Lifelines

And she’s been on it ever since!

Yep.
This one’s gonna be trouble.

Greer was super NOT into photos yesterday.
I had to take like 35 of the ones I just posted to get a few good shots from her.
We had invited her friend, Emma, to come along with us for the night and Greer would have MUCH rathered race around outside for five minutes pre-carload up than stand and take pretty pictures with me.

“TOO BAD!” I said :)
And I meant it.

This shot pretty much sums up how she was feeling after being forced (oh, and she was FORCED) to smile for her 5th birthday mini photo session.

And here they are at dinner!
Clearly a crazy loud car ride is the balm to a crappy birthday attitude :)

When Creux hears us telling Greer that she looks beautiful, he comes scrambling by for some attention.
“I wook booful, too!” he shouts at us, pulling on his outfit so we can get a nice, long, appreciative look.
He’s a character, this one.
(And he spent the whole day insisting that it was HIS birthday, too! We couldn’t get it through to him that it wasn’t–he sees no difference between him and his “Little” partner-in-crime.)

Until yesterday, I’d never seen an adoring puddle of Daddy Goo before.
Really.
I never had.
But Charlie walked in just as I was yanking eensy-weensy chicken legs into these to-die-for stockings and I honestly thought I was going to have to revive him.
“Those…are the cutest things…EVER,” he breathed in sheer Daddy delight.

And he’s right.
Those ARE the cutest things ever.
(Thanks, Emily!!)

Jenny, I know we spoke about it, but our girls were in RARE form at dinner.
I’d never worried before about being escorted out of a restaurant until last night!
(Well, that’s not exactly true. There HAVE been a few times with Creux where I thought some back-room secret security staff was going to come charging out and remove us forcifully from our dinner table.)
They weren’t bad, they were just…like, I said, in RARE form.

And little Luxe, she’s two for two, dinner-wise.
She slept the entire time, even through them setting the table on fire.
(I mean, is that really necessary? I feel like my eyelashes are singed after every outing there!)
Anyway, she’s been such a great baby for us.
THANK YOU, GOD!!!

It was fun but Charlie and I are in agreement that we’re about Japanese Steakhouse’d out.
Every one of our kids, plus my mom and sister, request to go their for their birthdays and it’s neat but we’re there like monthly at this point.
I’m about ready to let him start lighting our OWN tables on fire so that we don’t have to deal with the drama of getting ready to head out (took me ALL DAY LONG yesterday to get everyone ready and we were STILL fifteen minutes late to our own party!) and it probably would be cheaper in the end.

Don’t worry, if we do this, I will DEFINITELY take pictures :)

I took these last night on our way out to the Japanese Steakhouse for dinner.
(Her choice.)
I just can’t believe how big Greer has grown lately–she’s still bitty but she’s definitely moving on up in the world.
And she’s a good mix of sweet and sass these days (though I could do with less of the sass, frankly).

I’m excited for this year of “five.”
It’s one of my favorites, kid-wise.

I saw the cutest cupcakes over on Stacie’s blog and it was a lifesaver for me because I had NO plan for Greer’s birthday.
For obvious reasons, I just hadn’t been in super big cake mode.
But I didn’t want to go buy something and Stacie’s little cupcakes looked so yummy and then when I emailed her they sounded so easy (”just add water!” she said) so I set my gang up with the box mix and let them go stir crazy :)

In the end, these did not turn out as fantastically as I thought they would.
It was probably a mistake on the baker’s behalf as by the time every had a turn stirring the mixture, it was literally fizzing.
(It was an angel food cake mix so was supposed to be light and fluffy but we probably not only took too long but over-mixed it. There was no getting out of the stirring assembly line though.)

I ended up making a second batch of cupcakes, chocolate ones at that.
By some miracle, I managed to find a spare box of double fudge chocolate mix in the waaaaaay back of my pantry.

(And it WAS a miracle, as I stood there on a chair, listening to the house coming down around me upstairs where Emily was bathing the Littles who were bickering like mad and Luxe was fussing incessantly in the bouncy seat beside me, I was digging and digging in the cabinet and muttering over and over, “Please, please, please.” A spur of the moment grocery trip would have been my undoing yesterday.)

I don’t have any photos of the second batch of cupcakes being prepared but I sort of wish I had because I had to have been quite a sight.
I don’t think I’ve EVER made ANYTHING faster in my whole life.
One big batch of cupcakes, from box to oven, probably took me three minutes.
Record. Time.
And record mess.
I’m STILL finding slops of batter from where I had flung it in my frantic mixing extravaganza :)

I said for Monday to “bring it” but what I didn’t know was that Tuesday had the knockout punch.
Yesterday almost killed me.

Anyway, here’s Cupcakes: Round One.