Life with the Lewallens: Party, Party, Party

We've had a partyful time lately! That's right...parties, parties, everywhere.
The exciting news that I eluded to in my last post......I'm in party picture paradise!
If you've been keeping up then you know that I lost my beloved camera to the toilet and bought a replacement on black friday. And then you probably remember how I was not so good with my new camera and had trouble getting good pictures, especially action shots of my active little guys. Well, one day last week there was a package delivered for Kade and Ryne. When we opened it up for them it was a new camera.....one like my precious old camera that went for a swim. Of course Kade and Ryne are not old enough to use a camera like that so I called up the purchaser of this camera, C.G. I had to inform her that while the boys would be excited about a new camera they wouldn't be old enough to use if for a few years. She said that she was pretty sure they would let me borrow it until then to take pictures of them for the blog. It seems that Grandaddy and C.G. want non-blurry action shots of the boys!
Thanks Mom and Dad...Hope you enjoy the party pictures today.

Now on to the parties!

Party #1
Party in Kade's Room

What real party is complete without live drums?

(Look at this NONblurry action shot would ya!)

There is video at the end to show you just how good our little drummer boy is and what an amazing assistant drummer his little brother Ryne can be....be sure to check it out before you go.

We took a little break from drum playing and did a bit of book reading.

Kade and Ryne both love to read books. They will bring us books to read to them all the time. Even Ryne brings us books to read, although he doesn't quite have the patience to read to the end just yet.

I let the boys continue on with their book reading party and before you know it I could tell things were getting a bit rowdy. I went back in to find a little bit of this going on:

Good thing Kade got two microphones with his karaoke machine last Christmas.

These two boys were cracking me up. They were singing and talking and making any kind of noise that they thought sounded cool as it was amplified throughout our entire house. I got some funny video of what Kade called their "Talking Show" that I will share with you sometime.

With Party #1 complete we moved on to Party #2

Going to buy groceries and have dinner "As a Family"

I put "As a Family" in quotes because that is what Kade kept saying about our little outing.

When I told him that after nap time and when Dad got home from work we were going to go grocery shopping and have dinner he just looked at me with big happy eyes and said, "Are we going as a family, Mom?" "Yes, son, we are going as a family, now get you're nap."

Kyle got home from work after Kade's nap and Kade immediately approached him and let him know that we were going grocery shopping as a family. And that we did. Two boys, two parents, two buggies full of groceries, and two sale papers with which to play the price matching game.

After groceries were bought we headed to dinner. We were going to try out a place that we had heard was very yummy. We had a gift certificate and headed over to cash it in at Norma's Burgers. When we got there this sign greeted us at the door:

We thought that was just great! Especially seeing this in the very liberal, politically correct Northwest where we live.

Then we ordered up some very yummy burgers and fries and onion rings and peanut butter chocolate milkshakes.

See my plate piled high with fries. Guess who ate at least half of my fries?

This guy:

Yea buddy...Ryne was in french fry heaven.

Kade on the other hand...

was in onion ring heaven!

He loves onion rings...mostly the onion part. He will actually eat the onion out and give us the "shell" to eat. I guess we have a true veggie kid on our hands.

That brought Party #2 to a close!

Party #3

Neighborhood Party at our house!

Saturday we cleaned and cooked all day in anticipation of our now annual neighborhood Christmas party.

We had 20 people at our house on Saturday night and we had a super duper time. Much of that good time is owed to the fact that Kyle really had his thinking cap on and hired a couple of great girls to come over and watch the kiddos during the party so the adults could really hang out. Two thumbs up to my sweet hubby for that one!!!!

Here are some pictures of our fun:

A shot of half of the kiddo table.

We ate a lot.

Ryne found out that he likes barbecue sauce and that he enjoys smearing it in his hair.

We played lots of games.

Our favorite is always Christmas song pictionary.

If you ever want to play this game it is fun to give a bonus point to the team if they are willing to sing the Christmas song after they get it right. The singing part is what really makes it fun!

Oh who am I kidding...the drawing is pretty funny sometimes too.

This was my favorite of the night. Can you guess what Christmas song this was?

When all the other children were gone Kade got to venture down from the kid party upstairs to hang out with his grown up neighbor friends.

I think his favorite part of the night was getting Mr. Joe to read his pirate book to him. Mr. Joe read it like a real pirate!

We were super excited about how much fun we had with our neighbors on Saturday night. We are already looking forward to next year's neighborhood Christmas party at our place!

Party #4

Sunbreak Church Christmas Party

On Sunday afternoon our friend Jeannette came over and kept the boys for us while Kyle and I headed over to Tumwater for a fancy grown-up Christmas party.

The fun was already beginning when we left because this is what we were seeing out our windows:

SNOW!

Snow makes for such a Christmassy Christmas party, I think.

Then there were these gals:

Sweet ladies with beautiful voices all dressed up singing traditional Christmas carols for us. They were very talented and made for an even Christmassier Christmas party.

And of course we ate and visited with friends and listed to funny stories and just had a great time.