~Birthdays~

Vance and Leslie welcomed a new baby boy into their family.

Iain Leyton was born at 3:30 p.m. on August 1st.

He is 7lbs. 12 ounces and 19 1/2 inches long.

I talked to Les around 7:00 p.m. and she was doing well, said the labor went quick with no complications and Gavin thinks his little brother is the coolest thing. Can't wait to see them all around Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Congratulations Ya'll!

With "little boy spit" and all!

You may think, "Oh, how fun!" and it is. Until you get outsiders involved. Alright I will start from the beginning. I decided to make Skylar's pinata and invitationsmyself. I remembered making a pinatain Jr. High Spanish class, but I couldn't quite remember how it all came out in the end. I had the idea of the invitations from Mandy and Tatum. Print the major part of the invitation on the computer and glue it to paper stock, piece of cake, right? I purchased Elmer's Glue and Red Posterboard at which was 1.76 at Walmart for the glue and 2 for 1.00 at The Dollar Store for the poster board. I then came home and began tearing newspaper in strips and watering down the Elmer's Glue in a glass bowl. I then shaped the red poster board into the shap of a fire hydrant and went to work on the pinata. I started soaking strips in the glue water and applying them to the red poster board. It went better then I expected, I allowed the strips from day one to dry and then started printing the invitations. By taking Mandy's size pattern from Tatum's party invites I cut out card folds and pasted them to the folds. They turned out mighty fine. The next dayI went to The Party Store, which is located in Albany. I went in looking for Fire Truck essentials for a fire truck theme birthday party. I got to the section that the fire truck, fire man, and fire whatevers. I see the main items I need such as plates, cups, table liner are not there. What I did see how ever was 1 package of 8 ct. cups and 1 package of 8 ct. plates. Not good! I ask the clerk if they had more in the back to stock the shelves with. She tells me, "whatever is out on the shelves is what they have." Fantastic! So I decided to do all red, red seems to the be the primary color used in a fire, and a fire truck. I grab plates, large and small, cups, table liner, napkins, plastic utensils, and red streamers.I also purchased some fire truck themed grab bags for all the kids. I then look up and see a fire truck pinata, thinking to myself about the nice fire hydrant pinata at home awaiting its next coat of glue strips, and how much I was so proud of myself, I bought it anyway. I also purchased whistles, 16 of them, thinking that would be enough. Before it was all said and done I had totaled an amount of 72.09. I figured I could get the remaining items for the grab bags at the Dollar Store or even Walmart to save some money. We then carted ourselves over to the Dollar Store in Lebanon to see what I could stuff in the grab bags. I start to looking around and realize the dollar store has the exact same party ware I purchased for 70.00 at The Party Store. I purchase a few items to fill the grab bags with and total an amount of16.00. I then got back to the car where Jeff and Skylar are sitting and inform Jeff of what I have discovered. His first remark is, "we will be returning the items we bought , and getting our money back." I think to myself, yea, not a big deal at all I am sure. The following day we then return to The Party store in hopes that we can return the party ware items we purchased the day before. I ask the clerk if this is possible and she informs me that there is a 5% return fee on the return amount total. Um, ok. I only returned the plates, napkins, cups, utensils and streamers, which totaled 37.05 after the 5% return fee. I also after making up the grab bags with what I had purchased the day before realized that I did not have enough grab bags or whistles, so I had to purchase more of them as I was there. It took the clerks with 3 of them and the manager on the phone 1 hour to have my returns taken care of. I am not sure why it took these women this long to do this, it seemed none of them knew what they were doing. After an hour of standing there the grab bags and the whistles were giving to me for free and I was on my way. So the remaining on the purchases from The Party store were, 35.04. I then went back to The Dollar Store and purchased the party ware, I also purchased more items that I had ran out of for the grab bags, the total in this shopping trip was , 33.00.I then carried myself and the other 2 to Walmart to purchase the items I needed to use to make Skylar's fire truck birthday cake. I bought pretzels, lemonheads, jolly ranchers, licorice whips, cake mix, icing, tootsie rolls, etc. I also purchased 2 large bags of candy to fill the pinata with. After it was all said and done I had spend a total of 36.97 at Walmart. So to make a long story longer, the pinata I was so proud of making myself will not be used as a pinata, but it will be used for something, just not quite sure what as of yet, I have spent a grand total of124.77 on Skylar's party. Have just about eaten all the tootsie rolls and lemonheads and I am already burned out. So what does this all mean you might ask, it means next year I am planning this crap out more throughly, and I am not buying party supplies at The Party Store anymore. Also if you need help planning a party , don't call me because I can't even plan my own!

Jeff turned 33 this year and since Oregon built their own "2" Hooters resturants, one being in Beaverton and the other being in Portland , he wanted to go eat at one of them. Well, since James and Jaime's Bachlorette and Bachlor party we took care of the one in Portland. So with that in mind we hit the one in Beaverton for his birthday. I actually like the lay out of the one in Beaverton a lot better. The Hooters in Portland used to be an old Tony Roma's resturant so the layout was pretty much the same as Tony Roma's with a touch of Hooters. Our waitress this time was Gretchen and she was super nice, especially to the birthday boy. She got a few of the other girls over to our table and they all sang "You Are My Sunshine" with their hands over their heads like a sun and made Jeff do the same. They were going to get Jeff up on the table and have him hula dance but Jeff was to shy. I didn't get any pictures inside the resturant, because I forgot I had my camera. But, we took a few shots outside. HAPPY 33RD BIRTHDAY JEFF!