Robot Party!!!!

Invitation to the party. Drawings by Bastien...
The robots! Maude and I made it our art night project to get these guys together. She had a lot of crazy junk lying around that she contributed and I saved toilet paper rolls and bottle caps and whatever else I could think might help for the month leading up to this...

Maude did these two guys. I love the star eyes and the silver guy's hat...
These were more of a collaboration...

Maude did this guy's face. I love all the little gears and gadjets....
This party was sort of a goodbye to the retro future room Bastien has had for the past 5 years. (He's transitioning to monsters right now... which is funny since that was the theme of his 3rd birthday party.) Anyway, I pulled out all the robots from his room to decorate the garage. I also brought out his robot bedsheets and he had some cool robot magnets for the fridge in the garage. I got busy doing who-knows-what-else, so Maude and KB and Zurico and Jason did all the decorating. They did a fabulous job as you can see. Thanks guys!


These awesome photos (as well as the other ones that look really great) were taken by our friend Garrett Hauenstein. It sure is helpful having talented friends, yes? I would recommend hiring him to cover any event you want to capture if you fear you won't be able to do it yourself. Well, let's just face it, a host never has time to take photos and they wouldn't look like this anyway, so keep him in mind.

I found this fab robot wrapping paper a long time ago at Target, along with the plates and napkins and robot candles (on sale, whoo hoo!)
Maude got a MDF board and cut this shape out. Then she painted it with chalkboard paint and a few white details...Voila!
These were our little make-your-own robots. We bought some magnetic tape and adhered it to all the little doodads. That way, the kids could make up their own designs.
Trying on the robots...


You may have noticed the green in the background. It's an actual digital green screen, like they use for visual effects. We had intended to have the kids dress up in the robots and dance in front of the screen so I could try to play with it in editing. However, it's hard to direct kids and that many kids?! Well... Instead we just went straight to our Robot Freeze Dance!
This was supposed to be a contest. I bought some robot-themed prizes to give away. I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to judge little kids. Man! I tried to pawn the judging off on some other unsuspecting parent, but alas... Our first round winner was Zooey! (kid in red) He won robot Shrinky Dinks. Remember those?
Next up, our all girls round. The winner was Shelly (girl in the middle). She was awesome!

However, that meant the other girls were losers.

Note to self: study up on early childhood development before planning future birthday parties. It seems this is not a good age for competitive games and it put a damper on the festivities. Since the boys were reluctant to have their own round, despite this awesome prize I found on sale at my favorite shop in Chinatown
I decided we would award the prize to the best parent.

Congratulations Strummer's dad! You were really rocking those 80's Raybans.

Our little robot guys took a beating...

Before...
...and After.
But they served their purpose, which was to have a good time.

The kids drew some pretty cool stuff on the driveway with chalk....
and Bastien said his favorite part of the birthday was the pinata.

(I love this picture, Garrett)

Then, it was time for cake...

Can you believe what an awesome job Maude did of putting these together?! All I did was cook a ridiculous amount of Betty Crocker cake. (That was when I thought I was going to try to do the cakes and I wanted to make sure I had enough for mistakes. )

Here you can see the cute little robot candles...
We asked him why he had his head in his hands and he said he was just covering his eyes for the surprise.

What surprise? He'd already seen the cakes.

I hope he wasn't too disappointed when he took his hands away and it was still just cake?

Finally, I would like to share with you the two robots his friends made for him...
This one was from Eve.
This one was from Shelly.

How much do you just love these?!!!

Bastien said maybe Isabella can have a robot party when she turns five.

I'd be down with that.

If you'd like to view the full album of pictures Garrett took at the party, here's the link.

Lemonnade 25 cents

Okay, M and I had this brilliant idea of having a garage sale. I, for some reason, thought this would be easier and more lucrative than selling stuff in that Kids Consignment sale (most of you know what I'm talking about, but for those of you that don't...http://www.lakidsconsignment.com/).

Ummm, garage sales suck. Unless you are the customer. My husband has tried to convince me of that in the past, but I'm stubborn. And maybe I have to learn by doing. Anyway, the other brilliant idea we had was to have the kids sell lemonade.

Now, that was a great idea!

We had a blast making the lemonade. (Or, rather, letting the kids make the lemonade.)What they lacked in strength, they made up with determination.

Of course, they had to test the product before selling it.

Witness the business sense... where does it come from?

Ummm...this was the most she's probably played with this in the last six months...If your kids seem uninterested in all those super cool toys you've purchased for them, just have a pretend garage sale. All of a sudden, these are their favorite toys ever.

Notice the prices (Minnie Pearl style)... I sold the same rocking horse that noone would take at the garage sale for that nice $6 price for $14.50 at the consignment sale. The hat I sold for $2.50. Even with the consignment take (30%), I still made almost $5 more. Interesting...

Going through stuff for the sale, I found these that my mom bought me a while ago. No way was I selling these!

Just check out that shirt. I love the subtle hilarity of it.

No more pictures please.

And no more garage sales.

Next time, we're selling lemonade exclusively. As a business venture, this makes more economical sense.

I missed "uno", but here's...

This was filmed back on May 21st. I'm just now getting it here. Jeez!

Vacationing in the Valley...

We love to go visit our friends Kylie and Garrett who live in Castaic (which is out in the Valley for those of you who don't know LA). It's really only an hour or so drive, but they have a guest room and we like to stay over. Especially during football season. Jason, Kylie, and Garrett are all in a Fantasy Football league together and Sundays are apparently sacred football watching days. (?) I don't care about football, but I love hanging out with those guys and their house is so comfortable to just lay around and read in. They have two daughters Brooklynn and Brenna who are close in age to Bella & Baz, so it's fun for the kids too.

Last weekend, we spent some quality time out there and went to their daughter Brooklynn's school carnival. Bastien was dressed like a stud in the new hat and glasses he just bought on a shopping excursion with his dad...

Apparently, he picked this stuff out himself. Well, I bought the shirt, and for Jason really, since his favorite movie of all time is Jaws.

On another fashion note, Isabella wore her favorite dress as of late. It was coincidentally given to her by these guys on her last birthday. She is always pulling this out of her drawer to wear. It's definitely cute, but I wonder what makes her love it so?They had a lot of games to play and stuff to bounce on.But, this guy kicked Bastien's ass...He was trying so hard to get that puck to the top, see?

He couldn't quite get it, but he did win at the Cake Walk.....ABOUT FOUR TIMES!!!

And so did Isabella...TWICE!

(People, how am I supposed to drop pounds when my kids are winning brownies and cookies and cakes and candy? It's torture.)

Meanwhile, Jason and I participated in our first ever Cow Plop. What is a "Cow Plop" you say?

Well... you try to guess where in the yard the cow is going to lay his patties.

And, man, we came sooooo close.

I'd never heard of such a thing. And I'm from Texas?!

I tell you, though, it's kind of weird to be part of crowd watching and waiting for cows to do their business.

Ah, the delights of being a tourist.

Dead Alice

"Alice is a Zombie and her feet are bucket feet. Her dress is made out of walls. Her skin is made of moon. Her eyes are buttons (like in Coraline). Her nose is the number eleven. She lives in Zombie City. Her sister's name is Benden. She was going with her sister on a walk in the city. Then, she was starting an owl movie at home (like Maude and mommy). And then they were making cakes. After the cakes, they were eating them. They were strawberry. They were trying to build a big big city around their house with dead blocks. Do you know what dead blocks look like? They look like really old blocks. After they built the city, they started putting people in it, like us, for them to play with." -Bastien Tamez