a peter pancake party

Jimmy's birthday was a little more low-key this year.... or should a say last minute and not well planned. (Planning something the day after Halloween is tough... but I will not let that be an excuse!) Since we already had the whole Peter Pan thing going on we went with that. We had tones of cute ideas for games and crafts, but they pretty much all fell by the wayside. However, Emily still had Jack's really old Peter Pan costume that Jimmy fit in so he wore that and Lucy was only too happy to get back in her Tinker Bell costume. Jimmy had been loving being Peter Pan seeing as the first time I tried it on him he wore it around Emily's house all night and then he wore at the Kersting Halloween Party on Friday. On his actual birthday, he wore it for about 15 minutes and insisted on taking it off before I could get any good pictures. Shucks. (Should I force him back into it and pretend the pictures are from his baptism?... I mean birthday.... I didn't do that for his baptism or anything.) I did get one with the hat on so I didn't totally fail. The first thing Jimmy told me when he woke up was that he wanted to go play with Finn and then he specified that he wanted to play with the pirate ships with Finn. This was a pretty good idea on his part if you ask me because we loaded up all the Playmobile Pirates and took them to Em's so the kids could set up Peter Pan toys at the Peter Pan Party. We were having a morning party, so we thought it would be fun to make pancakes seeing as Jimmy loves them and it was a cute little play Peter Pan's name. We were going to therefore not have a real cake, but instead put birthday candle on pancakes until I felt to guilty not giving the kid a real cake. To Jimmy, cakes pretty much the culmination of birthdays. At the park we pretend to make cakes out of sand and blow out stick candles after singing Happy Birthday. He pretty much thinks it is the best thing ever, and when I told him about his birthday coming up all he would ask about was getting cake. So we decided to do cake after eating pankcakes. The kids had no problem with this, and hence they were the only ones that ate any of it. We decorated it with Peter Pan toys lying around at Em's house, but Jimmy thought it was great and he talked about it more than his presents. He did get some pretty cool new toys and clothes though. Thanks to everyone who came and who sent gifts. (I will try to get real thank you notes out soon, I swear!). I can't believe Jimmy is 2!!!!

a peter pan halloween

I am finally posting Halloween pictures in January. I bet anyone who used to look at my blog as stopped by now assuming that I gave up. In my defense, it has been a very busy couple of months. By now most people have seen these pictures elsewhere, but I had to post them myself anyway. Here is what I wrote back in early November, but didn't publish until now:

So Jimmy jumped on the Burch Jerk Bandwagon once again and did a group costume along with the Speier family. They all went as the characters from Peter Pan and it was pretty stinkin adorable. Some of the adults got in on the fun as well.

The Darling Family

The Darling Children

"I want my mother." -Michael Darling

I thought Jimmy was actually sad until I realized that he was just pretending because he wanted me to sing "Your Mother and Mine" to him. I guess we have a little actor on our hands...

Go figure.

He was so obsessed with his pink jammies for awhile which I thought was cute, but Zach didn't like much...

they are hidden at the moment.

Playing Pirates.

The Kiss.

"We Can Fly! We Can Fly! We Can Fly!"

I think Jimmy really thought he was flying. The smile in this picture only partly captured the moment.

Rescuing Tiger Lily.

Hook and Smee.

My Pumpkin Punch smoking. It scared the kids too much to drink it...

maybe I should have put the rum in after all.

Dry Ice and Beer.

Lucia, the Gerber Baby

I had to put this one in because I loved the tongue.

And I just had to show one shot of the buttons on Jimmy's bum.

(I had to add those)

This was my back-up costume in case it was as hot as last year- Indian Michael.

I just wish I could have gotten the face paint on him for the picture.

Me and my grumpy husband... What a good sport Zach is.

(By the by, the shirt front is an exact replica of the one in the movie...

