Evan's 8th Birthday

Well, I know it's been a week or so. . . but here are the pictures for Evan's birthday week!!!

For his school class we made planet cake pops.  It was a science themed birthday week!

Then, he came home and got to open presents!

I was able to find these great video recording spy glasses on clearance (YEAH!!) and Evan LOVED them!!  He likes to take hidden video of people. . . I've learned from first hand experience to be careful if he has those glasses on!

He made out pretty good on his actual birthday.  Can you see Addison behind the balloon kit?  She had to help open the presents.

Since I made his cake later on in the week for his party, he chose to have banana splits for his Birthday desert.  They were pretty good.  Love banana splits with brownies and strawberries!!!

Grandma and Grandpa Dance came into town on Thursday.  On Friday they took Evan and Brayden out on the town shopping and lunch.  They had a lot of fun!  I got to finish my cake and party prepping with less kids in the house, so it was nice.

Friday night was his party.  Here he is in his wonderful "lab" coat and glasses.

Brayden sporting the same style.

Addison doing one of the best jobs showing us how cute this outfit really could be!!! :)

Here is the party area.

Here are the party goers in the party area painting their party volcano's!!

Didn't they do such a great job!!

Addison had fun painting hers.

Brayden showing his off.

Evan showing us his.

Andrew eating.  He didn't want a lab coat, or to paint a volcano, he was just hungry and wanted dinner!  He ate really well that night!  He was a pure cutie pie!!!

After dinner we pulled out the volcano cake.  It doesn't look 100% cool, but hopefully the video will show you that it's actually made for action, not beauty!!

Here is the video of the volcano "exploding".  We had some technical issues, but overall it was pretty fun!

Here is Evan opening gifts at his party.  Brayden was funny during this part as he kept saying "cool" and "that's awesome" the whole time.  Thanks for all the gifts everyone.  He loves them all!

This was the last fun for the day. . . they got to explode their volcano's!  Just a little bit of vinegar and baking soda and bubble over they all did.  The kids had fun doing it.

I had them all go out on the lawn.  Good for the table, not so good for those spots of lawn.  I have dots of brown all over my lawn!!!

Andrew again, eating.  He was eating from his treat box, and filling it up with grass at the same time.  They are rocket ships, way cool.  Didn't actually take a better picture of them!

Addison is now sporting the medals that were handed out once the volcano's all "exploded".

Over all it was a great party.  I somehow failed to include a picture of Josh doing his science experiments for the kids.  They got to see his frozen flowers, and elephant toothpaste, and all other sorts of fun things.  We got to hang out with friends and have all sorts of fun.  

The next morning, Saturday, was Evan's baptism.  Here he is with his Grandpa, Evan.  Don't they both look great in their suits?  So handsome!  Evan got his suit for his birthday!

Three silly kids before we left.

Four silly kids.  They all looked so cute!  What great kids they are!

Here's the kids with Grandma and Grandpa Dance.  So glad they were able to come!

Evan with his Dad before the baptism.

One of Evan with his parents!!  How we love him!  

Here is a wonderful family picture after the baptism.  Everyone is ALMOST looking.

Here is Evan with his baptism presents. . . I know, he got a lot of presents!!!  Addison wasn't happy about it!!

Happy Birthday Evan!!  I can't believe you are eight!!!  You have grown up so fast!  We are so proud of you!!!  Love you!!

Easter 2012

So, I guess it's about time I put in my Easter blog!!  It'll be a quick rundown, but it was a great day and the kids had a ton of fun!!

A few days before Easter we actually decorated eggs!!  Now I always meant to get after shots, but I don't think that I did seeing as I don't have any!!  Evan and Brayden each had a themed "egg holder".  Evan had pirates and Brayden had outer space.  It was a lot of fun for them to decorate there egg characters for their themed holders.  They had fun. . . and just to proof what a smart Mom I am, the babies were in bed when this all went down!!!  SO MUCH BETTER!!! :)

We had a wonderful easter egg hunt the day before Easter.  The kids got to look around the yard for the eggs.  There were PLENTY to go around.  Here is Addison finding one.

 Here is Andrew finding one, or two, or three!!

Here is Brayden all done finding some. . . the older kids were so quick I didn't even get pictures of them looking!!!

Here's them all at the table with the friends we had over, going though their eggs.

I finally got a picture of Evan. . . he was at the table before I even found him!!

Isn't Andrew cute.  He found the perfect use for that basket of his!!

Of course I had to make a carrot cake!!  and yes, it is ACTUALLY carrot cake inside!!  It turned out cute.

This is Easter morning when the kids found their hidden baskets.  Addison PROMPTLY emptied hers all out, separated the grass from the candy and put the candy back in her basket.  She was the only one to get rid of the grass.  I guess she understands its true value!! Oh, and Addison had my old purple hugga bunch (that I had as a kid) in her basket.  You can barely see it in the picture.  She loves it!

Andrew looking at his Mater Truck that was in his basket.

Brayden got another pirate (Jack Sparrow) for his pirate ship from his birthday!

Evan got a human skeleton to put together.  He loves it!!

I made these YUMMY orange rolls. . . just made them a bit TOO big.  They fell all over the place and my oven was full of smoke because of it!  They were good though.

This is my cute Addison in her Easter dress.  Yes, I made it. . . it turned out ok.  I learned a lot, and she was SUPER cute so overall it worked out.

