things. Sophie tried, but couldn't quite hold on to the ginormous crab floaty like she wanted to. Definitely a great start to the weekend.

Friday we decided to camp out in the backyard. We attempted this two years ago and failed at the actual camping outdoors part. Once we finished watching our movie Lydia decided it was time to go sleep in her nice warm bed. Inside. But we were all game to try it again. Some of the more memorable things for Jon were that spending the night in the tent was fun. Sophie was really cold outside her sleeping bag, but both she and Lyds kept saying that their sleeping bags were too cold. Poor Aunt Abby (who we were thrilled to have join us) had only a light fleece blanket to keep her warm. Not sure why I thought that would be enough, but I'm so sorry Abs! Jon also remembers laying on the air mattress and being the heaviest thing on it so that the girls just rolled on top of him. Every half hour he had to move them away. Soph fell in the crack between the mattresses many times. Lydia's giggles during The Incredibles when Jack Jack turns into a monster after Syndrome kidnaps him was a definite highlight. As was Mia sleeping until 5:30 in the morning. She kept looking out the windows and pointing to the sky. I could almost see her thinking "what are we doing here?" She kept trying to grab the ipad while the movie was going and in her haste to reach it she'd find herself getting stuck between the mattresses. Overall I'd say that backyard camping was a smashing success! I think it's safe to say that we'll do it again. And we might even try leaving the comforts of our lovely backyard and rough it in the great outdoors. Maybe. One day.

Saturday Jon took the girls with him to run some errands while Aunt Abby and I made his cake (more on that later). While at Home Depot Sophie practically yelled out "we need to go find the popcorn lady" because they usually have popcorn, but it was late in the day at this point and they weren't doing it. Then she proceeded to loudly explain why they lady wasn't there. "Maybe she's at home.... Maybe she had another job. Maybe she's out of popcorn. She's not there!" They were there buying Tiki torches which naturally led to the following discussion: what mosquitos like and don't like. "Do they like carrots? Probably. Any food they probably like. What don't they like? Maybe we could fan them away. Maybe we could use the fly swatter. Or maybe we could swing on the swings. Maybe we could use the hammer..."
Next item on the list was Stuffing faces at Sam's Club. I mean shopping at Sam's Club.
And finally J &J. Seeing Big Foot several times was part of the trip (He's a life size yeti that we call Big Foot). Getting trees for the yard (Jon was really excited to plant some around his birthday and that's exactly what happened on Monday) was the actual purpose of that stop. Lydia kept going on and on about her flowers that died and why they died. "I guess it's because we didn't take very good care of them. They needed water and we didn't give them water and we didn't do a very good job. And we didn't do it. And we forgot. And we were just so busy. And we were playing soccer and we just didn't feed them enough water."
Once home the girls spent some time with Jon in the yard picking sticker bushes and Jon showed Lyds that when you break the stems of the sticker weeds that white liquid comes out and they called it milk. They decided to collect enough that Mia could drink it because we were out of Mia milk. Then Lyds called it Glue.

That night Grandma and Grandpa Frazier, the Talbots and the Pynes joined us for S'mores and Fireworks. Celebrating with family is the best. Also, I always love watching these girls eat S'mores. It's just so cute and messy! Some of the more memorable moments (not all of them being high lights) were: Lydia knocking Soph down when she was swinging. I yelled at her to stop, but not soon enough. Major face plant and hysterical crying ensued. I'm convinced my yelling at her to stop only added to her tears. Lydia's beard and nose marshmallow face was fantastic. Like I said, these girls and their s'mores! It's the best. And lots and lots of burning marshmallows.

During fireworks all the kids got to take turns choosing which firework would be lit off next and Jon put on quite a show! Sophie covering my ears during the fireworks was absolutely my favorite.

And on Sunday we were at Grandma and Grandpa Blackhursts singing the extended version of the Happy Birthday song and enjoying Red Cake with more family. Which Jon said (in reference to the cake) "tasted just like it should." High praise for sure!

Let me just give you a little history on the Red Cake. Jon's Grandma Duse used to make this cake for her family and the story goes that it originated at the Waldorf Istoria Hotel. A customer really wanted to get a copy of the recipe and kept asking the baker for it until he finally gave in. On condition that she pay him $500.00 for it. Well, once she had the recipe she copied it and gave it to everyone she knew. Which, apparently, is how it came to be in Grandma Duse's possession. And on top of that there are many stories in the family of how easy it is for people to goof up the recipe. They've all done it at one time or another and it many different ways. Anyway, Mia was a doll and took a three hour nap while I made Jon's red cake (both versions. The one that Abby kindly commented on. "We made a mistake." No she didn't. I did. And the one we actually ended up eating) and I can now add my story to those who've gone before me. For the record, Mia loving the botched version. I have no idea why I thought combining the flour mixture to the milk mixture was a good idea when it specifically said to alternate adding them to the rest of the batter. Whoops! I can promise you that it does make a difference. Mostly in appearance though because I'm with Mia. The messed up cake didn't taste bad at all. Before the completion of the cake I took a running break with Mia and she and I giggled while Jon and the girls were away. She kept teasing me with her water like she was going to hand it too me and would then pull it away. We played peak a boo a bit while I stretched. It was nice to have some one on one time with her and so kind of her to let me know she liked my ruined cake. :)

39 looks good on Jon! And we loved celebrating him all weekend long!