I should sell it on Ebay)

These boys were not so into Trick or Treating yet so this is how they spent most of the time. They made it to a few houses though. Jimmy just wanted to double fist his candy the whole time. He didn't even ask to eat it, he just wanted to hold it. So much so he wouldn't let go of it to go receive more. I had to pry them from his hands so he could go to the next house. He ended up with two melted Snickers inside the rappers that I hid from him so he wouldn't ask to eat them. I think he ate one piece of candy the whole night. This will surely be the last year of that.

The end of the night- watching what else, but Peter Pan.

For more pictures check out Emily's Blog HERE and Allie's Blog HERE.

this is halloween

....Okay, this was Halloween, but that isn't the name of a song from A Nightmare Before Christmas. More Halloween to come. I just loved this picture so I thought it should get its own post.

my play

Here are some pictures from my most recent theatrical endeavor, Dear Brutus. Of course there were things I would do differently if I could do it again, but all in all I was happy with it, and it was a good first time experience at CGCC. Hopefully, I will get more chances. These are the pictures I took myself so they aren't great, but people told me they wanted to see them so take a gander. I will add more pictures to this post when I finally get the "good ones" from the school secretary, but I was just anxious to post Halloween pics and being the crazy person I am, I don't like things to be out of order. None of the pictures were really up to my standards, but what can I do? The lighting is so off and the quality if awful. I mean, the set was far from perfect, but it looked better than this.

The five ladies harass Matey, the butler, to get find out Lob's secret.

Mable catches Joanna and Jack together.

Lob tells about the mysterious wood.

Here is my set model for the Act 2: The Wood.

(I never really finalized my Act 1 model so I am not posting pictures of it)

The real set for Act 2

Matey and Lady Caroline in the wood.

Mr. Coade wanders with his whistle while Joanna is in search of her husband.

Joanna catches Mabel and Jack together.

Dearth and his "might-have-been" daughter, Margaret.

Everyone in the wood.

Joanna, Jack, and Mabel come back to reality.

Everyone comes back to reality.

dear brutus

Here is the flyer with all the information for my upcoming play, Dear Brutus. Obviously, I didn't design it myself because my name is spelled wrong on it and they forgot to put that it is written by J.M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame). Call (480) 732-7343 for tickets. I would love the support and hopefully it will be a good show.

peter pan

Jimmy's very favorite movie is Peter Pan. I am sure I let him watch it way too often. I have the whole movie memorized now. He also loves to read his Peter Pan books and on nights when he is taking a long time to fall asleep I tell him my own version which is usually very detailed so that I don't ever actually get to the end before he falls asleep (if I do, then I move on to Dumbo). Jimmy loves to pretend like he is flying and my dad says he is going to have a warped view of reality. Zach or I will fly him around the room while singing "You Can Fly" and he tells us that he is either Peter Pan or Michael Darling (his current favorite... probably due to some similarities in appearance to himself). When I push him on the swings at the playground he says, "I flying! I Peter Pan!" So basically he loves it. We don't have any actual Peter Pan toys, but since all our old Playmobile toys are at my dad's house we have picked out all the important characters and we set up the whole story. Well... I set it up and Jimmy helps. He doesn't quite play actual stories yet, but he does like to make Peter and Captain Hook fight and he loves when I set the toys up and tell him what is happening. Fortunately, I think that this is a game that will remain fun for him for a long time and eventually he won't need mom to do all the set-up. Until that day, I will have some fun of my own.

Peter at the window.

(Yes, our Tinker Bell is a little Indian Baby,

but she is wearing green so close enough.)

The Nursery

Wendy meets Peter.

Trying to Fly

Flying with Peter Pan... sort of.

(We actually make them fly, but close enough for the sake of a picture.)

In the clouds over Neverland.

Smee and Hook taking Princess Tiger Lily to Skull Rock.

"Squaw gettem firewood!"

Hook and Peter fight on the ship.

The Children and Lost Boys hold back the pirates.

Mr. Smee tries to escape.

The Croc chases Hook.

I kind of want to make a whole story book with pictures of Playmobiles, but alas that is a project for another year.