The birthday boy

Owen is THREE!  He seems so old, I can't believe it.  But also he has seemed so old for a while now, since Maris was born I guess.  So having him be actually three just seems natural!  

I feel a little bad because when the girls were 3 they had birthday parties-kind of. We invited a few friends to play at the park and had cupcakes.  BUT sadly Owen doesn't really have any friends!  Okay there's a couple of people I could have invited, but I haven't been feeling as socially needy so we haven't been hanging out with people, and he has his sisters to play with, so as a result he doesn't really care about having friends!  In fact when my new visiting teachers were coming over the other day I was trying to get him excited about meeting some new kids and he was like "I don't like any other kids.  I just want to play with Kate."  So... we'll work on that now that I have visiting teachers with young kids!  And I plan on doing home preschool with him in the fall.  And he does have one friend from Santaquin that I need to call.

ANYWAY, for Owen's birthday, since we weren't going to get together with friends, he wanted to have a "sports party" at the Provo Rec Center.  We did his cake the night before (Derek and Raycelan came over for it and FHE) and then Grandma and Kurtis came to the Rec Center with us for the party.

Owen's requested basketball cake!

And this was hilarious, he was blowing so funny trying to get his candles out!  He kept blowing with his lower lip stuck out, and when he finally got one it came back to life!  So Eric helped him out a little.

He wanted to open all his presents right when he woke up on his birthday, I guess that's becoming a tradition in our family!  It was fun because then the girls and Eric got to see it all before they went to work/school.

Cutie.

After we got the girls to school, we spent a happy day just playing with all his new stuff!  Airplanes, more train tracks, riding his scooter around the house, taking pictures of things... it was a fun day.  Oh and his big haircut; we'll get to that in a minute!

Here are his sports party pics.  First we played a little basketball, (you can see the girls in the background, and Kurtis was there too but escaped the camera).

Then we spent a large chunk of time in the indoor playground.  It was pretty cool, but I had to keep telling myself "it's his birthday, this is what he wants to do!" and not try to make him stick to the sports theme haha!  Silly me.

Then we spent a few minutes at the climbing wall before trying to get a raquetball court (the wait was too long) and attempting to run on the cool indoor track (apparently you are only allowed on if you are 14 years old and up!) and finally just spending the rest of our time in the pool.

I guess this is the only picture I took at the pool!  He was finally brave enough to play on this playground and not mind if he got splashed or sprayed, yay!  The girls loved the big waterslides and Eric and I challenged each other on the pool climbing wall, which I can now do because of my stronger PiYo arms. :)

It was a fun family activity night.  And Grandma had fun holding Maris. :)

So. The big haircut.  Owen has been refusing to let us cut his hair.  He hates it all- the clippers, the itchy hair everywhere, holding still.... (as if the boy needs anything else to make him itch!  He's had a really bad eczema flare-up on the back of his knees that has taken literally a month to heal!  He kept scratching and had open sores and we finally started wrapping it in gause and athletic tape and it is FINALLY better!)

He finally agreed to let me cut his hair for his birthday.  He did NOT want to go to a haircutting place even though I begged him, because I did not want to do it myself!  The 3 or 4 haircuts I've given him in his life have not been very successful in my opinion!  But he insisted, so I looked up cute haircuts and how to do them on pinterest, and went for it!  Here are the befores:

Side,

front/side,

front, and back.  So cute and blond but so long and usually scruffy and crazy!

and 45 minutes later here's after!

I'm very pleased to say that I like how it turned out!  I really wanted to keep it long enough on the top corners where he has these lumps- if it's short there it just sticks straight out.  And I wanted to be able to brush it to the side or spike it up, and I wanted the back super short.  So I only used clippers in the back, and did the rest with scissors and it pretty much worked!!! Yay.  I love how it looks like he has frosted tips because the ends are still white and the roots are darker blond.

Anyway, we love our funny boy.

Oh yeah, and a couple of his quotes from lately:

"Mom this is a walking stick slash sword" (as in walking stick/sword.  I love how he uses that "slash" correctly!!) and playing at the park with a steering wheel "we are in a house slash car"

"Mom you know that when your water breaks, then you are not pregnant any more." 

Me: uuuhhhmmm, yep, you're right! How did you know that buddy?

"It was on Studio C."

Wow, I guess he picks up more than I thought!  A good reminder to make sure even family-friendly shows are age-appropriate!  Not that that info isn't, it was just surprising to hear him say it out of the blue!

At a park:

Me: Are you playing with those girls?

Owen: Yeah, we're playing Realtor.  I'm their realtor and I'm finding them a house.  We're going to go see that one.

Really?  haha, so funny that they act out their experiences.

Also it was really funny when we saw his cousins Lydia in December and Jenna in January, Owen did the same thing with each of them while sitting at the counter eating.  He would say funny made up combinations of words and they would laugh, over and over again.  It was so cute and such a classic boy/girl interaction: if it makes a girl laugh, a boy will keep doing it!