happy birthday to karl

Karl's birthday was last week.

I asked Samuel what kind of party we should have for Dad and he said, "An AWESOME party."  So awesome we did.

To make the morning special I made a crepe breakfast.  To make it even more special I made everyone personalized "awesome" hats.  I got the hat template from here, she is a party genius.  We thought the baby looked so cute in his mini hat.  But then again, we think everything about Maximus is cute.  He is showing off his tongue tied-ness here.  That is as far as he can stick it out and it pulls in the middle to make a little heart shape.  Oh, wait, this post is about Karl?  

 Crepes, Nutella, strawberries, berries, real maple syrup, bananas, strawberry cream cheese, peanut butter, and Karl entertaining the kids...

 Seems to me that breakfast is sometimes a way to just pack in a bunch of sugar in the morning.  But, hey, it was a celebration.

 To make the afternoon special, we headed to Grind Cafe for some local food for lunch

and stopped at Glass Beach.  The beach is actually full of little pebbles of smooth beach glass.  I guess once upon a time it was a glass dump.  Or something like that.  

I couldn't be there for the evening but to make it special I set up a big ol junk food and movie fest for them.  I bought all the junk food that Karl has ever shown interest in, popcorn, pizza rolls, nachos, root beer, M & Ms,  Robin Eggs, Fritos...and set up a laptop so they could watch a movie and have a party while I was gone.  And I was gone so I didn't have to witness Samuel having Red Vines and Hi-Chews for dinner. 

We did cake the next day.  You know, to drag out the celebration.  Just kidding, we ran out of hours on the birthday clock and we kind of forgot.  This photo shows the mess, that Eva still wasn't done with dinner, Karl's excellent candle extinguishing skills, and just how surprised Maximus looks half the time.  

Celebrating without extended family puts a lot of pressure on the immediate family.  The plus side is that we can wing it and do whatever.  And we are very good at that.

i just can't stop watching this video

Karl some serious stubble.  Watch Baby Max's face and hands when Karl rubs his hand on his chin.  The best part is that he would just continue to smile when Karl would stop.  

related

Growing up, I had exactly five people that I was related to in this country. My mom, my dad, my sister and my two brothers. That was it.

Then I married Karl.

On Friday, we headed up to Cache Valley because Karl's sister and her husband were getting an award at USU. We needed someone to watch our kids. So, Karl asks one cousin. But her daughter ended up getting sick. So, Karl asks another cousin. So sweet, said they were going to hang out with friends that night but were willing to have my kids join them at their friends' house.

When we pick the kids up, Karl's cousin had a funny story to tell. She was calling Samuel by his full name to try and get him to listen (what? Samuel not listening?) and her friend says, "Wait, what is his last name?" Turns out she has a great-grandma Eva, too. Turns out that she and Karl are second cousins. So, well, it turns that the kids were baby sat by cousins on both Karl's mom and dad's side!

How would it be to be related to so many people that you don't even know. Karl joked that he married me, just to be totally safe that he wasn't marrying one of his cousins.

The next day (well, night) we went to the pumpkin walk. It was a first for me, but a long standing tradition in Logan. And it is run by, you guessed it, one of Karl's relatives.

Karl's mom joined us. The kids adore their grandma and were so excited to go see her.

(When choosing Eva's coat, we went for function over style. She likes her coats long. She kind of looks like E.T.)

Karl's grandma painted these signs for the pumpkin walk. I see where Eva and Karl's art skill come from.

These were a few of our favorites:

Here is an article on the pumpkin walk. Guess who took the pictures. Yep, another one of Karl's relatives.

We got a kick out of all the hand painted stick-your-face-in-the-cut-out-to-kind-of-look-like-a-character things. My favorites were the Yoda and Eva in the air plane. And though Eva loves to tell people she doesn't like princesses, I think she secretly still likes them.

And we turned the corner and guess what we saw? Yep, Karl's relatives. This time it was his grandma and grandpa made out of pumpkins.

Guess who made the Aggie Icecream display? You know the answer by now, Karl's relatives. His uncle and cousins.

There were more relative run-ins, more than I have time to post. Things like, "That's a big house." "Oh, that is my cousin's." And I am sure more than I even knew about.

I guess I always knew that Karl came from a huge family. His dad is one of 12 and his grandpa is one of 12. It just seems like I was re-realizing it this weekend. But I just have to say that my kids are lucky to grow up having so many people that automatically love them, even if it is just because they are family.

ligers, dumplings, cake... happy birthday karl

This is my 200th post!

Warning:
This post is not for PETA people, animal lovers, and I'm guessing most normal people. Guys, hunters, gather round...
I am behind on my posts because of the lame internet connection. I am skipping ahead to Karl's birthday.

So, we went to this city called Harbin. It is a four hour drive from where we are staying right now. The reason? To see these tigers. Specifically, to pay money to watch the tigers devour live animals. Ew, I know.

We pile in a bus and drive around these Siberian Tigers like it is no big deal. The first lucky victims were these chickens. A guy drives up in a Land Cruiser and just chucks them out the door. The tigers are all over the car and the guy seems unphased.

Ok, so here is where is gets gross. I felt compelled to share all the grossness. Maybe to diffuse it a little. A little goat. A cute little goat. They let it loose. It runs a bit and then all these cats attack it (which apparently is unnatural because in the wild these animals hunt alone but when we are dumping goats out of cars for money, do we really give thought to what is natural anymore?)

Next, is Karl's birthday present from his dad and Jill. A cow. A cute little yearling (I am learning lots of new words from my country boy) gets dumped out of the truck. Look at the tigers go. The saddest part was the mooing/crying.

So, those that have been to China (it is crazy how many of my friends have been to China) can agree that this next part is "so Chinese." Once the tigers get the cow dead, two SUVs pull up. One guy GETS OUT (note: tigers are all around) while the other guy shoos the tigers away. I show him lighting the fire cracker that he throws to get one of the tigers to back off. They tie the cow up, and, get this one, DRAG it around so the cats will chase it. So sad. Even sadder that it was entertaining us. In the end, they chop up the cow and drop big hunks so all the tigers get a piece.

Here were some other cats:

The white tiger. Yep, perfect for printing onto black velvet. A liger. Yep, bred for its skills in magic. And that black thing.

And here are some awesome signs: The service promise that among other mistakes does not list the phone number for English speakers to call. The price list for the live animals. Gross, I know. And check out this candy bar I found. Guts. We tried it, it tasted chocolaty, nutty, creamy, and crunchy. Nothing like guts at all.

But, Karl's birthday celebration was not all disgusting. These nice ladies made us this tasty lunch. Handmade fresh noodles are one of my favorite things, ever. Of course, the fresh dumplings also make me happy. This meal for three? $2.22 US.

This nice guy decorated this cake for us. It took all the guts (and not meaning the above candy bar) I had to go and order this cake. The only thing that we could communicate were the numbers and "happy birthday." This guy made that animal out of frosting in like 1 minute. The detail was amazing.

Since all of us were sick and achy and tired, we stayed in and ate cake. The flowers on the table are from a couple of people from the university. They knew it was his birthday (because they were lucky enough to see Karl's birthday cow get eaten). Karl got all the candles out in one shot. He was a good sport and wore the crown that the bakery provided with the cake.