I never get tired of taking pictures of her cuteness!!  All my kids have such super cute moments.  I'll show you a few in my next blog post!  

Well, that was Easter at the Cobb household this year.  So fun.  

Hershey, DC, and Hoboken "baby!"

So, about two weeks ago we got back from a little family vacation.  About one week ago, I added the pictures to the blog.  Finally today I am adding the text so that hopefully tomorrow or Wednesday I can post about Easter!!

I made great trail mix for the trip. . . Andrew had a bit of a problem with keeping it in the baggie!!

Funny kid.

So, to start, we went down to Hershey, PA.  The first day there we went to the Civil War museum.  It was pretty cool.  

This is the exhibit where they depict what slavery was like.  The "display people" were SO REAL looking it was kinda creepy, but it got the point across.  Very well done.  Really enjoyed this museum.

Our first family picture of the trip, outside the museum.

The next day it was onto Hershey's Chocolate World!!  So much fun to be surrounded by chocolate!

We took a trolley ride around Hershey to learn some of the history of it.  Parents loved it, kids liked the free chocolate and the trolley.

We also got to make our very own chocolate bars!!  So cool.  We made the contents out of different options they gave you, and then got to make the wrapper any design we wanted (within their graphic library), but really SO FUN to watch them make the bar you selected and eating it and just the whole process!

                                     

The IMAX show at Hershey's was Amazing!!  Extra 3D with vibrations of your seat, and slight mist effect and bubbles. . . really cool!!

Cool chocolate assortment to choose from in the gift shop!  Anything Hershey's you could buy.  So much to choose from!!!

The third day we headed to Washington DC!  We headed to the National Zoo (It's free, people!!  Love that!!)  The kids had fun watching all the animals.

I think that I have a picture of Evan on most of the animal statues.  He thought that was fun.

Addison was cute "spying" out all the animals.  She would put her hands up to look at them like she was looking at them through some special instrument or something.  SUPER CUTE!!!

The lions in the background were really active.  It was fun to watch.  They were really playing around quite a bit.

Oh look, Brayden happens to be on another animal statue!!  Go figure!!  Like I said, we have a picture of them all!!

The next day we headed over to the Mall.  It was perfect weather for us.  Nice and cloud covered (and warm) in the morning while walking around outside, and sunny and warmer when we were inside looking around.  A really nice day.

Another family picture.  Thank goodness for strollers!!

This is the world war II memorial.  It was pretty neat.  I hadn't remembered it from when I had been here before, but it was really fun to see.

We got another family photo!!

Evan had been really looking forward to seeing the reflective pond. . . this is what we saw.  It's under construction!!!  I felt so sad for him, though he handled it well.  The day before he was really cute when he said "We've been in DC for like a whole day and I haven't seen one drop of the reflection pond"!  So, kind of a let down once we got there and it was under construction.

Evan and his Dad at the Lincoln Memorial.  Fun place for them to see.  He really seemed to like it.

Addison in front of the White House.  She really liked the fence and the flowers.  She was super cute the whole trip!!

This is a picture of the Hope Diamond on display at the Smithsonian.  It's not a very good picture, but it was really cool in person.  Large and really similar to what I remember from the Diamond they used in Titanic. . . don't know if it's suppose to be the same or not, but still really cool.

This is at the IMAX 3D of the Dinosaur show we saw.  By this point Addison was getting the hang of wearing 3D glasses.  It was super cute.  The show was so good, that Brayden scratched his nose with his finger nail trying to get his glasses off so the dinosaur wouldn't eat him!!  He knew it wasn't real, and wasn't scared, but it was quite startling to him when the dinosaur came out of the screen to eat his prey.  Pretty fun to watch (both the movie and the kids!).

Cherry Blossoms were in bloom.  In fact, it's the 100th year of the cherry blossom festival.  So pretty.

Addison with her new panda bear she acquired.

Andrew with his elephant (that you can only see the trunk of).

Oh, and another family picture (in front of the Capitol building)!  This time, Parthiban actually got to be in the picture with us!!  Yes, he has been on the trip with us the WHOLE time!!  It was super fun to have him along.  He is from India and him and Josh had become really good friends, so we thought it would be nice to have him along with us.  It was great to have one extra pair of hands around!!  Almost even with three adults and four kids!

The next day (day 5) we headed out of DC.  We stopped off at a place called Longwood Gardens.  We had a friend there who is doing an internship.  This is a tree the kids found to play in while waiting for lunch.

This is another family picture with all of us. . . Parthiban and Brenda (the friend doing the internship there).  It was a very pretty place.  We didn't stay long, but it was nice.  We continued on to Hoboken, NJ.

What is in Hoboken New Jersey you ask??  Why, the CAKE BOSS of course!!  We wanted to stop on our way home.  So, we spent the night in the area and on our last day of our trip we (Evan, Brayden and myself), got up and went to Carlos Bake Shop.  It was just pretty cool to see it in person.  I knew it was small, but it really is pretty small.

Here we are in front of the shop.

Here are Evan and Brayden inside the shop.

And here is a better picture of the whole shop.  I wanted to wait until those people had moved, but they didn't seem to be doing that, so I just took the picture!!  It was a fun little stop.

Then, we went back, got the rest of everyone and headed back to Ithaca.  Since we've been home, it's been raining, cold, cloudy, and overall not fun.  Oh well, at least we had a break from it for one glorious week!!