regular party animals

That's what we are, and we know it. Last month the Koots celebrated 3 Birthdays, namely those of Elliot, Max, and yours truly. Since all of our Birthdays are just a week apart we decided to bunch them all together and have one big fiesta to invite everyone to. We ate hot dogs, opened presents, lounged around in the shade provided by the beautiful tree in my parents' yard, had a pinata (I tried to to the squigly line over the n, but cannot get my keyboard to speak Spanish), had fun on the Slip n Slide, and devoured ridiculous amounts of ice cream. 

The highlight of the day? I can't decide between the river of crusty watermelon juice that ran all the way down Elliot's tummy, and watching Max kick that pinata's butt. It was our first pinata EVER, and so of course everyone got to take a swing at it. Lara had a go at one before at a friend's Birthday party, and hit it so hard the string broke and it flopped to the ground with an underwhelming thud. It was a funny moment. Once it was back up Max was fired up to the limit and went at it like a pro. First its face came off, and then its bottom started to bulge. Finally Max finished him off and candy flew from the pinata's innards all over the concrete... and the look on Max' face was one of pure disbelief and joy. This kid lives for candy, so it was pretty much the whipped cream, sprinkles, fudge sauce AND cherry on top of his already pretty amazing Birthday.

So now we are another year older! For Elliot it was the celebration of his 2nd year on earth, for Max his 4th, and for me... the 31st. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but I have no problems with growing older at all. I much prefer my 30s to my 20s, which were a little too all over the place for my liking. Let's not even speak of my teenage years. No, my thirties is the time in my life where I've started to feel comfortable with who I am and where I'm at. I'm young enough to be silly and old enough to be intimidating to children I don't know. I've had enough experience to have become efficient enough at putting makeup on to be able to have it done in 10 minutes, and to know that a Crock-Pot is a pretty wonderful Birthday present. Actually the CrockPot is a funny story....

My lovely sister Marissa is so clever when it comes to Birthday presents. She is thoughtful, puts effort and love into it, and will go out of her way to procure the perfect gift. So when I mentioned in passing I was going to have to get a CrockPot for when we moved into a place of our own, she made a mental note. She looked for the best deal she could find, even returning one she had already bought because she found a better one... then wrapped it like a pro and looked pretty excited when I was about to open it. Well guess what Sander told me just days before the Birthday party? He had managed to pack our own CrockPot from Holland (which is originally from the USA. That thing is well traveled) and it was sitting in our storage unit, waiting to be unpacked an used. Whoops! Sorry Marissa! Luckily my sister is also very smart, and she had the gift receipt taped to the box, so I was able to go back to the store and get a wonderful 4-slice toaster instead. And thus we see that in the land of women and kitchen machinery, all will be well in the end when there is love involved. Thanks for an amazing Birthday everyone!